Post on 19-May-2015
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Considerations in Managing your SAS EnvironmentSUNZ 201016 February 2010
Bill GibsonCTO, SAS ANZ
Agenda
� What environments (Dev/Test/Prod, Discovery & Operational, Business Continuity) should you have?
� Administration – daily, weekly and periodic tasks
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� Administration – daily, weekly and periodic tasks
• Back-ups
• Monitoring your environment
• Software Maintenance
� User Support
� Trouble shooting and working with SAS Support
Environment Types
� Development
� Test
� Production
� Software Test
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� Software Test
� Playpen
� UAT
� BAU Dev/Test
� Discovery
� Operational
� Business Continuity/DR
Software Environments - Single Environment
� Simple and cheap to set up and manage.
� Risks around business continuity if issues arise.
� Risk of breaking system by
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� Risk of breaking system by
• Runaway usage
• Incorrect maintenance application
• Hardware error
� Need to evaluate time to recover from an outage, and the business impact.
Dev / Test / Prod in Business Analytics
� Very different from traditional operational systems
� IT use Dev/Test for data management & production system creation & maintenance.
� Business users create new content (reports,
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� Business users create new content (reports, analyses, & ad-hoc data management) in production environment as required.
• May use folder level security to manage status.
� Multiple “applications” hosted on a single platform.(see http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/forum2007/204-2007.pdf)
Sample Complex Configuration- Detail
� Active/passive Metadata
� Clustered Mid Tier
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Tier
� Grid enabled compute Tier
SAS Administration
� Requires competency around both operating system and SAS (+ people skills)
� Not necessarily a full time role
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� SAS Platform Administration Training mandatory
� Focus should be on preventing problems, not fixing them
� Critical to have a SAS Administration role with suitable competencies.
(Ref: The Many Hats of the SAS® Administrator
Administration – Back-ups (daily)
� Metadata Server Backups are essential.
• Operating system back-ups cannot back-up a running metadata server successfully. It must be paused.
• Make sure the SAS back-up is archived to a separate
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• Make sure the SAS back-up is archived to a separate location.
• SAS Standard install provides 31 day rolling back-ups.
� Back-up Content Server /Table Server at the same time as metadata
� Back-up SAS Config directory tree before/after each config change
Best Practices for Backing Up and Restoring Your System Best Practices for Backing Up Your SAS System
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Tip: Create Admin Metadata “Playpen” Server
� Selective Restore of Archived Metadata Versions
• Restore production metadata back up to playpen ia file copies
• Selectively export content
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• Selectively export content
• Import required objects back to production environment
� Does not require a complete environment, just a metadata server which can be started as needed
Monitoring Your Environment
� Disk Space
• Regular cleanup of orphaned work libraries
• Out-of-space is a major cause of production job failure
• Monitor space during overnight batch processing
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• Monitor space during overnight batch processing
� System Resources
• CPU
• Memory
• I/O performance
Windows I/O and Memory Management
� Generally poorly understood.
� I/O is typically a bottleneck with multi-GB files –and I/O by default goes through Windows file cache.
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cache.
� Look at SGIO (which avoids cache) – use Bufno=n000
� Understand Windows Memory management:
� http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/10/10/the-memory-shell-game.aspx
SAS 9.2 and the SAS Administrator
� Major advances in System Administration in 9.2
• Attend the changes in Platform Administration training
• Browse the What’s New
• Try the new features out!
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• Try the new features out!
SAS® 9.2 Audit and Performance Measurement� SAS Metadata Server Audit Reporting
• Administrative authorization and authentication modifications
• Administrative group and userid access control modifications
• Userid authentication and authorization patterns
• Userid authentication and password failure attempts
� SAS Enterprise BI Server analytic server performance usage
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� SAS Enterprise BI Server analytic server performance usage
• Metadata Library Reporting
• PROC and DATA library reports
• SAS OLAP Server Cube usage
• SAS Stored Process Server usage and user reporting
• SAS analytic server processor utilization reports
� SAS Enterprise BI Environment Status Reports,
• Web application server and services availability
• Analytic server tier availability
• Analytic server tier response time reporting
• Real-time alert feature for failure state conditions
Software Maintenance
� Generally proactive, scheduled maintenance is recommended.
� For 9.2, install maintenance releases in a scheduled maintenance outage.
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scheduled maintenance outage.
� If you do this you probably do not need to apply pro-active hot fixes as well.
� Hot fixes are generally only available at the current maintenance release level.
� Details at support.sas.com- search “Maintenance Release”
User Management –Real Life Examples
� 6TB of data in SAS Data Sets
� 30,000 SAS programs
– no understanding of who created what, when, and what
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– no understanding of who created what, when, and what is obsolete.
� User program that uses 400GB of work space, whole system slows down when it runs.(some tuning reduced space required by 95%)
Suggestions for Managing Users
� Create, communicate and “enforce” Best Practices
• Define standard directory / metadata trees
� Provide avenues for knowledge sharing
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� Provide avenues for knowledge sharing
• Web site
• User forums
• Mail lists
Publicise successes
� Business Intelligence Competency Centre Concept
- see SAS Web Site
Enterprise Guide
� Standard Locations for Projects
� Versioning Strategy
� Project Size & Complexity
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� Project Size & Complexity
• Don’t put everything in one project
• Separate Data Preparation from Analysis & Reporting
� Understand How EG interacts with 3rd party databases
DI Studio
� Standard Metadata Structure
� Meaningful Names
• Temp Tables
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• Process Objects
� Create sensible size jobs
• Consider restartability
Trouble Shooting & Working with SAS Tech Support
1. Learn to use Support.sas.com
2. Plan and test remote access for support (WebEX)
3. Provide complete logs, not just extracts
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3. Provide complete logs, not just extracts
• Learn how to create diagnostic logs and set logging levels
4. Single error messages and screenshots of limited use.
5. Provide information on “What is” and “What is not”.
Conclusions
� A well managed SAS environment is a productivity aid for all users
� Administrators need to have blend of IT & SAS skills
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skills
� Monitoring your environments allows issues to be anticipated, and avoided.
� Appropriate standards, well communicated & monitored, facilitate development and maintenance.
References
The Many Hats of the SAS® AdministratorFabian Robinson, Shiva SrinivasanPJM Interconnection, Norristown, PA
SAS Global Forum 2009 177-2009
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Optimizing SQL performance with SAS Enterprise Guide®
Best practice paper
SAS and Teradata Center of Excellence