Viya 3.5 on Ubuntu 18?

[snoopy369]

Has anyone successfully deployed Viya 3.5 (including Visual Analytics) on Ubuntu 18? I'm aware it's not an officially supported OS, but it's also the only OS my company supports.  Wondering if anyone has tried, and if so, what the level of complexity is compared to RHEL/SUSE?

[JuanS_OCS · Accepted solution]

Hi @snoopy369 ,

I have installed SAS in Ubuntu in the past, here my experiences and conclusions for you:

- I installed SAS Foundation. With 9.2 and 9.3 I had several issues. In 9.4 they seem resolved (and I believe why) to a certain degree and I could validate it.

- I installed SAS Studio, to see how it goes with a little bit more of complexity (Integration Technologies and a web app, SAS Studio). I managed to make it work, and maybe the latest maintenance are better, but the effort is simply not worth it.

- I installed SAS 9 and SAS Viya 3.x containers in Ubuntu (considering the containers SAS prepares include a base image of CentOS), this works OK, as an intermediate OS. Still not officially supported, but as CentOS up to 8 is technically similar to the supported RHEL, it is fine, technically.

My conclusions from these exercise are:

- When you can, go for a supported version. Always, no workarounds. It is not only about the technical feasibility, but specially if you are to prepare a Production server, which issues can potentially and largely impact your business, you really want a supported environment.

- This being said, the environment is still yours. And it is your call to take to assess the risks and to manage them. If you think there is a small risk, or the impact is small and controllable, maybe it is worth to take it. As example, installing SAS in a single machine for one user, not a key user, maybe it is worth a certain risk. If you install in a server from which one department directors/leads might be left down when it is not available, then the risk might not be interesting to take it.

- Of course, you can co and check the container workaround, as the CentOS is managed by SAS. However, read carefully the terms and conditions, and what is supported in this version, as not all is supported by SAS Institute (only a basic version of it), and your compliance teams might want to look at those terms, including the fact the internal OS is different.

PS. Is not Ubuntu 18 a little bit old-ish by now? I asume in that migration you should be able to go at least to version 20 or higher.

PS2. Still, you should check if the installation requirements, aside the OS, can be met. Versions of the libraries and software are a must, and the Linux distributions do not support, even in their higher versions, the right versions of the software and libraries. Keep that in mind 😉

Kind regards,

Juan

[snoopy369]

Thanks for the detail!! I'm not in charge of the server OS decisions, so don't really have any ability to change that sort of thing; and I don't know why Ubuntu 18 (maybe we do have 20 and I just have the information wrong, or maybe we're slow to adapt new versions of things?), but I will go back to the server team and find out. Appreciate all of the information!

[SASKiwi]

@snoopy369  - Please note Viya 3.5 is not the latest Viya version and only has full support until 2025. If you haven't deployed Viya at all yet then I'd recommend installing Viya 4 / 2021.n so you can take advantage of the latest SAS architecture and more frequent upgrade cadences. AFAIK, Viya 4 is only available on cloud-based platforms although an on premise version is planned.

[snoopy369]

Yes, we're aware of that; however, it also requires kubernetes, which we're not prepared to install at this time.  We've got it on the roadmap for the future.