Understanding the Learning Path for Deploying SAS Viya on Kubernetes

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Since joining SAS I’ve worked on several individual portions of the SAS Viya on Kubernetes deployment learning course. However, I’ve never taken a step back and looked at the entire course offering until recently. This month I was tasked with “mapping out” the course’s hands-on exercises as they connect with one another to form a web of possible methods for deploying and customizing a SAS Viya environment.

The Workshop and Overview

Workshop: Deploying SAS Viya 4.

Below is the overview map:

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This post aims to break down the overview image to help you understand what the workshop’s exercises have to offer.

Kubernetes Deployment and Viya Preparation

Users begin their hands-on workshop experience by assessing their environment and deciding if it is ready for a Kubernetes deployment. Kubernetes, for those unfamiliar, is a container management platform and will be part of our infrastructure needed to deploy SAS Viya. More on Kubernetes here. Once users prove the readiness of their environment, they will deploy an upstream opensource distribution of Kubernetes.

On a customer site we might assume this to be done ahead of time, but the workshop walks users through the process by which one can order SAS Viya. Our virtual learning environment with which we are performing the hands-on already has a “SAS Viya order” and we will not actually use the sample internal order that the exercise has us make. Still, it can be beneficial to learn what the order process looks like for SAS Viya.

Next, users will manage some prerequisites for their SAS Viya deployment. If users are planning to run the Deployment As Code (DAC) tool instead, this section will be handled automatically by that tool. If not, each prerequisite (colored in orange on the overview chart) will have to be manually installed and have its specifications tweaked by the user. Once users are happy with their prerequisite management, they’ll run the “ViyaARK Prereqs report” to have their environment checked for SAS Viya installation viability. Assuming the ViyaARK tool sees all prerequisites are met, SAS Viya can then be installed!

Deploying SAS Viya

This section is broken into two parts: manual deployments and non-manual or “automatic” deployments.

The workshop walks through a few different ways to deploy SAS Viya:

A “simple” manual deployment, which is entirely generic and has almost no alterations to the defaults.
We use this environment as a jumping-off point to potentially create the following manual deployments:
- The “programming only” environment, which would only allow users of the environment to use the SAS Studio offering of SAS Viya.
- The deployment with authentication, an enhancement to the simple environment which allows for different users/roles to be authenticated with separate permissions and restrictions.
- The deployment in a second namespace, this is essentially another simple SAS Viya deployment but running on the same infrastructure at the same time as our original. It shows us that you can have multiple SAS Viya deployments running as long as they’re in separate namespaces.

A SAS Viya deployment with the “sas-orchestration command”. This method for deployment has some manual steps but the bulk of the deployment is done automatically by using information detailed in the software order email we would’ve gotten after ordering SAS Viya.
A SAS Viya deployment using the Deployment Operator (DepOp). This tool requires some setup but can point to a “SASDeployment Custom Resource” that contains configuration files to extract information about the desired deployment, then deploy a SAS Viya environment accordingly.
A SAS Viya deployment using the Deployment As Code (DAC) tool. This tool automatically manages all SAS Viya prerequisites and deploys a simple environment with very little manual setup required.

With SAS Viya deployments being customizable, all possible modifications to a deployment cannot be covered in this workshop. Still, we cover all the ways to deploy a simple environment as well as several key pre-deployment modifications one might make in the real world.

Users are free to go through the hands-on for one or all of the different deployment types. Before starting a new deployment, the exercises make sure users delete previous deployments and clean up their environments.

Customizing a SAS Viya Deployment

Users clean up all previous deployments they may have made and begin on a clean slate with a simple SAS Viya environment created using the sas-orchestration command. The actual method of deployment shouldn’t matter, as any methods would lead to an identically customizable SAS Viya environment.

From here, users can configure several real-world deployment customizations. Among these customizations are some SAS specific configurations: namely SAS/CONNECT, SAS/ACCESS, and the SASWORK storage location. Users are also given the option to manage the Kubernetes local registry for backups, configure Hadoop, and enable “high availability” on the SAS Viya deployment to lower chances for machine failures or service downtime.

Of note in this section users are also shown how they can validate any of their deployments. This step can be performed at any time a SAS Viya deployment exists on the environment and will generate an explorable deployment report for the user.

Putting it all together

The idea behind walking through a workshop’s hands-on in this way is that users (maybe you, dear reader) can get a better idea of what to expect before having to delve into a given workshop. The hope for GEL workshops in the future is that each one will have a similar overview map designed to walk you through their learning paths before you begin. If there’s anything in this particular workshop overview that you feel is left out or needs further explanation, feel free to comment down below and I’ll do my best to prepare you for what you can expect should you book this collection.