A previous article describes how to configure SAS Viya to leverage an external instance of PostgreSQL for the SAS Infrastructure Data Server. After reading it, you may still wonder: “Why would I choose to leverage an external PostgreSQL instead of going with the default internal one provided by SAS?”. Well, I’m glad you asked: here you can find some pros and cons we collected during multiple architecture design workshops.
One of the design principles of SAS Viya is to give customers more choices and control over their desired architecture. This starts with supporting many Kubernetes cluster providers: you can run your cluster on local machines or in a cloud platform, including supported versions of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Red Hat OpenShift. Deployments with open-source Kubernetes are also supported. We can easily say this is the modern incarnation of the decades-old Multivendor Architecture!
As soon as the first customers started deploying SAS Viya on their Azure clouds (that was the first provider SAS supported back in 2020), they asked about the possibility to leverage their existing native cloud instances for some of the services that SAS Viya requires. Supporting external instances of PostgreSQL answers that requirement, and, in the future, additional services will be able to leverage native cloud implementations. Examples may include Azure Service Bus instead of the SAS Viya-provided RabbitMQ for message queues, or external instances of OpenSearch.
This already gives us the first, possible answer to the original question: using an external instance of PostgreSQL can be a good choice if you already have one! You should still consider all of the system requirements, to make sure that SAS Viya can leverage what you are already using.
Apart from this obvious case, what other considerations should you weigh when deciding to use a PostgreSQL instance not provided by SAS?
Here is a non-comprehensive list gathered from discussions with customers and colleagues during multiple architecture design workshops.
SAS Viya gives you many choices and control over your desired architecture. In this article, you can find some of the considerations gathered from discussions with customers and colleagues to evaluate whether to use an internal or external instance of PostgreSQL for your SAS Viya deployment. Do you have any additional points that we may have missed? We’re always open to discussion and eager to learn, so share them in the comments!
Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.
thank you for this article. We are now looking into the requirements for external Postgres, however the high availability is a challenge and of course there are also extra costs. Is SAS going to continue providing internal Postgres database after 2023.06 version? does everyone have to migrate to external postgres? If you have answers to these questions, it will help us a lot with planning.
Registration is now open for SAS Innovate 2025 , our biggest and most exciting global event of the year! Join us in Orlando, FL, May 6-9.
Sign up by Dec. 31 to get the 2024 rate of just $495.
Register now!
Data Literacy is for all, even absolute beginners. Jump on board with this free e-learning and boost your career prospects.