Need more information on SAS server installation and to upgrade it from lower version.

[yogez1]

Hello Experts.

I am new to the world of SAS, and finding my ways to upgrade the SAS server from old to new version, hence I would appreciate if some one can provide me the details about how to go ahead on this.

Regards,

Yogesh

[SASKiwi]

Here is a link to the SAS Upgrade resources: http://support.sas.com/software/updates/index.html

With all due respect if you are a newby you should be getting expert advice on this and not just reading the documentation. SAS and a few third parties have experts who can help you make the right decisions regarding your SAS infrastructure. There are a lot of key architectural decisions required that can only happen with good advice.

[yogez1]

Thanks for your information SASKiwi :), this will definitely help me. I appreciate !

[Anand_V]

Hi @yogez1 

As advised by @SASKiwi SAS upgrade requires quite a lot of discussions around architecture, approach (i.e. automated, partial promotion) compatible versions etc depending upon the SAS product suite or solutions you have installed at your site. While the documentation should be a good place to start understanding the various phases/process part of this exercise, getting help from experienced folks would help in making the right decisions and save a lot of effort and pain.

I would advise you to engage professional services that SAS provides to understand the complexity and work involved in doing the upgrade.

[yogez1]

thanks for your input Anand I will discuss this will our management but I appreciate your reply thanks you !

[Kurt_Bremser]

• Are you an expert in handling your server's operating system?
• Have you already done a complete SAS install from scratch?
• Do you know what a domain name, a network address, a network port is?
• Can you find the description for a system error message code on the internet, and make sense from it?

If you have to answer "no" to any one of these questions, then let an expert do your upgrade, or (even better) have one guide you through the process in person.

If it is a release upgrade (e.g. 9.3 to 9.4), do not upgrade in place; set up a new server, install from scratch there, and migrate your current setup piece by piece to the new platform; switch over once you have verified that the new installation works.

If you do an upgrade in place, verify before you start that a complete system backup is in place and can quickly provide any file that you might need.

[yogez1]

Thanks Kurt for your reply, I am new to SAS but I have been working as a SAP BO Administrator(Linux/Windows) since 14 years so I am thinking the concept of SAS would be similar to SAP BI/BO.

However I need some key information that should be taken care before I actually start with our SAS upgrade. I have recently upgraded my SAP BI environment where I have used the same approach by installing the new System on new Servers and then Migrating the File Repository + System database (CMS) and later configured all the required configuration.

I am exploring through the documentation available online on SAS portal as in below mentioned link.

https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=biig&docsetTarget=n06fixagb4ezikn1mcfew8mwq8o1.htm&docsetVer... 

I will upgrade our Dev environment first followed with the other, hence I have a bit scope to explore and test. It will be helpful for me if you let me know the better approach like which server needed to be installed first Metadata server, Application server or web server.

Thanks in Advance for all you help.

Regards,

Yogesh Pande

[Kurt_Bremser]

How may tiers will your future SAS installation have? The first one to install will in all cases be the one that has the metadata server, as everything else depends on this. If you have two-tier setup (server and clients), the server installation does it all in one process; if you have compute and middleware, do compute first; if you have metadata/compute/middleware, start with metadata.

From personal experience, I recommend to do installation and configuration separately; if you do it in one sweep, a problem during configuration will cause the SDW to roll back everything, and you'll have to restart with the installation.

[Anand_V]

Hi Yogesh,

There are two ways that you can upgrade SAS to a new version.

1 - Automated way using SAS Migration Utility (SMU) which would help you to migrate all your custom configuration and content. There are few limitations in this approach like source/target OS family should be same i.e. win-win or unx-unx, source/target architecture should be same.

You will have to run a script in your current deployment for smu to check if the current versions in your SAS deployment can be migrated within a single hop. It follows the rule of N-2 where N being the target SAS Version. Here is the link for this - https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=bimig&docsetTarget=n02005intelplatform00migrate.htm&docsetVe...

You can find the overivew of the utility here - https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=bimig&docsetTarget=n08001intelplatform00migrate.htm&docsetVe...

2- Promotion way using Import/Export utilities provided by SAS. In this approach, you first install and configure your target environment and then manually copy or re-create your custom configuration from the source environment to target environment.

Here is the link to review on the promotion tools - https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=bisag&docsetTarget=p04l8c3fo8tpyhn103dps7pxvru2.htm&docsetVe...

Hope this helps!