Migrating SAS 9.2 from a physical hardware to a virtual machine

[SandeepE]

Hi,

I am relatively new to SAS environment.

I am working on a project, where I need to migrate

SAS 9.2 from solaris sparc physical hardware to a Solaris sparc virtual machine.

Can someone please point out some right set of resources which I can refer for this process.

Different components of SAS is installed in 2 components, I have the metadata server in a seperate machine.

Do I need to use Migration utility for this?

How can I transfer the license in this case?T

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sandeep

[jakarman]

Virtualization should not be different as to a physical machine. You are getting to share hardware what could have a big impact on performance. Get your specifications for that correct.  Keeping all names the same it should be the same as backup/restore your installation.
SAS 9.2 is an older version you could migrate to 9.4. This will require you to understand the new version first.  

[jag_SAS]

SandeepE,

If you are wanting to take exactly what you have on physical hardware and clone it over to virtual hardware you would use industry tools for going from physical to virtual technology. Once you have successfully done that, if the host names for either one of your two machines has changed you would use the Change Host Name tool available through the SAS Deployment Manager to update the host name(s) in your deployment. Documentation on this for 9.2 is located here, SAS(R) 9.2 Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide, Second Edition.

Additional Notes:

• Please read the doc carefully and note things like, "CAUTION:The Update Host Name References tool is not supported by certain SAS products and solutions. Refer to SAS Installation Note 39344 to determine whether your installed products and solutions are supported. "
• You may not change the deployment topology and use this tool. You will still need two machines in your virtual environment that are clones of your physical machines (If you wish to change your deployed topology then you would need to install new and promote content from the existing deployment into the virtual deployment using SAS' Promotion Tools, SAS(R) Intelligence Platform: 9.1.3 to 9.2 Migration Guide. )
• SAS does not provide additional support around the use of cloning tools nor does it make recommendations of tools to use. Others on this list may have personal experiences to share.

Cheers!

[SandeepE]

Dear Jag & Jaap,

Thank you so much for your responses.

I have some more doubts..

1) Will sas anyway keep IP addresses in any configuration files.

2) Can I migrate just by doing a FTP from source to destination.

3) During installation of SAS does it write any files outside of install folder?

Coming weeks I am going to get my hands dirty on SAS

Thanks,

Sandeep

[jakarman]

1) Will sas anyway keep IP addresses in any configuration files.

   Yes it will use them in a incredible lot of files and in the SAS metadatabase.

2) Can I migrate just by doing a FTP from source to destination.

    For the SAS base/Foundation this will work (same version OS etc).  But ...

    When you have a BI/DI installation and more of that than than you have a lot of those IP-adresses and user/functional accounts 

3) During installation of SAS does it write any files outside of install folder?

    The installation is two-fold. 1/ real Installation / and 2/ configuration

    During phase1 you are just placing the loadables in a location. Some changes at OS level may be necessary

    During phase2 you are getting the SAS services up,  metadataserver metadatabase,  objectspawner and more

    Thereafter you are going to be able to have users able to use that. (phase 3)

When you are making an exact copy of the not virtualized machine to the virtualized one, it is a backup / restore exercise.
As you are reusing  those ip-adresses in that case at the network level some actions are needed (temporary isolated segment) 
   

[Kurt_Bremser]

I would recommend to combine that with a migration in the SAS release.

That way you can set up a completely new server in the VM, do the install from scratch and set up your whole infrastructure and test it without any interruption in the production environment. Once the new installation works satisfactorily, you "only" need to roll out the new EG and reroute the web applications to the new server.

When SAS was only Base SAS, the backup-restore option worked perfectly, but today the whole system has gotten so complex that that fails almost every time.

Also keep in mind that creating a new setup lets you fix logical errors (or bad naming conventions) that you made in the previous version