topic Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4 in Administration and Deployment

Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

vfarmak — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:40:56 GMT

Hello everybody,

I would like to raise the question to sas communities: is anyone involved in the past on migrating SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4 (Open Kubernetes) and has experienced issues? If yes, what pitfalls does this migration might have and what actions or preliminary steps need to be performed to have a smooth transition?

To give you an insight, we have a cluster installation and a Visual Analytics 7.5 reporting systems in place.

Mostly we have SAS Data Integration Flows (around 1000 jobs), a few stored processes, no OLAP Cubes and we need to migrate to SAS Viya 4.

Best Regards,

Vasileios

#sasviya4 #migration #sas9.4M8

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

LinusH — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 11:55:32 GMT

There are so many different use cases, and specific customer configurations, so I think it will be hard to get relevant input here.
Your starting point should be to do a Content Assessment. From this you can identify potential risk areas for your migration, and perform detailed analysis.

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

SASKiwi — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 01:08:42 GMT

@vfarmak - Are you going from on-premises to on-cloud by any chance? If so then you will need to deal with cloud hosting issues as well as SAS migration issues.

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

LinusH — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:18:17 GMT

Short on the components you are mentioning:

OLAP cubes
1. Detailed (single table) will be migrates to CAS tables.
2. Start Schema will migrated as Viya Job definitions - which in turn creates CAS tables.
DI Studio: many transformations haas a like-4-lika migration path, some don't. Some options in transformations are not supported. When a transformation can't be migrated like-4-lke, a program step is created (lika a User Written Code in DIS).

Again, this information will be given to in per job/object level if you perform Content Assessment.

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

Kathryn_SAS — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:31:42 GMT

There is a lot of good information on this starting with the link below that has additional links to papers, blogs, and videos:

https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/calintro/latest/p0wcj8rvehrzmrn12xzih1f5g789.htm

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

vfarmak — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:00:43 GMT

We are planning to build it on premises (Open Kubernetes scenario).

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

vfarmak — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:03:35 GMT

Hi @LinusH

some of the Data Integration Studio jobs include User Written code (So we are good in this scenario).

Based on your experience, the effort for each job depends on the complexity right?

Re: Migration from SAS 9.4 M8 to SAS Viya 4

LinusH — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:03:23 GMT

Yes. If you have standard trandformations that migrates like-4-like it's easier. If you have stuff like Loop, Fork etc you probably need som customization in the migration process.
Again, Content Assessment will give you good insight of the profiles of your jobs.