What’s New in SAS Grid Manager 9.4

Overview

SAS Grid Manager has the following new features and enhancements:
  • Support for grid options sets has been added.
  • Support for grid-launched workspace servers has been added.
  • New options have been added to the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility, including support for grid options sets, support for interactive SAS sessions and command processing, and support for waiting for results from grid jobs.
  • New job options for Platform Suite for SAS have been added.
  • A Grid Manager plug-in has been added to SAS Environment Manager.

Support for Grid Options Sets

A grid options set is a collection of grid options, SAS options, and required resources that are associated with a particular SAS client application. The purpose of a grid options set is to enable a SAS grid administrator to define a collection of options in SAS metadata. These options map to one or more SAS client applications and are automatically applied to workloads submitted to the grid based on the identity of the user accessing the client application. Some of the client applications that support grid options sets include the following:
  • SAS Data Integration Studio
  • SAS Grid Manager Client Utility
  • SAS sessions that use the grdsvc_enable statement to submit jobs to the grid
  • Grid-launched servers

Support for Grid-Launched Servers

With grid-launched servers, when an application requests a SAS workspace server from the object spawner, the spawner passes the request on to SAS Grid Manager. SAS Grid Manager checks the machines on the grid, using the grid’s policy management to determine which host is the least busy, and starts the server. Because the load-balanced servers are started by SAS Grid Manager, jobs on these servers appear as LSF jobs.
In the first maintenance release after SAS 9.4, stored process servers and pooled workspace servers can also be grid-launched.

New Options for the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility

The following new options have been added to the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility (SASGSUB):
-GRIDOPTSET
specifies the name of a grid options set.
-GRIDWAITTIMEOUT
specifies that the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility waits until either the job has completed running or a specified time-out value is reached.
-GRIDWAITRESULTS
specifies that the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility waits until the job has completed running (either successfully or with an error) and then returns the results of the processing.
_PROMPT_
when used as a value for the METAUSER or GRIDUSER parameters, specifies that the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility prompts the user for a user ID.
In the first maintenance release after SAS 9.4, support has been added to the SAS Grid Manager Client Utility to support interactive mode. These options enable you to start an interactive SAS session on the grid, using either SAS Display Manager mode or UNIX line mode, or to run an arbitrary command. It also enables you to monitor the output from SAS or a command running in batch mode.
-GRIDRUNSASLM
specifies that the SASGSUB command runs a SAS session in line mode and that standard output and standard error are displayed by SASGSUB. SASGSUB also redirects standard input to the SAS session running on the grid. The grid must be on UNIX.
-GRIDRUNSASDMS
specifies that the SASGSUB command runs a SAS session in SAS Display Manager mode. Standard output and standard error are displayed by SASGSUB, and the X Windows session is directed to the host and port specified on the -GRIDRUNSASDMS argument. The grid must be on UNIX.
-GRIDRUNCMDINT
specifies that an arbitrary command is run on the grid in interactive mode. Standard output and standard error are displayed by SASGSUB. Standard input is directed to the program running on the grid.
-GRIDWATCHOUTPUT
when SASGSUB is used for batch processing, specifies that the log output and the list output of the batch job are displayed on the user’s machine.

New Job Options

The following job options that are supported by Platform Suite for SAS have been added:
app
specifies the LSF application name to use.
maxpendingtime
specifies how long a job waits in the pending state before being terminated.
jobname
specifies a job name to be used for all jobs.

Grid Manager Plug-in for SAS Environment Manager

In the second maintenance release after SAS 9.4, a Grid Manager plug-in has been added to SAS Environment Manager. This plug-in enables you to perform these tasks:
  • View information about LSF clusters
  • View information about and manage grid jobs
  • View information about and manage hosts on the grid
  • View information about and manage queues
  • View information about and manage high availability applications
  • View audit records
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