PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
Your company runs SAP ERP on AWS with a multi-AZ deployment. The SAP HANA database is replicated across two Availability Zones using HANA System Replication. The application servers are behind an Application Load Balancer. During a recent Availability Zone failure, the primary HANA instance failed, and the standby took over. However, the application servers continued to try to connect to the primary instance for several minutes, causing downtime. The DNS record for the database endpoint was manually updated after the failover. What is the most effective solution to automate the failover and minimize downtime?
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
✓
Implement Amazon Route 53 DNS failover with health checks on the primary and secondary HANA instances
Using Amazon Route 53 with a primary and secondary routing policy and health checks can automatically update DNS to the healthy instance. Option C is correct.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure a Network Load Balancer in front of the HANA instances
Why it's wrong here
NLB does not support automatic failover between active/passive without health check integration.
- ✗
Create a custom script on each application server to detect failover and update the connection string
Why it's wrong here
A custom script on each application server to detect failover and update the connection string would introduce a race condition and inconsistent timing across servers, failing to provide the synchronous, atomic DNS update required to redirect all traffic instantly after HANA System Replication completes. This approach is tempting because it mirrors a common pattern for application-level retry logic in stateless environments, and it would be correct if the database endpoint were not resolved via DNS but instead managed through a local configuration file that each server polls independently.
- ✓
Implement Amazon Route 53 DNS failover with health checks on the primary and secondary HANA instances
Why this is correct
Route 53 health checks detect primary failure and automatically route to the secondary.
- ✗
Use an Amazon RDS for SAP HANA instead of self-managed
Why it's wrong here
Amazon RDS does not support SAP HANA.
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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.