Resource control for SAS Viya on Azure Managed Service

[nullpointer8086]

As an early adopter of this deployment model, we urgently need to be able to control the cost of the Azure Infrastructure - especially as we are performing proof of concept work on an ad-hoc basis.

It would be easy enough to STOP the Kubernetes cluster entirely and shut down the VMs when it is not in use, however, what currently prevents us from doing this is that the IAM has a specific "System DENY assignment created by the managed application".

According to this post SAS "are working on enhancements to allow customers more control over the infrastructure costs when the software is not in use." This is indeed great news, but until this is available do we just keep deleting/redeploying the application between the POC activity?

Perhaps just removing this system deny assignment when the app deploys in Azure - and replacing it with a more finely-grained access control policy would immediately allow the starting/stopping of resources?

In the interim - we have noted that we are indeed able to stop the Virtual Machine Scale Sets which we are hoping will pause the infrastructure billing at least on the K8s cluster when not in use. Would anyone be able to comment if this is the case or not?

Another item for clarification - when it comes to the "metered usage of the SAS Viya software" under this circumstance (of stopped VM Scale Sets), will the billing thereof also be paused? It is also mentioned in the post I referenced above.

As far as the 2 VMs go, it doesn't seem we have much control over those at all yet, but they are less of a concern for now - but control would also be appreciated!

My last question is about cost reporting - I've been running this app for almost a day now, but my subscription cost dashboard is not showing any billing yet. We are on a newly upgraded Azure account that did have the $200 credit, so I am just unsure about where I start monitoring the costs!

Thanks!

[Conor_H]

We are currently working on the start/stop capability that you describe. There is currently a beta of this feature. At the moment, it is being tested before general availability. To gracefully shutdown the infrastructure we would advise not stopping the Virtual Machine Scale Set, as this may cause issues with the software when bringing the cluster back up. When you shut down the infrastructure, you will no longer be billed for SAS Viya. Microsoft does not have a way to do real time reporting of the meters on the software use. We have already shared this feedback with our Microsoft partners.

[slg]

Note that even if you stop K8s clusters and VMs, on the infrastructure side, you will still incur costs such as storage (disk space) and the like... However, you may be able to fit the cost into the budget that you mentioned on a monthly basis.

[ChrisHemedinger]

The most recent version of SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure Marketplace offers some support for Stop and Start. See Stop and Start SAS Viya in the documentation:

To help you manage SAS Viya on Microsoft Azure, an Azure runbook is included that can be used to start and stop the deployment on demand or at times that you schedule.