Hello,
Does this happen when trying to launch SAS OnDemand for Academics?
Until a couple of year ago there was a problem note for the SAS University Edition (presumably the predecessor of SAS OnDemand for Academics), but the problem note is not there anymore.
Problem Note 54109: The error "The launch of the server process failed with an unknown status code" might occur when you attempt to launch SAS® University Edition
http://support.sas.com/kb/54/109.html
Question : do you have access to the "underlying" Linux / Unix host using a Command Line Interface? In that case, you can do some root cause analyses.
Thanks,
Koen