SAS Platform Admin Blog

In Windows operating system, we know that installation files by default get stored in Program Files in C drive. For example, let say I install a Antivirus program, the default location will be C:\\Program Files. SAS installation is similar and it maintains two main directory to store SAS software and configuration files. In SAS we call it as: SASHOME directory - Which contains SAS software SAS Configuration directory - Which contains configuration files of SAS software Let's see in details about this directories. SASHOME directory: SASHome directory screenshot taken from Linux SAS Software installation is done using SAS Deployment Wizard. When you do first installation you can provide the desired location in which you want your SAS software to be stored. This will be your default location. However later you can't change the directory unless you do fresh installation. Any new SAS software installation made in the same computer will automatically gets stored in...

We know there are several client application in SAS. SAS Admin does most of his task using SAS Management Console and rarely using SAS Environment Manager. Other tool like SAS Web Administration Console can be used. Let's see a brief detail about what these tools does. SAS Management Console: SAS Admin can accomplish most of his/her task using SAS Management Console or SMC in short. Using SMC, admin can manage the metadata (library, table, ACT, user, groups and role) and SAS servers (workspace server, pooled workspace server and stored process server). SAS Admin can do their task by using the plug-ins available in SMC. Schedule Manger is one of the plug-in in SMC used to schedule SAS jobs. Using this plug-in you can choose the scheduling server. Image shows list of Plugin in SAS Management Console 9.4 Each plug-in has its own functionality. Other major plug-ins that SAS Admin should be aware are Metadata Manager, Library Manager, authorization plugin , Server Manager a...

You know SAS is a tool installed on top of OS like Windows or Linux. Often SAS Admins were assigned task done by system admin. There is no harm in learning new stuffs but in the end we are not aware which task belongs to whom. SAS Admin role starts once the SAS platform is installed, configured and validated. In my experience, primary installation and configuration were done by SAS Tech Support. Once installation is done, it is responsibility of SAS Admin to keep the platform active. High priority tasks: Security: Major task of SAS Admin will be planning the security. Security should be added in the OS level where all the SAS configuration file resides. You know that making changes to repository data sets will make them unusable. Proper security should be added to that directory in OS level so that normal users won't have access to that directory. Backup: Plan your backup activity. It will be a one time task. It is necessary to backup both metadata repository as well as ...

It is responsibility of a SAS Admin to know who are the users in their environment. We know that SAS is platform for business analytics. There are five roles who make use of this platform, they are. SAS Admin/platform administrator DI developer Data Quality Steward Power User Information consumer. SAS Admin needs to have little knowledge about all the roles. It will be easy for SAS Admin to solve the issues when people from other roles report an error. What SAS Admin need to know about other role? SAS Admin will have access to all client tools. Mostly we will get issues related to tools. By the tools we can deduce what kind of role the user is. For example: Primary tool for DI developer is SAS Data Integration Studio. So if the user reports issues with SAS DI studio we can deduce he/she is a DI Developer. DI Developer: DI Developer often create and manages metadata objects used for ETL processing. They deal with libraries and tables. DI developer ask SAS Admins creat...

Object Spawner spawns processes:   Object Spawner comes into picture when a user submits a SAS code or a scheduled code is submitted. It is part of SAS server, located in host machine. It literally checks for any user is submitting SAS code (including scheduled jobs). If they do it will call Workspace Server or Pooled Workspace Server or SAS Stored Process Server depending on the user request. As SAS is a Java based application the process of calling these servers is named as instantiate. So whenever Object Spawner gets a new request, it instantiates the server. As a SAS Admin whenever a user reports that they are not able to run a code you first suspect should be Object Spawner. Note: In this article server means Workspace server, Pooled Workspace server and SAS Stored Process. SAS jobs run in server and Object Spawner is responsible: SAS jobs run in any of these servers Workspace Server and SAS Stored Process. We can deduce Workspace server as Standard Workspace S...

Metdata Server Cluster gives more availability than a single Metadata Server. I succeeded adding a node to metadata server in SAS 9.4 and here you will find how to do that. Your host machine should comply with all pre-requite in order to set up a cluster. I did this in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS. The steps are almost similar for Windows OS too as we will be using SAS Deployment Wizard. Create a directory to store backup which is common to all nodes in Cluster: The first step in setting up cluster is creating a common backup directory. You can create a directory anywhere you like but make sure sas account has read, write and execute access to this directory. Let's say I have directory called SAS and now I am creating a new directory inside it. % mkdir /SAS/MetaClusterBackup % chown sas:sas /SAS/MetaClusterBackup % ls -ld /SAS/MetaClusterBackup drwxrwxr-x. 2 sas sas 4096 Mar 15 07:32 MetaClusterBackup I named the directory as per SAS documentation. You are free to choose ...

There are times where SAS Admins need to provide access to specific plugins in SAS Management Console. Here I am going to cover providing access to Authorization Manager Plug in using SAS Management console 9.2. The scenario here is the user named Robert needs access to Authorization Manager Plug in alone. He want to do migrate ACT from one environment to other. Note: This scenario can done in SAS Management Console 9.3 and 9.4. What should be done? First you should create a new Group and a new Role. Yes, a new group is needed to hold the list of users who need access to Authorization Manager Plug in alone. It is always good to have separate group for a separate role. It makes your life easier when it comes to maintenance. Let’s say the group name is Authorization Manager group. Then a new Role should be created which gives access only to Authorization Manager Plug in. There will be many default roles available but it is always better to create a new one. Steps Step 1: C...