SAS on demands for academics

[emaneman]

Dear all,

due to the fact that I am getting a new Apple computer with the apple processor (M1), which does not support VirtualBox, I am switching from SAS Studio to SAS on Demands. I have two options: SAS Studio or SASPy access to SAS® hosted servers.  Can anyone comment on the relative advantages of one over the other? My main concern is that I have all my SAS file and data spread across many folders of hundreds of projects, and these folders also contain tons of other non-data files, so I would like to be able to simply "map" the folders and have the SAS files i work on sync automatically on my local computer.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Eman

[Reeza]

From what I understand of On Demand, it's fully cloud based and has some significant limitations that may affect your usage - for one there's a limit on file sizes uploaded though you may get around that with storing your files on a different cloud service and reading them via URLs. 

A second is that it doesn't 'map' to your local drives, you have to upload your files explicitly. On the plus side, this means your files are with you from wherever you log in, even from an iPad in an airport. I don't think it has Github integration fully implemented, which is available in private installations. 

Some other options that you may want to consider are setting up a private cloud instance (via AWS or Azure) and running SAS UE through that. SAS UE is being deprecated next year anyways though, so it seems like this may be a good time to convert anyways. Apparently you can run a Linux VM via Parallels that so maybe you could install SAS UE using that approach. That's probably a bit of a technical challenge though. Windows doesn't yet have support for ARM chips so it'll be a while for optimal solutions.

There's a significant price tag for being an early adopter 😉 I'm waiting to see performance reviews and such but hoping for a new MacBook Pro next year...unless Santa makes a surprise visit. 

[emaneman]

Indeed, early adoption is always risky. I am hoping that VirtualBox will catch up, or that other solutions will be provided by SAS.

thank you

[Reeza]

I doubt SAS will be providing any solution as SAS University Edition is being deprecated next year.

[vetgirl56]

Santa made a visit to me with an M1 macbook pro and I wasn't smart enough to plan in advance for things not being compatible 😞
Thanks for the additional suggestions here...still trying to decide if parallels for SAS UE is worth the energy if it's going away soon anyway. Any idea on when this year SAS UE will no longer be available?
Suggestions for additional resources for SAS on demand? Will that still require some form of additional software?
Thanks!

[Kurt_Bremser]

The only thing you need for ODA is a browser. I use Safari successfully with it.

[Kurt_Bremser]

And you don't need Parallels for UE. Virtualbox is available natively for OSX, and works without problems.

[emaneman]

Hello,

I have moved on to On demand for academics, on the cloud. I prefer to have my files stored locally, so this cloud based solution is not ideal for me. 

But i was told that UE will be discontinued anyway in august 2021, so I figured I would not bother trying to find solutions to make it work. 

As already mentioned, On demand only needs a browser (I succesfully use Safari and Chrome).

Best wishes with the transition.

E

[Kurt_Bremser]

On Demand works in the cloud, and it can only access data stored on the server; so you have to upload everything you want to work with to the server.

[emaneman]

thanks Kurt

[Reeza]

SASpy is designed for you to use Python on your local machine using SASpy which is a different language, so that really is a personal workflow decision that you would need to answer.

[emaneman]

thank you Reeza