Depot Subsetting Utility for SAS 9.3?

[bheinsius]

Hi,

http://support.sas.com/kb/39/212.html lets you download the Depot Subsetting Utility for SAS 9.2.

I can't find the same tool foor SAS 9.3

I tried running the 9.2 tool on a 9.3 depot for selected clients but got:

WARNING: The following products were NOT found in the source SAS Software Depot for this order and the requested operating systems:

securejava sysreqwizard mit

Is it a bug or am I missing the 9.3 version of this tool?

-Bart

[Jmo_sas · Accepted solution]

See http://support.sas.com/kb/39/379.html

This part:

Subsetting SAS Software Depots - this is new in SAS 9.3 (see page 17 for more details)

Note: The ability to subset orders within a depot when it is being moved or copied replaces the functionality that was available in the SAS Administrator Wizard in previous releases of SAS. If you are used to creating either a Client Users Depot or a Personal Users Depot in earlier versions of SAS, use the information above to select the specific products you wish to copy into a separate depot. Such a newly created depot can serve the same function as those depots did in previous releases.

For additional information see SAS Note 40426 "The SAS^® 9.3 depot subsetting option replaces the client and server installation model used by earlier SAS^® releases for Windows environments."

[bheinsius]

Thanks.

I miss SAS Management Console in the list. I selected SAS Configuration Manager (a plugin to smc), maybe smc gets implicitely selected, I'll update this track when depot creation finished.

[bheinsius]

Nope, SAS Management Console is not in there.

I will open a track with ts.

[Mark_sas]

So everyone is on the same page, the 9.3 depot subsetting functionality by default allows you to subset by operating system, Foundation product, and/or language.  You do this within the SAS Deployment Wizard by choosing to create a software depot from the main menu and following the dialogs until you get to the option of subsetting an order's contents.

You can use the SAS Deployment Wizard "-subsetclients" option (i.e. on Windows - "setup.exe -subsetclients") to allow the creation of depots containing strictly client software like EG or Information Map Studio.  The limitation here is that you can only specify clients which are not "configured," in the sense that they don't require the "Configure" path of the SAS Deployment Wizard to complete their deployment.  Thankfully, almost all of SAS's standalone clients are not configured in this sense.  SAS Management Console is the noted exception.

[bheinsius]

Is there another way to get Management Console in this client depot?

[Mark_sas]

Unfortunately, the deployment tools do not support that at this time.  SAS Management Console is a configured product.  In order for the SAS Deployment Wizard to properly deploy it, it requires that a fair number of additional artifacts be copied into your depot in addition to SASMC itself.  That's why it was excluded, along with all other configured products, from the -subsetclients depot.

Since SASMC is not typically provisioned to a large number of end users (as opposed to other clients like EG and AMO), I'd be interested in hearing a bit more about the scenario which is calling for it to be included in a subset depot at your site.  Thanks.

[bheinsius]

Thanks for your reply.

it requires that a fair number of additional artifacts be copied into your depot in addition to SASMC itself.  That's why it was excluded [...]

I see that other clients copy quite a few additional artifacts into the depot too, what's the difference?

Since SASMC is not typically provisioned to a large number of end users

Neither are Information Map Studio and OLAP Cube Studio, but they *are* in there.

No special scenario, I just want to create a depot with all Windows SAS clients and have limited disk space.

Thanks,

-Bart

[Mark_sas]

The difference is when configuration is added to the mix.  With config comes additional depot and SAS Deployment Wizard operational complexity - something we can avoid if we know the depot is to be used solely for non-configured client deployments. 

I agree that Information Map Studio and OLAP Cube Studio are not typically provisioned to large numbers of end users, but they get a free ride on the -subsetclients bus due to them not requiring config.

With the current tools, you'll need to maintain SAS Management Console in whatever depot you're using to deploy your servers (most likely an all-encompassing depot which also contains the clients).

It should be noted that if you're really short on disk space, you don't have to keep depots around after you've deployed your software.  It's suggested you keep depots around for a couple of reasons:

1. So you can subsequently deploy additional machines/products from the same order without redownloading/restoring the depot
2. To avoid having to download the same software more than once (once a given product version is placed in a depot, it will never be redownloaded, even if a different/future order calls for it)

However, you can always archive depots or copy them to media if freeing up disk space is deemed more important than these reasons.

[Mark_ABS]

In my organisation all software is deployed via Software Management tool as the desktop is locked down. I have a number of SAS Administrators that need SAS Management Console. Not having the ability to extract it from the depot makes our current install package very large and as we are geographically dispersed puts stress on the software delivery mechanism.

Mark.

[jasonlosh]

Hi Mark,

Many software management tools such as SCCM support the notion of installing from a central distribution point.  This requires a network share or a mapped network drive to that distribution point.  The share must also be common to all of the desktops being updated.  If that is the case for your organization you may want to look into that in order to cut down on the network traffic as opposed to copying the larger depot to each desktop environment.

Cheers, -Jason

[Mark_ABS]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your reply and yes we are aware of that option and have used it for some of the install, but unfortunately I don't get to make the decision on how the bulk distribution process is setup. We are making the best of the hand we have been dealt so to speak..

Cheers

Mark

[BobD]

Hi Mark,

I tried using the -subsetclients option on UNIX but I was not offered a chance to selects any clients.  Is this feature available on UNIX?  I'm using a freshly downloaded UNIX depot for SAS 9.3 TS1M1 containing my Enterprise BI Server.  I want to create a "subset" containing only those Windows clients specific to this release (such as Information Map Studio, OLAP Cube Studio and perhaps others).  I have a completely separate Windows order (which contains other software, including EG and EM clients), but for some reason SAS was not able to include those clients in my "normal" Windows order.

Thanks,

Bob

[BobD]

Hi again,

I finally figure it out; using -subsetclients does in fact work on UNIX.  One must select the dialog option "By Product" to get the list of clients.  However, it seems that it still included all the "foundation" products in the new depot.  That's just a guess, but I ran this and selected only the "clients" I wanted and the resulting new "depot" was 9 GB (and only for Windows and English).  The entire UNIX depot is 15 GB.

So, I suppose I'm still not doing it correctly.  I just want a new depot with only the Windows clients, which I hopefully can FTP to a Windows server to do the installs.  Is that possible?

[Mark_sas]

It shouldn't have included any Foundation products, but if you selected any Java-based clients (as OLAP Cube Studio and Information Map Studio are), there's a lot of supporting material that comes along for the ride.  You should be able to trim your depot further by subsetting to Windows only (the Platform/OS subsetting option); however, there will still be a fair amount of portable supporting Java code that will increase your depot size.