Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn about different tasks that should be done on a regular basis to keep your SAS Viya environment healthy and secure.
Watch the webinar
You will learn about:
- Monitoring a Viya environment.
- Administering users and groups.
- Checking pods.
- Backing up your Viya environment.
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
How can I integrate/inject organization user from active directory into SAS VIYA to manage their SAS access?
Users are brought into Viya through the identity management service. You work with your authentication provider, whoever manages that, and you will enter that information to allow SAS Viya to connect with you. You set up SAS groups and users, and those users will be brought over into SAS Viya. They're listed as users and listed as groups. Remember that the custom groups are groups that exist only in SAS Viya. The users and the groups exist in your authentication provider.
Could you please explain SAS Single Sign On? What resources are required?
That's just dealing with your authentication provider. As you can see, most of the SAS applications now are web-based so you're working with whatever authentication provider the browser uses. How I view single sign-on is one set of credentials that work everywhere in the environment. And if that's how your environment is set up, then you know the credentials that you log onto your desktop will work to access and run CAS servers. SAS Viya uses Kerberos for single sign on. Once the environment is configured the browser must be configured as well. Documentation on authentication mechanisms can be found here: https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/sasadmincdc/v_026/calauthmdl/n1iyx40th7exrqn1ej8t12gfhm88.htm#p...
How to make SAS Viya integrated with R, JAVA, python, and Lua use CAS programming in an interface? Is there any documentation?
I'm not a programmer, so I use the words from our SAS documentation: CAS integrates with common open-source languages. CAS actions can be called directly from Java, Lua, Python, R, or REST APIs. Integrating SAS and open-source technologies is often helpful for two main reasons: programmatically accessing SAS Viya using open-source software or bringing open-source models into SAS Viya.
We currently use pre-Viya versions on SAS in our organization with separately managed environments by business domain/dept. From an admin point of view, do you see large organizations manage a single Viya instance or multiple instances?
Like most things administration, it depends on the size of the organization. SAS Viya supports multi-tenancy that allows several groups to interact with a single instance of the software. In this configuration each group would be a tenant. There are also organizations that choose to deploy individual instances of SAS Viya for specific groups within the organization. I recommend continuing to work with your SAS team to determine the best option for your organization.
What's the equivalent object in SAS Viya 4 for SAS 9 information map?
SAS 9 information maps based on relational tables are job definition and job request objects in SAS Viya. SAS 9 information maps based on OLAP cubes are not supported in SAS Viya.
Could you please explain what SAS cache locator does in SAS Viya?
The SAS Cache Locator is a server that provides discovery information to SAS Viya microservices for the purpose of forming a distributed data cache.
Are there other monitoring tools I can use with SAS Viya?
You can use the following tools to view and manage metrics:
SAS Viya Monitoring for Kubernetes logging and monitoring tools – This monitoring solution uses the following open-source technologies: Prometheus, Alertmanager, Prometheus Operator, and Grafana
Microsoft Azure Monitor – Azure monitor can be used if SAS Viya is deployed in a Microsoft Azure environment.
Your preferred logging and monitoring technology – SAS Viya and Kubernetes allows for various monitoring tools to be used to gather metrics.
Do I need to be a Kubernetes administrator to administer SAS Viya?
I've probably mentioned Kubernetes almost as much as SAS Viya in this. I won't say that you must be the Kubernetes administrator, but for some of the basic tasks I showed you, like checking if the backup ran, you will need to understand some Kubernetes. There are tasks associated with the environment that you will need elevated Kubernetes permissions for. You don't have to be a Kubernetes administrator, but a good knowledge of Kubernetes is needed. We have created two free e-courses to help you get started, Getting Started with SAS and Kubernetes and SAS Viya Administration: Getting Started.
What percentage of your clients who utilize SAS Viya do not use SAS on any other platform? (Estimate would be fine.)
Unfortunately, we don’t have access to that information. I will say there are customers that SAS Viya is their first introduction to SAS. I don’t have exact numbers, however.
Where is the best place to find what are current hot fixes or patches for SAS Viya?
SAS is still working on methods to alert customers of hot fixes. However, the process to update depends on whether you are using LTS or stable cadence. LTS would basically redownload the deployment assets and redeploy. The fix would be there. For stable, you would just move forward to pick it up in the next stable release.
How can I monitor user activity in SAS Viya 4? How can I audit them? You mentioned RTM in your other question that I responded to.4
SAS Workload Management is the grid equivalent in SAS Viya. You can run your SAS 9 programming jobs in a grid in SAS Viya.
