SAS Administration Checklist

Below are the top 10 checklist jobs to be performed for a SAS Administration


1. Administration schedule

• Design and maintain a schedule of SAS platform administration activities
• Specify when regular housekeeping tasks should be performed
• Follow the schedule to keep your system running efficiently

2. Backup and Recovery

• Define backup and recovery strategy
• It should describe:

• Which components of SAS Platform should be backed up
• How frequently
• How long backups should be retained and where

• Seems simple, but can be complex in multi-machine deployments
• System state is stored in multi places
• Must backup and restore synchronously to keep system state consistent
• You can use SAS Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool

3. Linceses

• Learn how to apply new licence files "http://support.sas.com/techsup/license/"
• Document the steps for your specific SAS deployment
• You may have several separate licensed components
• Their licenses may not all expire on the same date
• Allow enough time to renew licenses before they run out

4.Archive and delete log files

• Write your own scripts to archive(zip) and delete log files
• Run those scripts regularly, e.g. nightly
• Example scheme:

Archive logs after 7 days

Delete archived logs after 30 days

• Some servers have to be restarted to rotate their log file

5. Relocate SAS Work

• Linux: SAS work default= /tmp

• Cleaned up periodically by OS
• May be on root partition - filling it is bad

• Windows : SAS work default= user's home directory
• Choose better location with sufficient space, on filesystem which is optimized for expected workload, e.g. large sequential read and write

6. Clean up SAS Work

• Delete SAS Work directories left by abruptly-terminated SAS workspace sessions
• Unix:SAS Cleanwork utility
• Windows:SAS Disk cleanup handler
• http://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2014/05/14/finding-and-deleting-orphaned-sas-work-and-sas-utility-directories/
• Run it regularly,e.g. Weekly

7. Security Model

• Design and maintain security model
• Implements a security policy
• Use groups to manage access to:

• Metadata
• Data
• Application functionality

• Determine how users and groups are:

• Added
• Updated
• Removed

8. Filesystem Access controls

• Secure files and directories in addition to metadata
• Prevent unauthorized read or writes access

9. Monitoring

• SAS Environment Manger
• Third party monitoring solution
• Your own custom tools or scripts
• Record time series data
• Set up alerts
• Monitor Jobs and Queries

10. Hotfixes

• Maintenance release
• Hotfixes
• Announcements
• Support notes

Reference:

• https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Hot-Fix-Announcements/bg-p/hf
• http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/hotfix.html