SAS 9.4 Base and STAT for Windows under Parallels on a Mac with an M1 chip

[jwaller]

Not quite sure where to post this so I chose Admin.  I think @ChrisHemedinger has answered some questions on this topic, but I thought the fastest way to get an answer would be on communities.  My current machine (a MacBook Pro manufactured in 2017) is on the "unable to support" list now due to it's age and I need to get a new machine.  My institution is unable to purchase a MacBook Pro with an Intel chip (i9 specifically) that has adequate memory and space needs.  I have looked and they aren't out there.  So I am going to have to purchase a MacBook Pro with an M1 chip.  

First, I cannot utilize SAS ODA as many of my datasets are at least a TB in size and that would preclude being able to upload them.  

Second, I work for a academic institution that has not (and I have no idea if they plan to) moved to SAS Viya and we are only licensed for SAS for Windows.  

Third, I like a Mac and have been using one for nearly my entire career.  I will not go over to what I call the "dark side" and utilize some type of completely windows OS based machine.  Please don't try to convert me.  You like what machine type you like and I like what machine type I like. 

Fourth, because of memory and space needs for utilizing SAS, I do need to it under a Windows VM and I have been using VM Fusion running some version of Windows OS (currently version 10), successfully for years (like nearly my entire career) and I work seamlessly between the VM and other apps running on the Mac.  However, I have done some research and found that Fusion isn't quite there yet with running Windows on an M1 chip.  They are getting there.  I am looking into Parallels but I believe that 1) you have to run and ARM of Windows (I am not sure what that means) and 1) I believe the current version of Parallels (version 17) only allows for Windows 11 (people have indicated that they haven't been successful in installing Windows 10).

So my questions are:

1. Has anyone successfully installed and used SAS on a Mac with an M1 chip?  If yes, what VM software did you use?
2. Will SAS run under ARM Windows on a VM?
3. Will SAS run under Windows 11 on a VM? Checked support.sas.com and this note indicated it was being tested (https://support.sas.com/kb/68/554.html), but I am wondering what the time frame for this is.

Jenn

[ChrisHemedinger]

Hi @jwaller,

I have shared this:How to use SAS on a Mac -- but it doesn't cover all of the details you asked related to M1 and ARM.

One avenue that might have some promise is SAS Analytics Pro on SAS Viya (blog announcement here). This is a containerized version of SAS Viya that supports all of your classic SAS programming code in a SAS Studio interface. You can install it on your machine and run in Docker (which does run on Mac, Windows, Linux). Even if you've never done that before, it's not that difficult to set up. It's also a cool skill to have and you might find other uses for Docker along the way.

A tricky part might be the academic licensing for it, so I encourage you to check with whoever you work with at SAS regarding SAS software at your university.

[jwaller]

Something to try.  Thanks.  I might just try to see if things work on a personal machine and go from there.

[Sajid01]

Hello @jwaller 

I appreciate your desire to stick with MAC. However  it is a fact that you are running SAS on Windows. Even if the Windows is on a VM, Its good that your machine is able to support the workload of two operating systems (even if the second is on a VM- ultimately the physical hardware is the same). In your future scenario you would still be running SAS on Windows.

The appropriate and the simplest course of action for you would to move your Windows from the virtual machine  to a  physical machine of its own. That saves you from lot of problems, improves performance.  Use this machine for SAS and do continue to use your mac for all other activities as usual. 
One may not be a great fan of microsoft windows, but any reasonable person would acknowledge the good it has.

If your primary objective is to use SAS in a manner which is convenient and easy then there should be no harm in having a windows machine run SAS. 

[jwaller]

The issue with running a separate Windows machine is that it does not allow for the seamless transition from the Windows VM to the Mac (exporting data, importing data, saving output/graphs, etc.).  I would lose that seamless transition and since ALL of my files are stored on the Mac I am not willing to have just a machine for SAS.  

