SAS Grid Pros and Cons

[mbrannon]

From a SAS Administrator's point of view - what are the pros and cons of going to SAS Grid?

[rogerjdeangelis]

Just my 2 cents, since you asked:

I am not a SAS admistator, but in situations where you need over 32 cores for over 8 hrs or

a single table is over 1TB it is had to beat the grid. The grid also may be needed if PII is a concern.

However new relatively inexpensive off lease power systems(old servers can be used as power workstations) often are musf faster,

A lot depends on the server load and whether data can be de-identified. Workstations are more secure when only de-identified data is used,rather than on the sever where the user parks identifiable data in his account. SSD's and memory prices are collapsing.

It is somewhat strange that adminstartors love 10 second jobs with less than a 1GB of ram or disk space. EG especially under VM often limits users to 4 cores and or 4gb ram and or 100gb of disk. This is opposite of purpose of large servers?

[LinusH]

I'm not sure that I fully understand the inquiry.

For starters, compared to what?

Going to a Grid is seldom an administrative issue. Usually, this is a user/business driven decision.

But of course, a con would be that you need to manage several servers, and have to configure and trim a shared file system Nit sure if that's pro or con, you might like it...?

[SASKiwi]

I agree with @LinusH. Choosing SAS Grid would be a business requirement, perhaps driven by the need for improved availability and / or performance. As an administrator I would want to avoid it because of the extra resources required to maintain it.

If it's not a business requirement I certainly wouldn't be recommending it. You would be increasing administrative overhead for no benefit.

[rogerjdeangelis]

There are user requiements that would necessitate a grid.

I suggest polling SAS users to determine if a power workstation in combination with a grid and large pipe for downloads might be appropriate.

Pros - You need it because of PII and big data(as I defined above) or big computation user problems.

          I have used the grid at petabyte installations and it was the only way to solve some problems in a reasonable time.

Cons - It is complex and if not needed do not get it. Leverage your power workstations so you may not need it.

It is not a business decision it is a sometimes a user requirement

Benchmarks to see if you need it ie power workstation v grid.

[SASKiwi]

@rogerjdeangelis I have a broad view of business requirements - if users require the capability to meet certain business needs it's still business-related .