Issue with sas hotfix deployment

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Hello All,

I am facing a situation regarding sas hotfix deployment.

Here is the situation:

I have a prod and a newly built test environment, both on Linux64 with sas 9.2 installed. The prod server has a few hotfixes applied on various products, i.e. Base sas, SAS MO Server, MA Automation launcher etc. Now, the test server should have the exactly same configuration as prod in terms of deployed hotfixes. Having said this, let me consider one hot fix for simplicity.  Hotfix E08005( which is a little old, currently E08010) has already been applied in prod years ago, and the test server should also have E08005 applied. Once prod and test has the exact same configuration and the same products on test are working as flawlessly as prod, I can go for latest hotfixes for both the server/environment.

Here comes the problem. On the sas webpage for E08005, the download link for the hotfix file points to hotfix E08010, instead of E08005. It shows that hotfix E08005 is replaced by hotfix E08010.

http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/E/E08/E08005/xx/lax/E08005la.html

If I cannot install hotfix E08005, the whole purpose of making Prod and Test the same is beaten. So I have downloaded the bin file for E08005 from this website. http://misc.esd.sasinstitute.net/hotfix/HF2/E/E08/E08005/xx/lax/

Question is, when SAS has discontinued E08005 and moved to E08010, would it be advisable to install E08005? Will products stop working after installing E08005la.bin?

Eagerly waiting for your expert advice and guidance.

Thank you.

[jakarman]

What you are facing is a bad attitude of SAS institue...

- ingoring commong installtation proceses like:

     SMP (z/OS),

     RPM (RedHat Package manager Unix/Linux),

    msi (microsoft) and instead dictating the installation wizard.

- instead of promoting release management of a SAS installation promoting directly updating within prodcution without any test/acceptance awareness

How you can solve this, some basics:

- You can have multiple versions of SAS on a single machine. Just make more SAShomexx entries.

- You can make full image backup/restore versions to another machine as long as they are indentical.

- Make a clear segregation between:

    the <sashomexx> installation

    the configuration with all Levx  parts

   addtional needing support like log-locations and the business environment.

   Why should the business environment be mixed up wiht the configuration of SAS.... (good question, answer?....)    

How you can solve this, solution:

If you have your prod environment en test environment on OS and hardware being equal it should work to make a full copy (no SAS deployment) of the installation part (tar/untar  rpm or whatever). By having a full copy you can start working on that.

The problem of discontinued fixes is eliminated by that.  You can start working on a real release management approach of the SAS installation.

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Hello Jaap,

That helped. I have installed some older versions, but prod and test are on the same platform now.

Installation was okay, some pain was there at the post installation procedure. And those are done too.

SAS institute helped as well, in finding some hotfix files.

Thank you.