What's New in SAS Grid Manager 9.2

Overview

SAS Grid Manager has the following new features and enhancements:

A SAS code analyzer is added to automatically add syntax to existing SAS programs in order to enable parallel processing on a grid.
High-availability capabilities are provided as part of SAS Grid Manager.
A method for submitting batch SAS jobs to the grid has been added.
The capability for SAS Grid Manager to provide load balancing for SAS workspace servers has been added.
Job control has been enhanced.
Enhancements to the Grid Manager plug-in for SAS Management Console provide improved grid monitoring and control.
Enhancements to the Schedule Manager plug-in for SAS Management Console provide improved control and monitoring for jobs and flows scheduled to run on the grid.
Support is added for other grid middleware providers.

SAS Code Analyzer

The SAS Code Analyzer is a procedure that executes an existing SAS program and identifies the dependencies of the procedures and job steps. SAS Code analyzer then uses this information to create a new version of the program that contains the syntax required for the subtasks to be executed in parallel on a grid.

High-Availability Capabilities

High-availability capabilities are incorporated into Platform Suite for SAS 4.1. This capability provides high availability for critical components running in a grid (such as the SAS Metadata Server) and eliminates the need for a hot standby machine and the purchase of additional third-party tools.

A New Way to Submit Batch SAS Jobs to the Grid

The second maintenance release after SAS 9.2 adds the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility. This utility enables batch SAS jobs to be submitted to the grid without the need to have SAS installed on the machine that is used to submit the jobs. The utility provides the capability to submit jobs, end jobs, check job status, and retrieve job output.

Grid Algorithm for Load Balancing

SAS Grid Manager can be used to provide load balancing for workspace servers running in a grid. This capability provides a robust way to enable load balancing for any clients that use SAS workspace servers.

Enhanced Job Control

The following enhancements improve control for jobs processed on a SAS grid:

A job name can be specified through a macro variable specified by the JOBNAME option of the GRDSVC_ENABLE statement.
Job options can be specified through a macro variable specified by the JOBOPTS option of the GRDSVC_ENABLE statement.
Job options can be specified in metadata for grid logical server definitions. These options override user-specified options.
SAS startup options can be specified in metadata for grid logical server definitions.

Enhancements to the Grid Manager Plug-In

The following enhancements to the Grid Manager plug-in for SAS Management Console provide improved grid monitoring and control:

The plug-in provides Gantt charts to display job information by status or host.
Capabilities are provided to:
- suspend and resume jobs
- open and close hosts
- open, close, activate, and deactivate queues

Enhancements to the Schedule Manager Plug-In

The following enhancements to the Schedule Manager plug-in for SAS Management Console provide improved control for jobs and flows that are scheduled to run on a SAS grid:

Enhancements to the table view provide more information about scheduled jobs, and the ability to filter the contents and view the SAS log.
A new visual editor improves the process of creating and editing flows to be scheduled.
Enhancements to the management of deployed flows provide the ability to create and edit trigger events and execution attributes.
The ability to redeploy a job for scheduling has been added.
Management of deployed jobs has been enhanced, including the ability to change the batch server and specifying the associated job.

Support for Other Grid Middleware Providers

Support is added for DataSynapse GridServer and Univa UD Grid MP as grid middleware providers. Platform Suite for SAS remains the middleware provider that is packaged with SAS Grid Manager. DataSynapse and Univa UD support includes multi-user load balancing and parallel load balancing. It does not include an interface to the schedule manager framework.