Proper way to shutdown SAS VA server (7.4) windows non distributed if it matters...

[kjohnsonm]

Hello all,

I am searching the user guide and admin guide and the communities for the proper way to shutdown my (SAS VA 7.4) server when I need to do maintenance etc.  I have noticed that I have this issue as described in this thread:  
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Visual-Analytics/LASR-Analytic-Server-not-starting/td-p/247934/pa...

However am not sure after reading it how to prevent it in the first place. I see the .pid files that they described needing to remove to get the start to work but what steps do I do to never fall in to this trap?  Thanks for your time.  Have a great weekend.  -KJ

[SASKiwi]

If you have separate metadata, app and mid-tier servers I've never had any problems just shutting them down in the order:

mid-tier, then app server, then metadata leaving a few minutes in between each one. Then starting them up in the reverse order: metadata, app server, mid-tier again leaving a few minutes in between.

Once that happens then all that remains is to load any LASR tables that are not auto-loaded at startup.

[kjohnsonm]

SASKiwi,

So you are strictly talking about stopping the SAS Services in that order?

...and thanks.  -KJ

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

No, just doing a server shutdown at the OS level and letting SAS take care of itself. I must qualify this that I've only done it for SAS VA 7.3 / 7.4 on Windows Server 2012 R2 though.

[kjohnsonm]

I too have 7.4 on Windows 2012R2. thank you for explanations / details

[JuanS_OCS]

Hello @kjohnsonm,

for stopping the services, while there is a recommended order (because otherwise, you will have more errors in your service logs), it is not a requirement per-se anymore in SAS 9.4. The services can be fully stopped, practically in any order.

However, you need to put attention to:

• if you stopped the services, did all of them stop as expected? If you just reboot, they will be stopped, sure, but if it is a manual stop, you would like to check sas processes with ps command

• when the services are stopped with the sas.servers command, LASR won't stop with this script. You need to stop it either with PROC IMSTAT sas code, the SAS VA Administrator console or, worst case scenario, with kill -9 commands. (Please note, if a LASR has Autoload, the scheduled autoload task will start the LASR server, maybe you want to temporary comment that schedule in crontab).
• Once everything is stopped, be sure that none of the pid files or lock files are there, they might prevent services to start up, because they might believe the service is actually up, simply because the file is there. Be sure those relevant ones are cleant up.

• Finally, the order to start the services are really important, with dependencies, as @SASKiwi mentioned.

[thesasuser]

Does this ( stopping servers in any order ) apply to stopping of SAS BI server on Windows Server machine?

[SASKiwi]

I suggest you read the posts again. The stopping (and starting) order is important, and yes the same order applies for SAS BI Servers on Windows.

[thesasuser]

Thanks for the response.
The accepted solution has this statement

"....just doing a server shutdown at the OS level and letting SAS take care of itself...."

SASkiwi answered that this he did for SAS VA 7.3.
My understanding from this is that if one shuts down the windows server, without specifically shutting any of the services (including SAS), windows will make a proper shutdown of  all service including SAS.

Wanted to know if my understanding is correct.

[SASKiwi]

Your understanding is right. We are now doing the same thing with VA 7.4.

[thesasuser]

Thanks