The power of SAS 9 applications allows information and knowledge creation from very large amounts of data. Analysis that used to consist of 10s–100s of gigabytes (GBs) of supporting data has rapidly grown into the 10s to 100s of terabytes (TBs). This data expansion has resulted in more and larger SAS data stores. Setting up file systems to support these large volumes of data with adequate performance, as well as ensuring adequate storage space for the SAS temporary files, can be very challenging.
Technology advancements in storage and system virtualization, flash storage, and hybrid storage management require continual updating of best practices to configure I/O subsystems. This paper by Tony Brown and Margaret Crevar of SAS presents updated best practices for configuring the I/O subsystem for your SAS 9 applications, ensuring adequate capacity, bandwidth, and performance for your SAS 9 workloads. The authors have found that very few storage systems work ideally with SAS with their “out-of-the-box” settings, so it is important to convey these general guidelines.
