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Installing SAS Viya 3.4 on SUSE Linux…What’s the difference?

Started ‎10-04-2018 by
Modified ‎10-04-2018 by
Views 2,539

Since SAS Viya 3.4, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (aka SLES) 12.2 and later is now a supported operating system for most of the solutions.

 

SUSE Linux is another Linux Operating system flavor. It is of German origin (based on the "slackware" open source distribution), mainly developed in Europe, and was one of the first linux system to offer a graphical packages installation system (YasT).

 

1YAST.png

 

As a reminder, the other Linux systems that are currently supported are: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Oracle Linux Server (OLS).

 

So...is it different to install Viya on SUSE than on Red Hat? ...Well... not too much. 🙂

 

For our Viya deployments, the 2 keys differences with SLES are:

  • We don't use YUM to install our RPM packages (we use ZYPPER instead)
  • A mirror repository is required for all deployments on SUSE Linux

Of course there are other slight differences that come from the Linux System differences between RHEL/OLS and SUSE Linux. (For example, a few differences in the pre-requisite system libraries, packages, and utilities) But they are documented and really minor.

 

So let's see a little bit more of what it means in practice in terms of deployment tasks.

 

Pre-requisite

 

Installing PIP and ansible, run VIRK (Yes, it works with SUSE as well!)

 

If you need to install a 3rd party package such as PIP or ansible on the system, you will use ZYPPER instead of YUM. The two systems are very similar.

 

They both work with repositories and manage RPM packages (automatic location, download from web repositories, dependencies management, and tracking).

 

So for example, to install PIP (which is used to install a specific version of ansible):

 

sudo zypper install python-setuptools
sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install ansible==2.4.1

 

Then if you want to use the GIT tool to clone the VIRK project, you need to register a new Zypper repository, like:

  1. On the machine that will play the ansible controller role, install GIT

     

    #add a new zypper repo for git
    sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/scm/SLE_12_SP3/devel:tools:scm.repo
    #install git
    sudo zypper install git
    
  2. Check with ansible and the "zypper" module that git is installed:

     

    ansible localhost -m zypper -a "name=git state=present" -b
    

     

    VIRK (Viya Infrastructure Resource Kit) is a set of open source tools and utilities for Viya, including a "pre-install" playbook that automates the check and implementation of the Viya pre-requisites. Check out the public github project for more information.

     

  3. Get the VIRK 3.4 pre-install playbook:

     

    # Use VIRK
    mkdir ~/working 
    cd ~/working
    GIT_REPO=https://github.com/sassoftware/virk.git
    BRANCH_TO_USE=viya-3.4
    git clone $GIT_REPO --branch $BRANCH_TO_USE
    

 

Create the mirror

To create the mirror, we use the mirror manager tools; whatever the target OS is, we will always use the same tool that we can download from the SAS Viya Install Center.

 

The important thing for SUSE is simply to use the correct "platform" option. For example:

 

./mirrormgr mirror --deployment-data SAS_Viya_deployment_data.zip --path /root/mc  --platform x64-suse-linux-12 --latest

 

Create the playbook

It is the same principle to create the playbook. We follow the same process (download and install the orchestration CLI locally), then we run it with the appropriate "platform" option:

 

./sas-orchestration build --platform suse --input SAS_Viya_deployment_data.zip --repository-warehouse http://rpo34prod-sles:8123/ --output SAS_Viya_playbook_VA.tgz

 

Installation

 

Then the remaining deployment steps are exactly the same as with RedHat or Oracle Linux 🙂
All you have to do is run a command like:

 

tmux
ansible-playbook site.yml ; \
ansible sas-all -m service -a "
name=sas-viya-all-services.service enabled=no" -b

 

Note: the second ansible command is just here to disable the automatic start-up of Viya services when the machine reboots.
And at the end, you should see something like this:

 

2SUSEDeployment.png

 

Do you see any difference compared to a Red Hat installation?
No?
Okay, it is normal and expected 🙂

 

Conclusion

So deploying Viya on SUSE is not very different from deploying it on Red Hat or Oracle Linux. The only noticeable changes for the SAS Viya installer will occur during the pre-requisite steps.

 

Let's recap the differences for a SUSE deployment in a table:

 

Deployment steps SUSE Linux Specifics?
Create an installation user No specifics
Install PIP and Ansible Use ZYPPER instead of YUM to install 3rd party packages.
Install GIT or TMUX (optional) Add a ZYPPER repository (Backports) in case the packages are not available in the default ZYPPER repo.
Pre-installation steps with VIRK SUSE specifics system requirements are managed inside VIRK. No difference for the usage of VIRK (unless GIT is used to clone the VIRK project)
Create the mirror A mirror is required for a SUSE deployment. Use "x64-suse-linux-12" for the platform type.
Create the playbook Use "suse" for the platform type.
Run the deployment No specifics
Perform the validation No specifics

 

Finally, in case you want to know a bit more about the SUSE Operating System capabilities, you might want to read the SUSE Blog and watch the entertaining "SUSE, Yes, Please" video.

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Last update:
‎10-04-2018 08:13 AM
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