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. There are several approaches for upgrading to SAS 9.3:
-
Promote—install SAS 9.3
and upgrade
portions of your
current SAS content.
The Export and Import
SAS Package wizards or batch tools provide you with a great deal of
flexibility. Promotion enables you to move gradually to SAS 9.3 if
you have additional hardware on which to run SAS 9.3 separate from
earlier SAS versions. Consider using promotion to upgrade to SAS 9.3
in the following cases:
-
You want to change your SAS topology
or operating systems.
-
You have made minimal configuration
changes to your earlier SAS deployment.
-
You want to move only selected
content from your earlier SAS version.
-
Migrate—install SAS 9.3
and upgrade
all your current
SAS content.
Using the SAS Migration
Utility with the SAS Deployment Wizard to migrate to SAS 9.3 has some
definite advantages, as you will achieve the most automation as possible
using this method. Consider using migration to upgrade to SAS 9.3
in the following cases:
-
You want to retain your SAS topology.
-
You have made significant configuration
changes to your earlier SAS deployment (such as customizations to
users and groups, ACTs, or server configurations).
-
You want to move all content from
your earlier SAS version.
-
Use a combination of migration
and promotion.
Migration and promotion
are not mutually exclusive. You might choose to migrate to a 9.3 deployment
and run it in parallel with your earlier SAS version and periodically
refresh the 9.3 content through partial promotion. This enables you
to continue to use your earlier SAS version in production while you
validate your migrated SAS content and become familiar with the new
features of SAS 9.3.