3 Approaches to SAS® Cloud Migration Q&A, Slides, and On-Demand Recording

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Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn how best to plan, execute, and ultimately succeed on your migration journey to SAS Cloud. 

Watch the webinar

You will learn:

• Three basic approaches to modernization when migrating to a new analytics environment.
• Which migration strategy is going to work best for you.
• How to make the migration transition easier on you and your team.

The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached.

Q&A

If we move with SAS 9.4, will full support remain past December 2024?

The SAS tech support statement says that SAS will support the product for 5 years past the date of the last maintenance release. You can find the details here: Support Services and Policies | SAS Support

What are the cost considerations; license(s) for a hybrid migration approach?

For the hybrid approach, yes, there are cost considerations around that from a licensing standpoint. It's not necessarily the cheapest way to do things, but it gives you the opportunity to phase into our migration. And the good news is you can scale up your environment in the cloud as you increase your migration component over to that tactical environment. Talk to your SAS representative about licensing and how you can manage that. But maybe start small in the cloud if you're going to put Viya footprint in the cloud and then grow that Viya footprint as you move those units of work, or those lines of businesses or those projects over. You don't need to scale it up for the end game. You can scale it up as you go along.

Are there latency impacts between putting SAS on an Azure platform vs. going solely with the SAS Cloud?

It really depends on how your network is set up. So, if you move to SAS Cloud, then the connections are generally (if you're moving to Viya) all going to be web-based connections and so there's limited amounts of latency impact there because you're just transferring smaller and smaller amounts of data. You can mitigate some of those challenges by having things like Express route setup, which is a dedicated connection from your premises to Azure because SAS Cloud is actually hosted in Azure. And that would be the same sort of thing that your company would typically do as well, but with SAS Viya, it's all web based interfaces, and so that's a lot more minimized.

How can python be used during models migration?

That depends on what SAS platform you're using, whether it's SAS 9 or if it's SAS Viya. I would see Python as just another mechanism to connect to SAS. So, if you're migrating to the cloud then you may use Python from your desktop or you may connect to a server and log into that server and use Python. These days, obviously you can just use Python in SAS Studio, so you've got that one stop shop to get access to Python and SAS. With SAS Studio being a web based application, it's just your browser.

Are there SAS services for helping migrate models, reports, etc. from desktop SAS 9.4 to SAS Cloud?

Yes, there are services, but there are also applications. We do a couple of things. When you run content assessment, we offer some guided migration there for certain areas. We also have what you know as promotion in SAS 9, but we call it content migration in Viya 4. From 9.4 to Viya, those are the two primary methods for migration, and we do have services to help with this, so you're not on your own, we’re going to help. We have professional services all over the world to help in migration.

What is your expectation of the level of effort for our users to move their SAS code from SAS 9.4 to SAS Viya?

I would say run content assessment. That's going to give you an indication of that level of assessment. Obviously, everyone’s code varies wherever, whichever customer you're working at. The best way to find out is to run content assessment, that's going to help you. Not only does content assessment tell you whether or not you can run that code in Viya and point out any little areas where you might have to edit that code, but it's also going to point out all the hard coded paths in there. So, hard coded parts of those things that you forget about, like when you've banged out a libname statement, and there's a hard coded path when you move to the cloud. That path might not exist anymore. It might be slightly different, and so you're going to have to keep an eye out for all of those. Content assessment is going to find all of those for you.

Would the current SAS Stored Process Web Application and existing Stored Processes still work in Cloud?

Yes, absolutely. Whether you're staying with SAS 9 or whether you’re moving to Viya. In Viya, they're called jobs. They’re called slightly different things, but yes, absolutely.

What is the better way to migrate Enterprise Miner and models to SAS Viya 3.5 or 4?

We recommend you run content assessment. Enterprise Miner is included in the profile application. Content assessment has several applications. Profile, we inventory and that'll just tell you how much you have on your SAS 9 system. Profile is going to dig a little bit deeper and give you more details about your usage. We’ve done some of the work for Enterprise Miner so it allows you to understand what your current state is for SAS 9. I know we are still working on migration for Enterprise Miner, and so it's going to depend on your circumstance, but we recommend you begin with understanding what you have so that you can craft that development strategy or that migration strategy for how you want to move forward.

Does the SAS code need to be deeply modified to run under Viya (assuming that the CAS server will not be exploited in our first phase)?

