Checklist of SAS Platform Administration Tasks

[#1]

Have you ever wanted a sample list of the tasks you should consider performing as a SAS Platform Administrator?

This Checklist of SAS® Platform Administration Tasks for SAS 9 (and it's equivalent for SAS Viya) was produced as the result of extensive collaboration with many experienced consultants in SAS UK, EMEA and North America.

It contains two checklists. The first lists one-time tasks that you should consider performing when you first deploy your SAS software. The second describes tasks you should consider scheduling as a regular, recurring activity to keep your environment running in good condition.

Take a look, and I'd love to know what you think about it!

[jakarman]

Very nice document as a start David.
Comments:
- The focus is only on technical parts. The sas user support is completely missing. What I think of is:

   + performance checks/validation

   + functional usage needs expectations that are possibly having impact.

   + the user application life cyclemanagment (DTAP) and the segregation of dataminers that work with production to develop and deploy models. 

      Sometimes the resulted reports/data must be validated before getting published (also an acceptance production life cycle)

   + (what is more on that)

- Backup restore has many type of requirements there is a DR (cold), system failure reset and one to roll-back human errors on a single artifact.

  That last one will need you to think on not having that full automatic backup but thinking of selecting one artifact in eg metadata/content server to be brought back.

- Accounts missing is that segration in normal and service (and others). For service accounts you really do not want to have passwords. There are many way to eliminate those. Sudo ant Unix (runas / surrogate) private/public keys with passwordless login.  That last one is possible used with VA with cgroups (docker). That passwordless login is also an advice with AWS usage.

I would add:

- Check the integrity of the total installation without trusting suppliers on their blue eyes.  Validate/check everything to business requirements.       

[MichelleHomes]

FYI, a great video "Top 10 SAS Platform Administration Tasks" by @DavidStern in the Technical Insights and Expertise series that complements his SAS Administration checklist paper listed above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-qwZgcEO0&feature=youtu.be