topic Re: SAS reading data from Azure in Microsoft Integration with SAS

SAS reading data from Azure

fetcs74 — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 11:00:50 GMT

Hello,

I was wondering if someone already used Azure as data source, in a Data Lake approach, being able to create VA reports or run DI jobs. How about the performance? Was it good enough?

Thanks.

Re: SAS reading data from Azure

AndreasMenrath — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:22:30 GMT

Your question is very vague. Azure has dozens of services which could be used as a data source: HDInsight, Blob-Storage, SQL DB, Data Lake, ...

I think you are referring to the HDFS data storage called Azure Data Lake. So the short answer for ADL: no, you cannot access the ADL HDFS with SAS or any other non Microsoft product out of the box. The reason is that ADL requires a user login before you can use the HDFS.

But with some custom programming you can access the data via the Microsoft API or commandline tools. It just won't work with the standard SAS/Access to Hadoop and you have to download the data locally before you can process it.

For the second part of your question about performance: the performance is related to dozens of factors, so it is impossible to give you a general answer. The service itself is performant, but if you can access it in a performant way heavily depends on your company infrastructure.

It also depends on the Azure region where your data is stored. It also makes a difference if your SAS is running on premise or in the cloud and maybe even the same data center.

I hope this gives you some insights and points you to the right direction.

Re: SAS reading data from Azure

fetcs74 — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:27:49 GMT

Thanks AndreasMenrath!

Re: SAS reading data from Azure

AndreasMenrath — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 09:32:33 GMT

One more addition to the topic:

for Big Data scenarios you should consider to take a look at the big data solution from SAS: SAS Viya. It runs on a public or private cloud or also on premise.

If you are in a Microsoft focussed company you might want to evalute Azure Data Factory to push your data from Azure into a location (on premise or cloud) where your SAS environment can read it.

Re: SAS reading data from Azure

JBailey — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 15:21:56 GMT

Hi @fetcs74,

Are you interested in using SAS with Azure HDInsight? Can you tell me your company name so that I can keep a record of this request?

Best wishes,

Jeff