What is SAS Environment Manager? :: SAS(R) Environment Manager 2.5: User's Guide, Second Edition

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
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 cannot run behind the SAS Web Server or any other reverse proxy server.

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. Other uses are restricted in accordance with your SAS Master License Agreement.

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.

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 repository for all of the information that is known about all of the resources known to SAS Environment Manager. It uses PostgreSQL, and uses the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Data Server when that server is configured to use 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, SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture 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 from stored processes in the Report Center.

The basic framework for SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture is provided by SAS Environment Manager Extended Monitoring. In addition to providing the infrastructure for the 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.