Your first step is to run content assessment. That's going to tell you exactly what needs to be modified, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. What we're hearing back from our account teams is that when customers run content assessment, they are surprised at how much of their code already will just go over to Viya 4. It works and they're thrilled because everyone is a little bit nervous about that. You've put a lot of effort into creating that code, and you want to make sure that it's going to work when it lands in Viya 4. And recently, someone shared with me that if a customer has 400,000 lines of code and they can hand them a report to say, here are the 400 things you need to look at. That's a huge win for them because you don't have to go hunt and find that information. We're going to help you. We're going to surface it to you so that you know exactly where to focus. I'm going give a plug for the development team because the application that actually analyzes your code is super quick. I have to say I was deeply impressed how quick it ran. You point it at a directory or directories and it just navigates the sort of directory tree and finds all the code and analyzes it and it's quick. So, go download content assessment.

In cloud, there are technology vulnerabilities, especially on shared environments so what does SAS do to secure our environment?

It's really about how your IT department has set up your cloud infrastructure. And they've probably gone to great lengths to make sure it's secure. Recently, we had the log4j problem that everyone had across the world. SAS is obviously working on that and making sure that everyone is safe. But in general, it's about your IT department and how they set it up. In the SAS cloud world, we go to very specific lengths to make sure that your environment is secure, and we have a document that talks all about that, and so if you're looking at SAS cloud, we can provide you with that document. It's a pretty hefty document called the security governance manual. It talks about exactly what lengths we go to to make sure that your environment is safe in the SAS cloud hands. If you're interested in that, then talk to your SAS representative and they can get you that cloud security governance manual.

How is SAS ESM tool different from SAS Content Assessment tool (other than the code refactoring information in content Assessment tool which I am assuming we don’t have in SAS ESM Tool)?

I think one of the key differences is that we're looking at workload with ESM. And so, when you kick off ESM and it runs, it's going to capture information for the time that it's running. And it's important to do that because it helps you understand your workloads and so that information, of course, is used as part of that data driven information you're going to use to do migration planning. Content assessment’s a little bit different. For content assessment, we're taking a look at what exists on your system. And again, a difference is if you're not running something that's important, it's cyclical, right? And you stand up ESM and you run it for three months and this thing that's really key to your business isn't running because it only runs at the end of the year and you're doing this at the beginning of the year, that's not captured. So, we recommend that you use both. You get different information from each of the offerings, and they provide different insight and value to that migration planning effort.

Does using a hybrid approach mean that old projects are being left and shifted in, while new projects are being developed by Viya.

Yes, so a new project is a great way to sort of kick off that hybrid approach. Any new project you just develop it in Viya. But at the same time, you do want to get off that on-premises footprint and so you have to look at the old project and make sure that it's neatly encapsulated and then move those over as well. So, it's not just new projects because otherwise you'll still have a footprint in the on-premise world. You need to make sure that all projects go over time.

Is SAS content assessment a free application or is a license required?

It’s both, but it's not the kind of license that we normally see. So what happens is you go to the downloads on the hot fixes site and when you download content assessment, there's a little terms and agreements that you click, it's a click license. I don't want to imply the licensing isn't there, it absolutely is. And we do that so that we're both protected because you might want to share your data with us after you've run content assessment, and we like to take that information, and again there's no PII data as part of that, so your values that you've collected, none of that's in there. We’re just trying to understand what you're using as well, and so when you're willing to share with us we take the results and that information is aggregated with other customer data and it just gives us a data driven way for us to do our migration planning to ensure that we're working on the features that customers use the most.

Are there detailed reference of SAS 9.4 M7 deployment and configuration in Google cloud platform?

I don't know offhand. I know that in AWS, we've got documented quick starts about setting up, for example, a grid environment in AWS. What I would say is your first approach should be talk to your SAS account team and get a sizing for Google Cloud platform. What the sizing can do is help you understand at least the machine instances that you would need in Google Cloud platform and start beginning to think about the components that you would need in your environment. For example, in Azure, it would tell you if you need a D type of machine or an E type machine? It's just going to tell you the types of machines that would work well for your usage patterns in Google. It won't give you a reference architecture, but it'll give you a first step in that direction to tell you the kinds of machines that you'll be needing for the instance type.

If you are also a SAS Admin on a Windows Box, how it will change on a Cloud environment?