How can I monitor user jobs in SAS Viya, like in SAS grid we have RTM portal to track it? What are the possibilities with SAS Enterprise Session Monitor for the SAS administrator?
There is also a SAS utility called SAS Enterprise Session Monitor. ESM can be used to monitor and audit users as well. https://us.docs.boemskats.com/esm/2022.x/
Do you need BASE SAS to do work that you cannot do in SAS Viya? Are those two platforms, Cloud vs. Unix, interchangeable with SAS on it? Is it redundant to have SAS on both platforms?
SAS code in SAS 9 can execute in SAS Viya, but the best option is to use SAS Content Assessment to analyze your SAS 9 components, code and objects to determine system readiness for SAS Viya. SAS 9 and SAS Viya are unique, stand-alone systems. You do not need one to use the other.
So you are saying they are redundant, and that there is no need to have both?
I wouldn’t say redundant. SAS Viya and SAS9 are unique systems but can process your SAS programs on either.
In SAS Viya 4, is there any order standard to do stop, start?
The Kubernetes pods are independent objects and Kubernetes takes care of all of the starting/stopping order.
I'd be interested in learning steps to go from SAS Viya 3.5 (Windows) to the more current Linux SAS Viya versions. From installing Linux on a Windows Server 2019 to installing SAS Viya on the Linux OS.
This is the documentation for migration.
Does Viya have special user, like sasadm@saspw, like in SAS 9?
The is one: sasboot. If you are having problems with loading the identities into Viya from LDAP/AD, that account provides a way to connect.
Please let us know the detailed information about the SPRE, microservices and controller and workers servers separately.
SAS Programming Runtime Environment, often referred to as SPRE, includes several SAS Viya servers that run SAS programs and stored procedures in the form of jobs for processing using the SAS language.
Microservices are self-contained pieces of software that do one thing, depend on one another to the least extent possible, and are deployed independently. One or more instances of these processes can run at a time and in many instances have built-in fault tolerance.
Controllers are required components that direct code execution to the workers.
Which details, as an administrator, do I need to provide to my SAS users when they ask me how to call CAS action and actionsets via REST API? Is the REST API something which exists inside a Viya microservice?
The administrator registers the REST API with SAS environment and provides a client id and secret. REST API technology is built into the SAS Viya via microservices. Here is a link outlining the process of registering a REST API in SAS Viya.
How to migrate SAS 9 contents to SAS Viya?
Gerry Nelson from SAS wrote an excellent article in the SAS Communities Library discussing migrating from SAS 9.4 to SAS Viya.
How Do I Migrate from SAS9 to SAS Viya?
Ask the Expert on setting up SAS Viya for Guest access to bypass kerberos authentication in SAS Viya 3.5. Is it possible to make a complete implementation of SAS Viya 3.5 where it is completely Guest access enabled with only additional access by members of the SAS Administrators?
Guest access is an optional feature that provides anonymous Read-Only access to a subset of resources and functionality in some applications. Yes is the answer to your question. The admin team would have to give access to the reports to be viewed by guests that connect. If users are to create content, they cannot connect as a guest.
Does SAS Viya webservices startup take lot of time SAS 9?
SAS Viya is completely web based and has microservices that share little to no dependency. The number of microservices you have will depend on the software you have purchased from SAS, but typically, the microservices don’t take a great deal of time to start. I haven’t run a stopwatch comparison, but I think you will experience less time because of the autonomy of the microservices.
Recent issue where I developed a Visual Analytics report in My Folder and only I had access to its data source. Then, later when I shared the report and granted access to the data source, when the user tried opening the report, they see the unable to load data source error message.
I would have to dig a bit deeper to know for sure, but one issue may be how the data is being accessed. You created the report and possibly accessed the data as yourself. The user could not have the same level of access to the physical data (although you did give them access through SAS Viya) or the account they are using to open the report doesn’t have access to the data.
Could you please explain what is the role of postgresql db in SAS Viya? What does it store? Is it possible to interact with it programmatically as an admin to draw some insights?
The SAS Infrastructure Data Server stores SAS Viya user content, such as reports, authorization rules, selected source definitions, attachments, and user preferences. SAS Viya uses High Availability (HA) PostgreSQL for SAS Infrastructure Data Server. You can use tools to connect to the PostgreSQL instance, but it is better gather information about your environment through SAS Monitoring tools.
Recommended Resources
SAS Viya Administration Documentation
Free Self-paced E-learning course: Getting Started with SAS Workload Management in SAS Viya
Free Self-paced E-learning course: Getting Started with SAS and Kubernetes
Free Self-paced E-learning course: SAS Viya Administration: Getting Started
A Day in the Life of a SAS Platform Administrator
Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.
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