What is SAS Environment Manager?

SAS Environment Manager is a web-based administration solution for a SAS environment. The application enables you to perform these tasks:
  • administer, monitor, and manage SAS resources, including administering the SAS Web Application Server and monitoring SAS foundation servers
  • collect and chart data on metrics for monitored SAS resources, which creates a comprehensive view of resource health and operation
  • monitor log events and reporting alerts
  • manage resources and definitions in SAS metadata, including authorization and user definitions
  • Incorporate the monitoring and managing of IT and SAS resources into a service management strategy by using the detailed metric information stored in the SAS Environment Manager Data Mart and the reports provided in the Report Center
SAS Environment Manager agents run on all SAS platforms except for z/OS.
SAS Environment Manager is based on VMWare’s Hyperic product, with customizations and plugins to optimize the product specifically for a SAS environment. Some terms and concepts used in SAS Environment Manager are different than in other parts of SAS, but these are noted in this document.
The basic architecture of SAS Environment Manager consists of an agent process running on each platform in a SAS deployment that communicates to a central management server. Agents monitor detected resources and periodically report resource metrics back to the server. The server provides an interface for interacting with those agents, managing the data collected by the agents, distributing plugins, creating alerts and escalation procedures based on collected metrics, and graphing the metrics provided through the installed plugins.
overview diagram
There are five main components to SAS Environment Manager:
agent
An agent is a software process that runs on each platform (middle-tier and server-tier machine) in a SAS deployment. The agent is responsible for tasks such as discovering software components on its platform, gathering metric and availability data for the platform and components, and performing resource control actions. The agents communicate with the management server. Plugins are used to provide the agents with the information needed to discover SAS resources installed on a platform.
management server
The management server is responsible for communicating with the agents. It collects information about items such as discovered resources, metrics, and availability, and issues control actions received from the SAS Environment Manager application. Collected data is stored in the SAS Environment Manager database.
SAS Environment Manager database
The database is a Postgres database that is a repository for all of the information about all of the resources known to SAS Environment Manager. It uses the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Data Server, which is based on PostgreSQL. After resources are discovered and added to your inventory, the database stores data collected from the agents about the resources.
SAS Environment Manager application
The application is the web-based interface to the SAS Environment Manager system. Resources discovered by the agents and added to the inventory are displayed and monitored. Metric and availability data collected by the agents and stored in the database is displayed and charted. Events and metric data are used to generate alerts. Control actions are sent back through the management server to the agents to control resources on the platforms. The application also includes a framework to add functions specific to SAS, such as server, library, and user administration.
plugins
Plugins enable agents to discover and monitor resources in a SAS environment. Each plugin is associated with a specific resource, and provides the agents with the instructions needed to recognize the resource during auto-discovery and to monitor and collect metrics for the resource.
Although open-source plugins are available for VMWare Hyperic, these plugins are not supported by SAS Environment Manager. You should use only plugins provided by SAS.
Beginning with SAS Environment Manager 2.4, the component SAS Environment Manager Data Mart Performance and Usage Reporting is also included. Extract, transform and load (ETL) processes obtain metric information from the SAS Environment Manager agent and from SAS logs, standardize the data, and store the data in the SAS Environment Manager Data Mart. From there, the data is used to produce predefined reports in the Report Center.
The basic framework for SAS Environment Manager Service Management Architecture is provided by SAS Environment Manager Extended Monitoring. In addition to providing the infrastructure for the SAS Environment Manager Data Mart and the Report Center, the Extended Monitoring package includes predefined alerts, groups, and logging configurations. Initializing Extended Monitoring automates the task of setting up SAS Environment Manager, and enables you to start using the application right away.
SAS Environment Manager is based on VMware’s Hyperic product, with customizations and plugins to optimize the product specifically for a SAS environment. Some terms and concepts used in SAS Environment Manager are different than in other parts of SAS, but these are noted in this document.
SAS Environment Manager is licensed for and restricted to the monitoring and management of SAS Technologies, solutions, and the necessary associated supporting infrastructures. SAS Environment Manager agents can be installed on any machines that host software or data on which your SAS environment depends. However, agents installed on machines that do not host SAS software are restricted to monitoring basic hardware and operating system resource metrics. Although SAS Environment Manager is based on VMware’s Hyperic product, only plugins and customizations specifically delivered with and deployed by SAS software may be installed in SAS Environment Manager. See the SAS Environment Manager Plugins page on support.sas.com for a complete listing of supported plugins. Other SAS Environment Manager uses are restricted in accordance with your SAS Master License Agreement.
SAS Environment Manager, its reports, and supporting data are provided to assist in the troubleshooting and performance tuning of SAS environments. Although audit, access, and connectivity data and reports are provided, SAS does not provide a guarantee as to their completeness. If you require more extensive and comprehensive audit, access, and connectivity data, please contact SAS Professional Services for assistance.
Note: SAS Environment Manager and the SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture use a collection of data sets to store collected metric data and information that is used to create reports. If you notice that a data set that is associated with SAS Environment Manager is not being updated, this is not necessarily an indication of an error. A data set might not be updated because it is no longer being used, or because the event that it is collecting data for has not occurred.
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Last updated: February 22, 2018