In the cloud environment if you go to Azure then you can set up Windows environments. If you go to one of the other cloud environments and go to Linux, then that's a big change. There will be a lot of changes as far as hard coded parts because slashes are going to be different. I would say that's an interesting sort of transition and customers do it all the time. One of the benefits of moving to a Linux environment is that the underlying operating system can actually get to data a lot quicker than they went through Windows, and so there's a gain there to be had. I recommend you talk to your SAS representative or consulting. They can help you with that.

My working environment depends on Linux shell scripts. Will I lose this capability upon migration to the cloud or Viya?

It depends on your IT department. If they let you access the OS and running shell scripts.

Can you repeat that last sizing tip please?

Go talk to your SAS representative and ask them for a sizing. We have a worldwide sizing team and their job is to give you a questionnaire which is designed to understand your usage patterns of the SAS software and then they take that sizing questionnaire information and develop a recommendation for you. That recommendation can be for Google Cloud platform, it can be for Azure, or it can be for AWS. Of the three big clouds that we support, they can give you a recommendation that will tell you the kinds of machine instances that you need to set up for your environment.

If you have the option to choose, which cloud would you choose, Azure, Google or AWS?

I'm super biased, but I would go with SAS cloud because SAS cloud is that white glove approach to setting things up for you. If you're not going to go with SAS cloud, then we're agnostic. We don't pick favorites, so they’re all as good as each other.

Can SAS DI studio jobs and SAS EG projects be migrated to Viya 4? Is there any tool or is it manual steps?

Yes they can. The first step is to run content assessment. We are working right now with those teams on the migration strategy and so every single month we release more and more support for migration. It's important that you are in content assessment. That's going to help you understand what migrates now and what you might have to wait on. But I will say this, if you are ready to go to Viya 4, we can do that migration for you. Things don't migrate 100% like to like, but we can get everything over to Viya 4 so that you can get started.

Is it recommended that in SAS Viya 4 SAS data artifacts should be loaded in in-memory only for SAS VA and the rest of everything should be in SPRE server?

That's a “it depends” answer. Many things can be loaded into memory into CAS. Again, it really depends on your situation, so I would say talk to your account team to help them understand the benefits of CAS versus the Compute Server.

Is SAS Cloud much more expensive than say going with AWS or Azure yourselves?

So, if you look at it, SAS Cloud provides you with both the hosting and the management of those servers. So, if you try to look at the numbers as an apples to apples comparison, they will look very different. What you have to understand is that it's not really an apples to apples comparison, because it does have that service component to it as well. We give you an SLA that is for your environment and we monitor it for you. We do all the changes for you. We make sure that any operating system patches are done for you. We do all that stuff for you, so it's not really an apples to apples comparison. I think you have to look at the benefits of what SAS Cloud gives you versus just hosting it on your own. And again, for your specific environment, talk to your SAS representative, they can get you to a cloud representative and they can walk you through exactly what the differences are, and they can explain to you the benefits of SAS cloud.

I missed the other tool you suggest to use, in parallel with SAS 9 Content Assessment.  Can you name it again?

Enterprise Session Monitor.

Can Forecast Studio projects (SAS 9) be directly imported to Viya 4 VF?

Not at this time. Again, we are working with that team and in the next few months, more migration support is going to be available. Forecast Server customers will be able to run SAS 9 Profile for Forecast Server and see what's on their system. We are also working on a guided migration path for that offering that's coming this year. It won't be 100% though, it'll be a partial migration because the functionality is a little bit different in Viya 4.

I think it's important to note that the latest generation of Viya has monthly releases, so new capabilities are coming out every single month. We have two different cadences of releases with Viya: we have what we call the stable release, which is monthly, and then we have the long term support release, which is every six months. So, what you’ll find with Viya is that now we're releasing software a lot more frequently and new capabilities are coming out much more frequently, obviously with those releases.

If you are in the midst of a migration, we really encourage you to take the stable release, which is that monthly release. Because if you look at where we were a year ago, it is so different. The team is making so much progress and we encourage you to take that monthly release because it gives you more opportunities throughout the year to take a step, to take a change, to adopt something new or import something that was important that maybe wasn't fully supported when you decided you wanted to take that step with migration. Within a few months you might see enough support where you're like, “oh, I'm ready now.” And so, by taking that monthly cadence, it just gives you a lot more flexibility when it comes to decision making on your part about when you want to make that change.