[JackHamilton]

Can you mount the Mac file system over your network to Windows, and vice-versa?  You'd have to make some changes to your programs and workflow because drive names/letters would be different, but other than that the process should be transparent.

Our main storage is on a Unix machine, and mounted to Windows through our WAN.  If we're working in Unix from SAS Studio we might refer to a file as "~/mydir/myprog.sas", and from Windows we would refer to the same file as "O:\mydir\myprog.sas".  We can create spreadsheets from SAS in Unix and read them from Windows, and all the other normal things you might want a shared file system to do.

Apple uses a proprietary file system that is not supported in Windows by default.  I don't know whether the network file system will take care of that for you, or if you have to add another layer like Paragon's HFS+.

My new M1 MacBook hasn't arrived yet, so I can't test any of this.

[Sajid01]

Hello @JackHamilton 
For the new mac computers APFS or Apple File System is the default and its support for Windows is limited.
So mounting with red and write  this may not be feasible as yet.
However one my still be able to share ate using a network or scp.

Keeping into view this overall thread I would have all my SAS related activities on the WIndows PC.

[cl458]

I came across this more than one-year-old thread while installing apps to my new MacBook Pro 13 (M2 CPU), and found that SAS didn't do much on this front in 2022.

We still cannot install SAS on computers running Windows 11 Arm. I installed Windows 11 Arm via Parallels 18 on my Macbook Pro and then tried two versions of SAS, 64-bit, and 32-bit.

The 64-bit version doesn't seem to have any problem with installation, but it crashes immediately every time I open the base program. It is not usable, apparently.

I managed to run some simple programs on the 32-bit version SAS after skipping several procedures in installation, but it starts by the statement that it is "unable to open sasuser.profile", which means all the changes I made will be lost after I shut down the app. Worse yet, it says in the log file that it couldn't find Java virtual machine. The stability of SAS on Arm seems to be a big concern, even if it works to some degree.

[SASKiwi]

I suspect your main issue is the non-Intel processor. I haven't seen any progress regarding for example supporting SAS Analytics Pro on non-Intel Macs even though it supports Intel ones. Someone with more knowledge might want to chip in.

[Nigel_Pain]

I see what you did there, @SASKiwi!

[cl458]

Following up on my previous comment.

I watched a video claiming to run SAS EG on M1 MacBook Pro, I realized that I only tried SAS 9.4 Base, not EG earlier.

EG does not crash immediately, and I can run a few simple regressions with it. I've only got one error message at the end:

"Error: SDS Failed to provide the decoder for the data set. No such interface supported."

I suspect that this is related to the "Profile" setup I cannot do with SAS on Windows 11 ARM.

[cl458]

I finally managed to install SAS 9.4 64-bit on my MacBook Pro M2, and it doesn't take any advanced computer knowledge.

My equipment: 2022 MacBook Pro M2, 24 GB Memory, 1TB HD.

Software: Parallel Desktop 18 for Mac, Windows 11 ARM Enterprise version 

I didn't try Windows 11 Pro on ARM, though.

Just do a clean installation of Windows, then install SAS 9.4 64-bit FIRST. I chose 32-bit EG, but I guess that doesn't matter much. Before installing SAS, stop sharing the Documents folder on Mac and Windows. Assign a local folder on Windows for the Documents, so the SAS won't return "NOTE: Unable to open SASUSER.PROFILE. WORK.PROFILE will be opened instead." message after the installation is completed.

After installation, try to see if your SAS works okay. If it does, then save the Snapshot. You might want to install other computer packages, which is very tricky. I found that my base SAS would no longer work every time I installed Microsoft 365. However, I can install Office 2021, and they work fine together. Every time you want to install a new computer package, save the current working environment with Snapshots on Parallel Desktop. You might want to have a larger HD for this. I think 512 GB or above is essential.

SAS 9.4 32-bit generates several mistakes during the installation and the SASUSER.PROFILE cannot be opened even without sharing the Documents folder, but it somehow can still run regressions.