In reply to Paul Homes.

Paul,

There are ways to have your anit-virus software exclude scanning all SAS data file. These are discussed in paper that we have produced regarding tuning your Windows system for SAS. Here is a link to the paper: http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/WindowsServer2008ConfigurationandTuning.pdf There are lots of other good tips for running SAS on Windows in the paper as well.

The simulation tools that we at SAS use the most for load testing is LoadRunner and JMeter. They work really well and have some very nice analysis features to them. The one thing I would strongly recommend you do with your load testing is make sure what you are testing is how your SAS users use SAS. "Made up tests" can give you inacurate results and if you tune for these results you may make the hardware run slower for your actual SAS users. (This has happened many times with SAS customers over the years.)

Thanks for the comments and keep the questions coming.

Cheers,
Margaret