SAS Administrators

Gregory NelsonNovember 13, 2013 0

Understanding SAS and third-party databases

Wow did the summer fly by! Now that grad school is over, it’s about time to resume the “it’s all about the data” series. In the last several posts, I tried to lay a foundation for understanding how SAS stores and manages data for use in business intelligence and analytic

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Edoardo RivaNovember 6, 2013 0

Dear LSF: Can you start a SAS Workspace Server?

SAS 9.4 has been out for some time now, and all SAS grid computing enthusiasts know that one of the new features is that SAS Workspace Server processes can be directly launched on the grid. (See The Top Four User-Requested Grid Features Delivered with SAS® Grid Manager 9.4.) What does

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyOctober 23, 2013 0

Grid options sets: what’s new for SAS Grid Manager

In SAS Grid Manager environments, SAS administrators must often set up separate configurations based on a mix of requirements for departments, client applications and user roles. To accomplish this in previous SAS releases, administrators must define multiple SAS Application Server contexts, each with its own grid server definition and associated options.

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarOctober 16, 2013 0

SAS deployment: do you need an architectural plan?

"Do I really need a detailed technical architecture before I start my SAS Deployment?"  My team gets asked these questions all the time:   Do we really need to spend the time for the above exercise?  Why can’t we just start doing the deployment of SAS and fix issues if they come

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Amy PetersOctober 9, 2013 0

What’s new for SAS administrators in SAS 9.4: popular questions answered!

Recently I delivered a SAS Talks session: SAS 9.4: What’s New for SAS® Administrators .  We had a large group attend and subsequently had a wonderful flood of questions that we couldn’t always keep up with.  So I wanted to follow up with some of the popular questions:

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyOctober 2, 2013 0

Parallel processing in SAS: when and how to use it

Do your SAS programs read extra-large volumes of data? Do they run multiple DATA steps and procedures one after the other for hours at a time? Two papers from MWSUG 2013 show how you can speed up those long-running SAS jobs. Although their approaches and environments differed, both authors made

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveySeptember 19, 2013 0

SAS 9.4 middle tier architecture: need a map?

My family are all Lord of the Rings Trilogy fans. As a novice in the world of SAS administration, I find discussing the SAS middle tier architecture a little like traveling through Middle Earth. For me, it’s new and fascinating terrain. And like other travelers, I would find it useful

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Gail BakerSeptember 11, 2013 0

SAS 9.4 webinar: What's new for SAS administrators

Please register and join SAS Product Manager Amy Peters on September 26 at 1:00 pm ET for a SAS Talks webinar: SAS 9.4: What's New for SAS Administrators. This SAS Talks webinar is laser-focused on enhancements and changes that will interest SAS administrators. Specifically, Amy will highlight how the new

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveySeptember 4, 2013 0

Installing SAS 9.4--three videos that can help

Some handy folks at SAS got together and created a series of videos to help you get started with the SAS 9.4 installation. It starts with the basics that explain what you should do with your Software Order Email. Step two provides videos for creating or moving the software depot.

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarAugust 28, 2013 0

Looking for a clustered file system for SAS Grid?

With the popularity of SAS Grid Manager, this question often comes up:  which clustered or shared file system should we use with the multiple nodes of the SAS Grid? This is a question that needs to be thought through very carefully because the amount of time and effort to fix

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyAugust 21, 2013 0

SAS 9.4 metadata cluster: what and why?

Over the past few releases, SAS has offered high availability for servers through various failover techniques. So I’ve been wondering how metadata clustering differs and why does SAS 9.4 provide it. The “why” is an easy question to answer. Today’s SAS software is used in a wide array of business-critical applications

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Wendy McHenryAugust 14, 2013 0

Four ways to schedule SAS tasks

What do you do all day long? I spend my time speaking with customers about what’s new in SAS 9.4, answering technical questions, and showing new users what they can do in SAS. You might spend your time on SAS data management tasks such as bringing in data and joining

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyAugust 7, 2013 0

Updated deployment tool for SAS hot fixes

An updated version of the SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download and Deployment Tool (SASHFADD) has just been released on the SAS Technical Support Hot Fix site. If you are not familiar with SASHFADD (pronounced SAS-H-F-ADD), it’s a tool that will analyze a SAS 9.2, SAS 9.3 or SAS 9.4 deployment

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarJuly 31, 2013 0

Tuning SAS performance in a virtual environment

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

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Amy PetersJuly 24, 2013 0

Capturing the number of logins per SAS user

Christina Harvey recently forwarded this question from SAS user Bob Wasicak to several administrators here at SAS: “Does the metadata layer capture the number of login's per user? And how can I get at it?  I have been using the metadata browser but would like to write a query to extract

