Newbie guide for SAS Viya Pay-As-You-Go?

[Quentin]

Was wondering if there is a newbie guide for best / safest /cheapest way to setting up SAS Viya on Azure just to have a personal playground?(Beyond the official documentation https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/viyaakscdc/v_001/dplyviya0cld0aks/p01dmkd9w5m7lnn10uxnpsjlrc... )

In particular, how to configure limits on Azure spending that will be enforced in a way that I don't accidentally spend $1000 because of an infinite loop.  : )

I remember years ago setting up SAS9 pay-as-you-go on AWS just for fun.  I can't remember if it was University Edition, or SODA, or something in between.  But it was SAS 9 running on AWS, pay-as-you go, and I could connect with SAS studio (or maybe EG?).  It was fun to have my own SAS server.

Basically, I'm tired of saying "no, I haven't tried Viya yet".  Since Microsoft is giving $200 credits for new azure marketplace accounts, I thought I could use them to play with Viya a bit.  But I have no idea if the installation process itself might eat those credits. 

I was surprised to see this post https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Viya-on-Microsoft-Azure/HIgh-cost-on-Azure/m-p/860427/highlight/t... , which says that even if you stop the Viya service, you'd still be paying ~$3/day.  Much as I love SAS, I don't think I would pay $50-$100 / month just to have a sandbox for playing with CAS.  So maybe my idea doesn't make sense.

Would welcome any thoughts.

[rich_sas]

Hi Quentin -

Thanks for your interest! We definitely want you to be able to try SAS Viya! You will love it!

You are correct that we don't currently provide a way for you to apply limits to your deployment. The best way to control costs is to use the start/stop feature or scheduled start/stop. But, as you note, that still results in about $3 per day of infrastructure costs to maintain the environment.

We do have a new solution in test that will allow us to spin the deployment down completely when it's stopped, such that there are no charges when the deployment is stopped. We hope to have that available soon.

Best regards,

Rich

[Quentin]

Thanks @rich_sas .  Do you have an unofficial estimate of how much this initial installation process is likely to cost me (for the smallest environment possible)?  If I can install it for $100 , then play with it for a month for $100, then I can play based on Microsoft's free money and see how it goes.  But if the installation alone will cost me $500, probably not worth starting.  Or if just playing with sashelp.class for an hour will cost me $100, same deal.  I'll have to investigate the Azure billing safeguards.   I vaguely remember in AWS you could set limits, but I think they only fired daily.

[rich_sas · Accepted solution]

The installation process itself doesn't really cost you anything. Once the software is deployed, you can stop the environment to limit the infrastructure costs to < $100/month. So, for the first month, consider that the baseline "install" cost.

When you start the environment and it is running, the infrastructure costs are ~$60/day or ~$2.50/hour (subject to change based on Microsoft pricing for the deployed infrastructure). Then, you would have the SAS Viya metered usage costs on top of that. There is an idle threshold on the SAS Viya metering, so you are not charged metered usage for just clicking around in the UI. You are basically charged when you submit work to the SAS Viya compute engines. Since sashelp.class is a very minimal data set, you would likely not run up significant charges. Even if you did do some heavier work, let's assume you end up with ~$5.00/hour average all in (infra + usage) for the sake of a ballpark estimate. That would give you 20 hours to try things out during the first month to stay within your $100 "install" + $100 usage cap.

An upcoming update will include an admin panel that will provide you with information about your metered usage charges so you will be able to track that within the environment. That will be included with the update I mentioned earlier where the infrastructure costs for a stopped environment will go to zero. So, you could wait for that to be announced if you wanted more assurance of your ability to contain / manage costs.

I hope this helps.

Rich

[Quentin]

Thanks @rich_sas , that's a big help.  Enough for me to plan on spending some time this weekend to try it out.  I've already got my azure account, and I think the $200 is only good for 30 days.  Of course, I suppose I could always open an account each month. : )

Yes, I'm sure I'll move on quickly from sashelp.class.  But probably won't do anything too resource intensive.  Mostly I want to play around and see how a multi-threaded data step works with things like LAG / RETAIN etc.  The documentation is good, but it'll be fun to see it.  And maybe I'll take a shot at writing some CASL just for fun...

[Quentin]

@yabwon , here's the thread I mentioned about setting up your own personal Viya envt on Azure Marketplace. I haven't done it yet, but keep hoping to find the time some rainy Saturday.

[yabwon]

Thanks @Quentin !

[BillBerkeley]

I just subscribed to sas Viya on azure and it says Awaiting Publisher. I wonder what that means and why can’t I start using SAS right away. Thanks!