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HEADS OR TAILS?

DECISIONS AROUND SAS® VISUAL ANALYTICS

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HEADS OR TAILS DECISIONS AROUND SAS® VISUAL ANALYTICS

There are many important decisions that you face

when implementing SAS® Visual Analytics. This

short session describes some of them, and provides

background information that will make those

decisions more than just a flip of a coin.

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HEADS OR TAILS DECISIONS AROUND SAS® VISUAL ANALYTICS

Option 1 Option 2

Mode Non-Distributed Distributed

Version VA VAAR

Metadata Server Shared Separate

Hadoop SAS Provided Commercial

VA Location Asynchronous Co-Located

LASR servers One Many

Working with Data Data Builder External

Data Formats ABT Star Schema

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HEADS OR TAILS MODE : NON-DISTRIBUTED OR DISTRIBUTED

Non-Distributed

Single Server

Lowest cost of entry

Ceiling to growth

Slower reload of data to memory

SAS Visual Analytics Environment

Metadata Server

Visual Analytics

Middle-Tier

Workspace Server

Visual Analytics has its own metadata server for managing the SAS VA environment

2 x # Core x64 Processors## GB RAM * / Linux x64

* Minimum Recommended hardware

SAS LASR Analytic

Server

SAS Visual Analytics Environment

Node n

Node 4

Node 3

Node 0

Metadata Server

Visual Analytics

Middle-Tier

Workspace Server

2 x # Core x64 Processors## GB RAM * / Linux x64

Node 2

SAS Hadoop/HDFS

Data Node

2 x # Core x64 Processors## GB RAM */ Linux x64

SAS High-Performance Analytics Environment

Worker Node

SAS 9.4

Visual Analytics has its own metadata server for managing the appliance SAS environment

* Minimum Recommended hardware

Node 1

SAS High-Performance Analytics Environment

Root Node

SAS Hadoop/HDFS

Name Node2 x # Core x64 Processors## GB RAM * / Linux x64

SAS LASR Analytic Server

Distributed

Multiple Servers

Higher cost of entry

‘No’ limits to growth

‘Snap’ load and unload to HDFS from

memory

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HEADS OR TAILS VERSION : SAS® VISUAL ANALYTICS VS. SAS® VAAR

VAAR

Limited functionality

No license cost

Usage tied to solution

VA

Full featured Visual Analytics

Standard per core pricing

Enterprise Usage

Or : Use BOTH!

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HEADS OR TAILS METADATA : SHARED VS. SEPARATE

Shared Separate

What are the solutions being used by the end users Same Different

What release of the SAS foundation platform do the

solutions to be implemented use

Same Different

What are the requirements for High Availability, Disaster

Recovery

Same Different

Is it a common community, specific to solution, grouped by

security or privacy requirements

Same Different

What is the release / upgrade cadence for the software Same Different

Are there dependencies on other software Yes No

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HEADS OR TAILSHADOOP : SAS PROVIDED OR COMMERCIAL

DISTRIBUTION

SAS Provided : SAS High-

Performance Deployment for Hadoop

Integrated in install (SDM)

Limited functionality

No license cost

Support through SAS Technical Support

SAS High-Performance Deployment for Hadoop support.sas.com : Commercial Hadoop Distribution Support Matrix

Commercial Distribution

Separate installation

Full featured Hadoop environment

No license cost

Support through commercial vendor

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Hadoop Cluster

HEADS OR TAILS VA LOCATION : ASYNCHRONOUS VS. CO-LOCATED

Asynchronous

Math and Memory Nodes

Separate performance impact

Use Embedded Processes to parallelize

SAS® LASR ANALYTIC SERVERS

Hadoop Cluster

Co-Located with Hadoop

Hadoop nodes

Cross performance impact

Snap-in, Snap-out HDFS persisted data

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HEADS OR TAILS LASR SERVERS : DEFAULT (2) OR MORE

Default

Default Installation

All groups share the memory

Can still be secured through metadata

Private

Additions to default

May help restrict usage of memory by

group

May require slightly more administration

Secured through metadata

SAS® LASR ANALYTIC SERVERS

Default Public

SAS® LASR ANALYTIC SERVERS

Default Public Private1 Private2 PrivateX

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HEADS OR TAILS WORKING WITH DATA : DATA BUILDER OR EXTERNAL

SAS® Visual Data Builder

End user self-service

Simple tool with focused set of capabilities

Users need only limited set of permissions to

the data

Minimum contact with SQL

Data created for a specific goal and shared

with a small team

External (e.g. SAS DI Studio, SAS EG)

IT owned and managed

Complex tool with wide range of capabilities

Need access to a larger set of enterprise data

Programming and scripting skills are

important

Data created for multiple goals and

shared across multiple divisions

/* PROC FREQ example */

/* Create a Hive table */

data myhdp.myUserID_class;

set sashelp.class;

run;

/* Run PROC FREQ on the class table */

proc freq data=myhdp.myUserID_class;

tables sex * age;

where age > 9;

title 'Frequency';

run;

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HEADS OR TAILS DATA FORMATS : ABT OR START SCHEMA

ABT

+ Best Performance

+ Easy to append, update and delete rows

- Large memory footprint

- Hierarchy data item replication across

analytical base tables

Star Schema

+ Smaller memory footprint

+ Reuse multiple dimension tables across schema

views

- Performance overhead due to execution of joins at

action time

- Schema must be reinitialized to reflect appended,

updated, and/or deleted rows

ANALYTICAL BASE TABLES

The structure of an analytical base table is as follows:

• Flat, fully materialized (that is, pre-joined)

• Atomic (that is, at the lowest level of granularity for reporting)

• Dimensions, facts, and measure variables all in one table

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HEADS OR TAILS

IT’S REALLY UP TO YOU!

The Choice :

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HEADS OR TAILS BIBLIOGRAPHY / LINKS

• SAS Technical Papers » SAS Visual Analytics

• Reeling Them Back In—Keeping SAS® Visual Analytics Users Happy

• See Section on “More than One LASR Server?”

• Self-Service Data Management: SAS® Visual Data Builder

• See Section on “Design Principles” for Visual Data BUilder vs. External DI Tools