How to Improve SAP HANA Resilience on AWS
Which TWO actions can be taken to improve the resilience of an SAP HANA database running on AWS? (Choose two.)
Quick Answer
Improving resilience for a HANA database on AWS means addressing two different failure scenarios, and that's why this question has two correct answers rather than one. Configuring SAP HANA system replication across Availability Zones protects against an AZ-level outage or hardware failure by keeping a synchronized secondary database ready to take over within the same Region, which is the kind of protection you need for the most common type of infrastructure failure. EBS snapshots address a different risk entirely: they provide a reliable, automated backup mechanism for the HANA data volumes, stored durably in Amazon S3, that lets you restore the database to a known-good point in time if something like data corruption or an accidental deletion occurs - problems that a live replica would actually propagate to the secondary rather than protect against. That distinction is the core concept here: replication protects availability against infrastructure failures, while backups protect against data-integrity failures, and a resilient design needs both rather than treating one as a substitute for the other. When a question asks for actions that improve resilience and offers a mix of replication-based and backup-based options, expect the correct answers to come from both categories, since together they cover the two different classes of failure a production database has to survive.
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse performance scaling (option D) with resilience, or mistakenly think cross-region replication (option E) is a simple built-in feature for SAP HANA on AWS, when in fact it requires complex setup and is not a standard resilience improvement for the database itself.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use EBS snapshots for automated backup.
EBS snapshots provide a reliable, automated backup mechanism for SAP HANA data volumes, enabling point-in-time recovery and disaster recovery without requiring additional SAP HANA-specific replication. These snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 and can be used to restore the database to a consistent state, improving resilience against data corruption or accidental deletion.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy the application in a single Availability Zone.
Why it's wrong here
Single AZ is less resilient.
- ✓
Use EBS snapshots for automated backup.
Why this is correct
Enables recovery from failures.
- ✓
Configure SAP HANA system replication across Availability Zones.
Why this is correct
Provides high availability within region.
- ✗
Increase the CPU capacity of the database server.
Why it's wrong here
Increases performance, not resilience.
- ✗
Enable cross-region replication of the database.
Why it's wrong here
This is disaster recovery, not resilience.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on PAS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. Which TWO actions should an operations team take to ensure high availability for SAP HANA in a single AWS Region?
medium- A.Create read replicas of the HANA database.
- ✓ B.Deploy SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ configuration using HANA System Replication.
- ✓ C.Use HANA System Replication with automatic failover.
- D.Configure automated backups to Amazon S3.
- E.Use a single large EC2 instance in one Availability Zone.
Why B: Deploying SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ configuration using HANA System Replication ensures that a replica is maintained in a different Availability Zone, providing high availability across AZs. Option C is correct because HANA System Replication with automatic failover allows the system to automatically fail over to the replica if the primary fails, minimizing downtime. Option A is incorrect because read replicas are used for scaling read operations, not for high availability. Option D is incorrect because automated backups to Amazon S3 provide data protection but do not enable automatic failover. Option E is incorrect because a single EC2 instance in one AZ is a single point of failure and does not provide high availability.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PAS-C01 exam.