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyJuly 17, 2013 0

Guide to SAS user IDs and password rules

I love tables. As a writer, there's nothing more satisfying to me than distilling complicated information into neat rows and columns. That's one of the features that caught my eye in SAS User ID and Password Usage Rules. The other is its potential usefulness for SAS administrators who manage SAS

Read More

English

SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Amy PetersJuly 10, 2013 0

SAS Environment Manager: The buzz around SAS 9.4

I don’t think people typically think of administration as a fun thing, but it really was fun talking to SAS administrators at SAS Global Forum this year. There seemed to always be a crowd around the administration demo station. We had quite a few super demos and papers, and we

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Edoardo RivaJuly 3, 2013 0

Help, I lost my SAS server again!

In my last post, I introduced the hardware solutions (such as a virtual IP switch or IP load balancer) that enable client applications to access services regardless of whether they are running on a primary or a failover server in a grid-enabled environment configured with high availability. In this post,

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarJune 26, 2013 0

When should I use solid-state storage for SAS?

This question comes up often when we’re working with SAS customers to configure their underlying storage arrays:  “When is solid-state storage appropriate for SAS applications?” Solid-state drives, or SSDs, are the latest and greatest thing in storage today because they boast extremely fast performance. In this post, I’ll outline how

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Gregory NelsonJune 19, 2013 0

How to connect to SAS libraries when the client application isn't metadata-aware

Based on my previous posts, we are almost done with the basics of SAS libraries and how the various clients can access them.  Before we leave this topic and go onto third-party database engines, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about some best practices for making sure that

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Edoardo RivaJune 14, 2013 0

Help, I lost my SAS server!

Like most SAS users and administrators, you usually don't know where your backend SAS servers are located--probably in some basement server farm or perhaps another building or even another town. But I'm sure you do know that your SAS client application must have a way to reach services running on

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyJune 5, 2013 0

Don’t overlook release management

John Heaton is no stranger to the often frustrating process of migrating code between environments after software updates. While release management and version control may often be afterthoughts, Heaton cautions that ignoring them could be “time consuming and disastrous should errors occur.” His winning SAS Global Forum paper SAS® Release

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyMay 30, 2013 0

Securing SAS installations--some recent papers

Reading Jan Bigalke’s SAS Global Forum paper on “Hardening a SAS® Installation on a multi tier installation on Linux" reminded me of baking apple stack cake with my mother.  Neither is a simple project.  Both are time-consuming, and their success depends on how skillfully you handle each layer. Data security

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Christina HarveyMay 22, 2013 0

SAS administrator connections and resources

A good chunk of the SAS year revolves around SAS Global Forum. Pre-conference, everyone is busy polishing presentations and planning meetings. Post-conference is the best—attendees come back to Cary with heads full of customer ideas to implement and notebooks full of contacts to follow up on. One user's request found its

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Gregory NelsonMay 15, 2013 0

Pre-assign SAS libraries? If so, which method?

As we have seen my previous post "Seeing SAS data through metadata", there is a fundamental difference between accessing a SAS library using a physical reference or a metadata reference to that library. By now, you should now be an expert on the nuances of physical references to SAS data

Read More

English

SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Waynette TubbsMay 8, 2013 0

Taking business intelligence mobile

In today's fast-paced, jam-packed work day, many people answer email and read reports after business hours. And more and more, they're doing those things on a smartphone or tablet. How are your users accessing and using your reports? Statistics South Africa has found that their end-users would prefer a mobile

Read More

English

SAS Administrators | SAS Events

Christina HarveyApril 17, 2013 0

SAS Global Forum: Focus on SAS administration

If you're a SAS administrator and haven't registered or planned your agenda for SAS Global Forum 2013, here are a few key happenings to tempt you!

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Wendy McHenryApril 10, 2013 0

Hiring a SAS administrator? 12 questions to ask

I have been on both sides of the table during an interview to hire a SAS administrator. I’ve been hired as a SAS administrator, and I have hired SAS administrators. Today, I work with SAS customers to help them find the best software for their business needs. I get asked-

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Margaret CrevarApril 3, 2013 0

Planning for SAS use on solid state drives

SAS software benefits from the high performance of solid state drives (SSD), whether it is in the form of flash memory cards or hard-drive form-factor SSDs. The following general points should be considered when planning SSD storage for SAS usage:

Read More

English

SAS Administrators

Simon WilliamsMarch 27, 2013 0

Finding audit bliss in SAS Web Report Studio

For many organizations, having traceability for members of staff accessing and leveraging customer data is a key requirement. There is the obvious security focus when leadership teams think about traceability, but there are additional uses for audit data within the organization: Using it to identify potentially broken work practices and

Read More

English