topic Re: CPU spikes near the end of a large PROC SORT in Administration and Deployment https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110792#M9718 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>A few pieces of the puzzle, but definitely not a full answer ...</P><P></P><P>Toward the end of the SORT process, SAS interleaves the various sort areas, forming the final sorted SAS data set.&nbsp; There would be a little cleanup after that, such as releasing the sort work areas.</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 14 Aug 2013 16:42:23 GMT Astounding 2013-08-14T16:42:23Z CPU spikes near the end of a large PROC SORT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110791#M9717 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>This has been an ongoing issue in my company's use of SAS: we run SAS on two powerful unix boxes with dozens of concurrent users.&nbsp; The boxes are connected to Isilon SAN storage and that is what most users use for read/write/SAS workspace.&nbsp; (Local and sort workspace are on drives local to the boxes, not on SAN.)&nbsp; SAS is the only app consuming significant resources on these boxes.</P><P>The issue is that we get debilitating CPU usage spikes (freezes the box for 3-5 minutes) on these boxes and from my experience, they always occur when a large PROC SORT is finishing up.&nbsp; What is PROC SORT doing near the end of its process that consumes so much CPU?&nbsp; Any suggestions for eliminating these spikes?&nbsp; (I am not IT; just a user.)</P><BR /><IMG src="https://communities.sas.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/10689iC7BA89B336C67312/image-size/large?v=1.0&amp;px=600" border="0" alt="serverload.jpg" title="serverload.jpg" /></BODY></HTML> Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:36:11 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110791#M9717 Bnad 2013-08-14T15:36:11Z Re: CPU spikes near the end of a large PROC SORT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110792#M9718 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>A few pieces of the puzzle, but definitely not a full answer ...</P><P></P><P>Toward the end of the SORT process, SAS interleaves the various sort areas, forming the final sorted SAS data set.&nbsp; There would be a little cleanup after that, such as releasing the sort work areas.</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 14 Aug 2013 16:42:23 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110792#M9718 Astounding 2013-08-14T16:42:23Z Re: CPU spikes near the end of a large PROC SORT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110793#M9719 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>I should clarify that these spikes/freezes happen really late in the PROC SORT, after the sorted dataset is fully written to disk, but before the PROC SORT finishes.</P></BODY></HTML> Thu, 15 Aug 2013 17:25:09 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/Administration-and-Deployment/CPU-spikes-near-the-end-of-a-large-PROC-SORT/m-p/110793#M9719 Bnad 2013-08-15T17:25:09Z