Keep Necessary Documentation Available
SAS administrators should keep the following documentation available for each environment:
• the operational document specific to your environment to assist in transferring information to new administrators or for vacation coverage
• an updated store of user IDs and passwords
• a complete log of changes and events that take place in the SAS environment. This log is helpful if issues are encountered. The following changes should be included in the log:
• hostname changes
• updates
• patches
Start and Stop SAS Servers in the Correct Order
It is critical that the SAS servers be started and stopped in the recommended order as documented in “Overview of Server Operation” in SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide. The SAS_lsm tool described in Usage Note 58231: Utility that manages multi-tiered SAS services for Unix/Linux deployments is one of the options to ensure that this recommendation is followed consistently.
Back Up Your Environment
Maintain a regular schedule of deployment backups, as described in “Using the Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool” in SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.
Use operating system commands to back up your file system contents on a regular basis when server processes are stopped. Verify that your backup process is successful. Verify that you can restore from your backup.
Maintain a daily schedule of metadata server backups, as described in “Backing Up and Recovering the SAS Metadata Server” in SAS Intelligence Platform: System
Administration Guide.
Test Alert Email Configuration
SAS Metadata Server automatically sends an email to the designated email address when specific errors occur. This enables the SAS administrator to take timely action to correct the issue.
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To test the alert email:
1. Log on to SAS Management Console.
2. Expand Metadata Manager and right-click the active server.
3. Select Properties and click Send Test Message.
4. The settings for the alert email are in the omaconfig.xml and sasv9.cfg files that are located in the <sas-config-dir>/SASMeta/MetadataServer directory.
For more information, see Backup and Alert Notifications in SAS Environment Manager 2.5 Administration: User’s Guide.
Regularly Assess Your Environment for Available Hot Fixes
SAS makes hot fixes available for the customer to download and install. For further information, see the following resources:
• SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download and Deployment Tool
• SAS Hot Fix Announcements Communities Page
• How to learn about hot fixes to SAS software
Update SAS Licenses and SSL certificates
SAS licenses and SSL certificates must be updated before the expiration date.
Monitor Your Environment for System Resource Limitations
Based on the system resource limitations defined in the system requirements documentation, monitor your environment for available disk space, CPU, I/O, file descriptors, ulimits, and memory. Use system tools and the Environment Manager provided by SAS to monitor your server health and issue alerts as described in “Using SAS Environment Manager to Monitor SAS Servers” in SAS Intelligence Platform:
System Administration Guide.
For Linux, see System Requirements for SAS 9.4 Foundation for Linux for x64.
For Windows, see System Requirements for SAS 9.4 Foundation for Microsoft Windows.
Perform Regular Metadata Maintenance
Perform regular maintenance of metadata as described in “Running the Metadata Analyze and Repair Tools” in SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.
Long-Running SAS Sessions
To monitor long-running SAS sessions:
1. Check for long-running SAS sessions that might be abandoned and are no longer connected to a user session or a batch process.
2. Check SAS Enterprise Guide sessions that are left running overnight by users. These can lock the SAS tables.
These sessions might interfere with the nightly backup processes. Both these tasks can be successfully scripted. Your SAS consultants can help you find and adapt such scripts in your environment.
Clean Up Abandoned SASWork Directories
The SAS Cleanwork Utility for UNIX or Windows can be used for this task.
• For the UNIX environment, see “SAS Usage Utilities: CLEANWORK” in SAS Companion for UNIX Environments.
• For the Windows environment, see “Cleanwork Utility” in SAS Companion for Windows.
Run Scripts to Archive Log Files
Compress and archive log files periodically to save disk space. If you have servers that need to be restarted in order to rotate their logs, schedule a daily task to restart each of them. Log files are essential for troubleshooting issues, so retain the archived log files for a period of time to ensure that they are not needed by SAS Technical Support.
SAS Visual Analytics Monitoring
If you have installed SAS Visual Analytics on your machine, monitor the Autoload feature to ensure that it is periodically refreshing the tables when SAS Visual Analytics is running.
Monitor the audit reports to review information about the usage of your SAS Visual Analytics environment.
SAS Grid Monitoring
If you have a grid environment, monitor the distribution of the interactive and batch workload to ensure that the health of your grid is good. For further guidance, see Introduction to SAS Grid Computing.
Maintenance of the Shared Services Database
For more information about the shared services database, see the following resources:
• Tuning the PostgreSQL Data Server in SAS 9.4 Web Applications: Tuning for Performance and Scalability
• Monitoring Database Usage with SAS Environment Manager
Maintenance of the PostgreSQL Database
To perform regular maintenance on the PostgreSQL database, see Usage Note 32781:
Performing periodic, required maintenance on the PostgreSQL database.
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Allow Only the Metadata Server to Access Your Metadata Repositories
The MetadataRepositories and rposmgr subdirectories, which are located in the SAS configuration directory, are critical to the operation of your system. These data sets contain metadata that defines your servers, users, access levels, enterprise data sources, and data structures. They also contain metadata for resources that are created and used by SAS applications, including information maps, OLAP cubes, report definitions, stored process definitions, and jobs.
To safeguard the integrity of your system:
• Never move, delete, modify, or directly read the data sets in the
MetadataRepositories and rposmgr directories. These data sets should be accessed only by metadata server processes.
• Do not place other files in these directories.
Use Best Practices for Working with SAS Folders
The folders that appear in the Folders tab of SAS Management Console are used by client applications to store business intelligence content and system information.
Inappropriate renaming, deleting, or moving of these folders or their contents could cause client applications to malfunction.
When interacting with folders in SAS Management Console, be sure to follow the best practices that are provided in “Working with SAS Folders” in SAS Intelligence Platform:
System Administration Guide. If you need to move or copy the contents of these folders, use the procedures that are provided in “Promotion Tools Overview” in SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.
Use Usermods Files When Customizing Autoexec Files, Server Configuration Files, and Start-up Scripts
If you need to customize a configuration file, autoexec file, or start-up script for a SAS server, do not directly modify the file or script. Instead, add your customizations to the corresponding file that is named server-name_usermods.cfg, autoexec_usermods.sas, server-name_usermods.bat, or server-name_usermods.sh.
Use of these files prevents your customizations from being overwritten when a new SAS release is installed.
Be Aware of the SAS Virtualization Environment Policy
Do not make changes that affect the responsiveness of virtual machines that are running SAS servers. For more information, see SAS Product Support for Virtualization Environments.