Users often ask if there are any major tuning efforts that need to be made in order for SAS to execute ideally in a virtual environment. The quick answer is "not really". The longer answer is “it helps to set up your virtual environment properly.”
There are a few minor tuning settings from a VMware perspective that should be followed. These tuning settings are detailed in the Moving SAS Applications from a Physical to a Virtual VMware Environment paper. This paper has been updated recently to reflect using Version 5, the newest VMware release.
In addition to knowing how to properly setup your operating system in a virtual environment, you must also properly setup your virtual storage arrays. How to do this has been documented in this SAS Global Forum 2013 paper: SAS and the New Virtual Storage Systems. Considerations for improving performance on an IBM POWER7 system were discussed in a previous blog post.
Please note that the above papers, along with many other tuning papers, can be found on support.sas.com under Usage Note 42197: A list of papers useful for troubleshooting system performance problems. You may want to bookmark the location for future reference.
