Choosing an Approach for Upgrading to SAS 9.2

You should review your goals for upgrading and develop an upgrade plan that best fits your enterprise environment. Selecting the approach might require trade-offs. You will have to balance the benefits and challenges of the upgrade options with your goals and priorities. Below is a discussion of several approaches for upgrading to SAS 9.2.

• Promote--install SAS 9.2 and upgrade portions of your current SAS content.

  Using the Export and Import SAS Package wizards provides you with a great deal of flexibility. Unlike the SAS migration tools, you have to bring down the SAS Metadata Server for a brief amount of time, as you are moving only a portion of your SAS content (unlike migration where you are moving everything at once). Promotion enables you to move gradually to SAS 9.2 if you have additional hardware on which to run SAS 9.2 separate from SAS 9.1.3. Consider using promotion to upgrade to SAS 9.2 when you:

  • want to change your SAS topology or operating systems

  • have made minimal configuration changes to your SAS 9.1.3 deployment

  • want to move only selected SAS 9.1.3 content

• Migrate--install SAS 9.2 and upgrade all your current SAS content.

  Using the SAS Migration Utility with the SAS Deployment Wizard to migrate to SAS 9.2 has some definite advantages, as you will achieve the most automation as possible using this method. The drawback is that the metadata server must be off-line for a longer period, including time required to validate your migrated deployment. Consider using migration to upgrade to SAS 9.2 when you:

  • want to retain your SAS topology

  • have made significant configuration changes to your SAS 9.1.3 deployment (such as customizations to users and groups, ACTs, or server configurations)

  • want to move all SAS 9.1.3 content

• Use a combination of migration and promotion.

  Migration and promotion are not mutually exclusive. You might choose to migrate to a 9.2 deployment and run it in parallel with 9.1.3 and periodically refresh the 9.2 content through partial promotion. This enables you to continue to use SAS 9.1.3 in production while you validate your migrated SAS content and become familiar with the new features of SAS 9.2.

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