Your organization's
ability to perform the data analysis you need depends on a flexible
computing infrastructure. You must be able to add needed resources
quickly and in a cost-effective manner as the load increases. You
must also be able to handle maintenance issues (such as adding or
replacing resources) without disrupting your work. A SAS grid environment
enables you to maintain a flexible infrastructure without disrupting
your operations.
As your
data-processing needs grow, you can incrementally add computing resources
to your grid by adding smaller, less-expensive servers as new server
nodes. This ability prevents you from having to make large additions
to your environment by adding large and expensive servers.
When you
need to perform maintenance on machines in the grid, the grid can
still operate without disruption. When you take the servers offline
for maintenance or upgrades, SAS Grid Manager routes to work to the
machines that are still online. Users who send work to the grid for
processing do not have to change their way of working. Work that is
sent to the grid is processed just as before.
Likewise, the SAS
grid environment adapts if a computer fails on the grid. Because SAS
Grid Manager automatically avoids sending work to the failed machine,
the rest of the grid is still available for processing and users do
not see any disruption.