Administrators and IT specialists that are tasked with quietly deploying SAS 9.3 via provisioning software are often faced with a variety of scenarios within their enterprise. For example, deployment might include user groups that have different product requirements on multiple Windows operating systems, or an automated quiet installation process might need to be created.

When using provisioning tools to install SAS across an enterprise that has heterogeneous machines, you need to maintain greater control of the installation process and ensure that there are no surprises during the installation.

The following two-pass process not only helps reduce potential reboots that could occur during a quiet installation, but it also gives the administrator complete control over what is installed in their packages so that software pieces are not installed ad hoc. Troubleshooting advice is also included.

Note: No matter which provisioning tool you use to quietly deploy SAS in your enterprise (for example, LANDesk, Wise, Microsoft SCCM, Symantec Altiris, IBM Tivoli, BMC, and so on), the underlying methodology is the same.

1. Before You Begin
2. Pass One
3. Pass Two
4. Testing and Troubleshooting
5. More Information about Response Files

Before You Begin

Before you proceed with this method, SAS recommends that you perform a thorough inventory of all of the SAS products that your organization needs to be installed and investigate the system requirements of those products. This information is available on the SAS System Requirements web page. In the Current Releases box, select SAS 9.3 (TS1M0) and later, including maintenance and then filter your search according to your needs.

Pass One

In this stage, you determine the system requirements, construct the applicable commands for each identified system requirement, and implement the system requirements commands into your provisioning software package.

1. Determine your system’s requirements.

   Note the system requirements that are listed under Stage 1 System Requirements. You will implement these system requirements later. In most cases, where you are installing a minimum number of SAS products (for example, SAS Foundation or a client mix), you might see that only one to four system requirements are needed. In larger, more complex installations, you could have several more requirements.

   1. Start a manual installation of your software. Navigate to the root directory of the SAS Software Depot and double-click setup.exe.
   2. Select the SAS product mix of SAS^® Foundation, client, and other SAS products that you plan to install across the enterprise.
   3. Proceed through the SAS^® Deployment Wizard to the Deployment Summary page and stop here. Do not complete the manual installation.
      
      New in SAS 9.4! SAS 9.4 TS1M1 Rev. 940_14w11 has a new "srwonly" feature that replaces the first two steps (as in steps 1 and 2 in this SAS 9.3 "Pass One" phase). For information about the -srwonly option that is available beginning in SAS 9.4 TS1M1, Rev. 940_14w11, see the section "Checking System Requirements (Windows only)" in the SAS^® Deployment Wizard and SAS^® Deployment Manager 9.4: User's Guide. The -srwonly option is not applicable in SAS 9.3. Step 3 is now also easier. You can use either the individual commands or the complete batch file to install system requisites.
2. Construct the commands for each identified system requirement.

   The locations in the typical SAS 9.3 software depot of the system requirements and their associated quiet installation commands are listed in this SAS 9.3 applicable table. You will use these commands to implement the system requirements that you identified in Step 1. You should verify the paths in your depot, as the examples in Table 1 might be slightly different from the actual paths in your depot.

   Note that some of the requirements have both 32-bit and x64-bit installers. You should install both 32 bit and x64 bit versions if your machine is Windows x64 bit and install only the 32-bit version if your machine is Windows 32 bit.

3. Implement the system requirements commands into your provisioning software package.
    
   1. Make sure the systems requirements commands that you will use work on your Windows machines in your enterprise environment before you incorporate them into your provisioning tools.
   2. After you implement the system requirements, repeat Step 1 above. Note that in Step c, Stage 1 should no longer be the systems requirements stage, which verifies that your systems requirements commands worked properly and that no more system requirements are needed. See the Testing and Troubleshooting section for other testing recommendations.
       

   Reboots of the operating system might be pending either from previous installations of products other than SAS or because one of the system requirements that you just installed requires a reboot. Reboots are not always required. However, if necessary, now is a good time to reboot your system.

