SAS VA + Office Analytics Deployment Questions

[ShaneD]

Hello, I recently deployed SAS Office Analytics(OA) with the 4 server deployment plan.  I have that up and running and now wish to begin my SAS VA deployment.  When looking at the two machine deployment plan, I see a lot of the components listed that I already have in my 4 server OA deployment.  I do want these two products to share the same base infrastructure. 

What are the minimum software/components I need to install/configure for the VA server deployment to use the metadata, middle tier, ect. from my OA deployment?  Is that possible?

Do I just install/deploy everything in the plan, but then specify my OA servers when going through the configuration?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

I would strongly advise against combining your OA and VA installations in any way. In my experience most SAS customers keep them separate.

VA server resource usage is way different to OA and often requires tuning to maintain performance - it is a heavy user of the SAS mid-tier server. It is a lot easier to diagnose issues and maintain optimal performance in separate installations.

Another reason is these products are on different upgrade cycles with VA being upgraded a lot more frequently than OA. It is a lot easier to upgrade VA if it is separate.

BTW - there is no need to repeat posts on the SAS Community in different subject areas as you have done.

[ShaneD]

Thanks for the quick response SASKiwi!  Looks like I'll go that route as I'm not the most experienced SAS admin anyways.  Should make my life easier!

[JuanS_OCS]

Hello @ShaneD, 

before answering your question, please let me add a comment about @SASKiwi 's.

While I normally would agree about keeping SAS VA and other products separate, it is a fact that SAS sells OA+VA as a solution, and this makes sense, because it is report-based. Reports in VA and reports in Office. And for this particular scenario, OA and VA are good partners. 

This being said, @SASKiwi remark about resources is absolutely right. The way to work with this is to create 2x SASApps. One SASApp for VA, so it can use memsize 0 and such and no interactive sessions, and another SASApp for OA and EG, where the users can run their SAS session with reduced or default memsize. The connection from OA to VA's SASApp would be only for report viewing.

As long as you understand this point, the architecture is basically up to you.

I would personally create a new plan file, adapted for your requirements. The SAS Depot and licenses must be also adapted/aligned with the design/plan file. This is something you can do in alignment with SAS Technical Support or SAS Consulting Services.

Kind regards,

Juan