Is there a template/form (having both business and tech questionnaires) available to help us decide which of the three options is the best fit for our situation?

No, there isn't, but that's a good idea. Thank you.

Regarding the sizing questionnaire template, is it available online in SAS documentation or do I have to contact my SAS representative?

You need to contact your SAS representative and the reason behind that is the sizing questionnaire is based on the software that you have.

What size organizations do you typically host in SAS Cloud?

It's a broad mix from the smallest single server environment up to big grid environments. It's the complete range, we get all sizes of customers in SAS Cloud.

SAS in-house has reports in MS Office. Do we have to license Office again in Cloud?

It depends on your organization. If you're moving to SAS cloud and you're using Microsoft Office with SAS 9.4, we provide a terminal server for you, and then we would host Microsoft Office for you and that would be included in your overall cost for SAS Cloud.

What makes SAS Cloud different to my own company’s cloud?

Support. It's all about that white glove approach. You're going to get a dedicated person that looks after your environment for you. You get access to architects to help you design that footprint. And you get people watching your environment all the time, so all the SAS administration is done for you and all the host administration is done for you. Basically, SAS cloud takes care of SAS for you. You don't have to worry about it anymore, you just use it.

In a lift and shift option for SAS 9 on premises to SAS 9 on Cloud directly, will there be migration required? If yes, assuming the 'quantum of migration' required will be lesser than the other 2 approaches discussed which involve Viya on Cloud? What type of reduction (in terms of migration content) in exercising this lift and shift option could be there compared to other approaches?

A ‘lift and shift’ will require a migration of content, and it is likely that you will need to make updates to your code due to hard coded paths. The best way to identify the effort of a migration is to use SAS Content Assessment for SAS 9.4. This will help you understand the areas of effort for a migration whether it is to SAS 9.4 or to Viya.

For economic assessment of SAS Cloud vs alternative: https://www.sas.com/en/whitepapers/economic-value-of-sas-cloud-112517.html

How hard is it to apply hot fixes in Viya?

SAS has changed the way new software is release for Viya, and now Viya updates are release on a monthly or six-monthly schedule. You can find more information about these changes here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Viya/Back-to-the-Future-with-SAS-Viya-Releases/td-p/703510

How does one go about identifying the appropriate cloud compute, networking and storage services and pricing options for your specific SAS workloads and business needs?

The best way to determine the right size for your SAS environment is to work with your SAS representative. They will be able to guide you by helping you to completing a sizing questionnaire. Once completed, our sizing team will be able to make a recommendation.

I have a question regarding the containerization in cloud environment. I have checked the contents of SAS Analytics for containers and I did not see SAS EG there. I would like to know if I wish to include SAS EG in containerization then how would I be able to achieve it? Or in general, if I want to have a customized package planned for containerization what steps should be done?

The containerization of SAS 9.4 has so far been focused on an environment without a metadata server. As such we do not have directions on how to containerize an environment with Enterprise Guide.

For different cloud providers like AWS, GCP, Azure does SAS have mapping of any sort for different SAS products compatible with different native cloud service / product?

All of the core set of SAS Viya offerings (click here) leverage the basic cloud native services (e.g. authentication, monitoring, storage, load balancing, K8s, DNS service, etc.) offered by different cloud providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure. We do go above and beyond when it comes to our integration with Microsoft Azure services and products as part of our strategic partnership with Microsoft. At present, we are not integrating with Microsoft Azure at the basic cloud services layer, but also with other Microsoft Azure based products like AML, Azure IoT, etc. For more details refer to this page: https://www.sas.com/en_us/solutions/cloud/microsoft-azure/viya-integration.html

Is moving SAS/AF the same LOE as moving SAS 9.4 to the cloud?

Moving from SAS 9.x to cloud is a completely different decision because it will be driven by your cloud strategy. We can help evaluate and move SAS 9.x workloads to the cloud in a lift and shift manner or BYOL to cloud. 

I am interested if SAS 9.4M8 is in planning because I have the impression that adoption of SAS 9.4MX is more than that of SAS Viya?

Planning, scope, and assessment for SAS 9.4M8 is ongoing and it is tentatively scheduled for GA in 2022. Customer adoption of SAS Viya is growing faster than SAS 9.4 and our current strategy is to add new, innovative data and analytics/AI capabilities to meet customer needs in SAS Viya.  

Recommended Resources

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SAS Demo: SAS® 9 Content Assessment

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