If you're a SAS 9.4 customer, take note of some important events that take effect in 2025. This article provides just a high-level overview. Read the full details about affected products (including release numbers and versions) in this article from Kimberly May, Senior Vice President of SAS Technical Support.
The next SAS 9.4 maintenance release
First, we are excited to announce that SAS 9.4M9 was released in June 2025. In addition to updates for 3rd-party components and database connectors, SAS 9.4M9 supports newer operating systems:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10 and 9.1 and later
- Oracle Linux 8.10 and 9.1 and later
- IBM AIX 7.2
- Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025 families
See support.sas.com for the full list of operating systems supported for each release.
SAS 9.4 Maintenance 9 | Watch the on-demand webinarReaders ask: will there be more maintenance releases for SAS 9.4? As mentioned in the SAS 9.4M9 webinar, a "Maintenance 10" is planned for SAS 9.4. Release timing has not yet been announced, but typically maintenance releases are spaced at 18-24 months apart.
Support updates for older SAS 9.4 releases and product versions
As a reminder, the most recent generally available maintenance release for the SAS 9.4 platform is SAS 9.4M9, released in June 2025. Prior to that, SAS 9.4M8 released in January 2023, and is under Standard Support until February 2028. SAS 9.4 maintenance releases are available at no additional fee to existing 9.4 customers.
Several older SAS 9.4 maintenance releases and product versions will move from Standard Support to Limited Support in 2025. Limited Support is not a recommended support level for production-type systems. For example, Limited Support does not receive security patches and has reduced severity level handling. Refer to the SAS Support Policy for additional information.
Extended Support available for older SAS releases and product versions
To maximize their SAS investment and keep systems secure, SAS encourages customers to run the latest SAS software and apply hot fixes regularly. However, we recognize that some deployments, such as certified or verified systems, are not easy to change in coordination with the SAS release schedule. To address this gap, we are offering Extended Technical Support as an additional service for software that has moved to Limited Support. Contact your Account Executive for more information and to see whether your system qualifies.
SAS Support Updates | Get the details on product updates
11 Comments
Does the extended technical support provide security patches? If not, what does it provide?
In general, Extended Technical Support is designed to provide more support attention when you are running software that is in Limited Support. This includes access to Severity Level 1 and 2 cases and Follow-the-Sun timing and response for support cases. You can see the full terms here.
SAS should really work on making upgrading no more difficult than installing patches.
The current process is much too complex and expensive, and harms SAS's reputation with customers
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We hear you. The 3rd party components (not trying to shift blame) do make the deployments complex. SAS Viya and SAS Viya Workbench are much better for upgrades, following well-established industry practices for updating cloud deployments in containers.
Some retired products and solutions will be back in SAS 9.4 M9 maitenance?
In general, no. "Retired" means no longer available in the latest platform release.
However, you can look up the plans and support for solutions you're interested in. And a comprehensive table for support policies per product is here.
Hi,
may I please have a clarification regarding Version of RHEL that will be supported for SAS 9.4M9:
On SAS 9.4M8, RHEL 7.9 (and later) is still supported.
What about SAS 9.4M9, will RHEL 7.9 still be supported ?
Thanks - Hans
Hans, I believe that SAS 9.4M9 will require RHEL 8.10 (or later) or RHEL 9.1 (or later). Tune into the webinar in April for all of the details.
Got it! Thanks for all the info, I greatly appreciate it.
I don't see Solaris in the list of supported operating systems for SAS 9.4M9. Can you confirm that Solaris will no longer be supported as of M9?
Hi Chris, the list in this post mentions just some of the new operating systems/versions that are being added -- it's not the exhaustive list of supported environments. However, there are changes that affect Solaris SPARC and x86 for M9: see this SAS article for details. In short, the newer version of Java that is included with SAS 9.4M9 is not supported on these versions of Solaris.
Solaris continues to be supported with SAS 9.4M8, which has standard support until 2028.