Symmetric and Asymmetric Distributed Modes

SAS high-performance analytical procedures can run alongside the database or alongside HDFS in asymmetric mode. The primary reason for providing the asymmetric mode is to enable you to manage and house data on one appliance (the data appliance) and to run the high-performance analytical procedure on a second appliance (the computing appliance). You can also run in asymmetric mode on a single appliance that functions as both the data appliance and the computing appliance. This enables you to run alongside the database or alongside HDFS, where computations are done on a different set of nodes from the nodes that contain the data. The following subsections provide more details.