SAS Administration tasks

1. Administration schedule

- Design and maintain a schedule of SAS platform administration activities
- Specify when regular housekeeping tasks should be performed
- Follow the schedule to keep your system running efficiently

2. Backup and Recovery

- Define backup and recovery strategy
- It should describe:

• Which components of SAS Platform should be backed up
• how frequently
• how long backups should be retained and where

- Seems simple, but can be complex in multi-machine deployments
- System state is stored in multi places
- Must backup and restore synchronously to keep system state consistent
- You can use SAS Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool

3. Linceses

- Learn how to apply new licence files

• http://support.sas.com/techsup/license/

- Document the steps for your specific SAS deployment
- You may have several separate licensed components
- Their licenses may not all expire on the same date
- Allow enough time to renew licenses before they run out

4.Archive and delete log files

- Write your own scripts to archive(zip) and delete log files
- Run those scripts regularly, e.g. nightly
- Example scheme:

• Archive logs after 7 days
• Delete archived logs after 30 days

-Some servers have to be restarted to rotate their log file

5. Relocate SAS Work

- Linux: SAS work default= /tmp

• Cleaned up periodically by OS
• May be on root partition - filling it is bad

- Windows : SAS work default= user's home directory
- Choose better location with sufficient space, on filesystem which is optimized for expected workload, e.g. large sequential read and write

6. Clean up SAS Work

- Delete SAS Work directories left by abruptly-terminated SAS workspace sessions
- Unix:SAS Cleanwork utility
- Windows:SAS Disk cleanup handler

• http://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2014/05/14/finding-and-deleting-orphaned-sas-work-and-sas-utility-directories/

- Run it regularly,e.g. Weekly

7. Security Model
- Design and maintain security model
- Implements a security policy
- Use groups to manage access to:

• Metadata
• Data
• Application functionality

- Determine how users and groups are:

• Added
• Updated
• Removed

8. Filesystem Access controls

- Secure files and directories in addition to metadata
- Prevent unauthorized read or writes access

9. Monitoring

- SAS Environment Manger
- Third party monitoring solution
- Your own custom tools or scripts
- Record time series data
- Set up alerts
- Monitor Jobs and Queries

10. Hotfixes

- Maintenance release
- Hotfixes
- Announcements
- Support notes

• https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Hot-Fix-Announcements/bg-p/hf
• http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/hotfix.html