   Because you are installing across a number of machines in the enterprise, you might need to ensure that rebooting does not take place. You should remove registry entries that are known to cause a reboot, such as FileRenameOperations or PendingFileRenameOperations. These entries are located here:

    

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager

    

   Running the fixpendingreboot.bat file that is included on the Downloads tab will remove the keys explained above if they are present. You can use this BAT file or its commands as an initial step in the final packaging job to remove the possibility of those keys affecting a potential reboot.

Pass Two

In this stage, you record a response file and construct a quiet installation command to be implemented into your provisioning software package.

1. Record a response file.

   From a command prompt navigate to the root directory of the SAS Software Depot and run setup.exe with the record and response file parameters. The following command is an example:

   "path-to-depot\setup.exe" -record -responsefile "path-to-response-file\sdwresponse.properties"

   See "More Information about Response Files" below.
    

2. Construct a quiet installation command.

   Note: Because the two-pass method is being used, the NOMSUPDATE parameter is used to suppress the SAS^® Deployment Wizard from reinstalling the system requirements. Recall that Pass One determined the system requirements, and commands for them were created and deployed already.

   From a command prompt, navigate to the root directory of the SAS Software Depot and run setup.exe with the QUIET, NOMSUPDATE, and RESPONSEFILE parameters. The following command is an example:

   "path-to-depot\setup.exe" -quiet -nomsupdate -responsefile "path-to-response-file\sdwresponse.properties"

   Note: SILENTSTATUS support is available in SAS 9.3 (TS1M1), Revision 12w23 and later. This option enables you to monitor the silent installation. The following command is an example:

   "path-to-depot\setup.exe" -quiet -nomsupdate -silentstatus -responsefile "path-to-response-file\sdwresponse.properties"

   Note: If the provisioning software is used to monitor the setup.exe process or if the package is configured to run one program before another, it will be necessary to use the WAIT parameter on the installation command. Adding the WAIT parameter on the installation command line as follows keeps the setup.exe process resident:

   "path-to-depot\setup.exe" -quiet -wait -nomsupdate -silentstatus -responsefile "path-to- response-file\sdwresponse.properties"

    

Testing and Troubleshooting

Before you incorporate the quiet installation command into your provisioning package, you should test the installation command that you created in Pass Two.

On a machine where you have completed Pass One and on which the system requirements have been deployed, run the command from Pass Two to verify that the installation command successfully installs the software.

To troubleshoot, run the installation command without the QUIET parameter as shown in the example below:

This command runs the installation against the same response file but will be interactive and might point out potential issues.

You should be aware of the following SAS notes:

• SAS Note 41966, "Using the SYSTEM account with automated installations might result in error message"

  See information about the missing Documents folder under Windows 7 on the SYSTEM account.

• SAS Note SAS KB0036506, "The 'Install Post Processing' step of the SAS 9.3 installation process fails"
• SAS Note 48408, "The message 'Severe: Response data missing' for REGION_SETTINGS occurs in the response file for quiet installations"

More Information about Response Files

You need to know the following information about response files:

• The response file can have a name other than sdwresponse.properties. For example, response.txt is a valid name for a response file.
• If you copied a command from a PDF file, be sure to delete the hyphen (-) that was copied and then manually retype the hyphen. See SAS Note 37418, "You must use a hyphen with command-line options in the SAS Deployment Wizard," for more information.
• When you record the response file, record it on a machine that represents the target machines of the deployment. Failure to do so could result in a response file that seems to work on the original machine but which could fail on target machines. When the resulting response file is used on target machines, it fails because the section for the Java Runtime Environment was omitted. See the previous section about system requirements that discusses a two-step process to ensure that prerequisites are installed first.
• You can have multiple response files. Multiple response files might be necessary when there are target groups that have different needs for specific deployments.

  For example, you have three groups: Group A needs SAS^® Enterprise Guide^® only. Group B requires SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS^® Add-In for Microsoft Office. Group C requires only SAS Foundation. In this example, you record multiple response files and name the response files accordingly—one file for each group to specifically install only the required products. You could record three files with the names EGresponse.properties, EGAMOresponse.properties, and SASresponse.properties if you want the names to reflect which products were being installed. You could also name the files to reflect the group name, such as GroupAresponse.properties, GroupBresponse.properties, and GroupCresponse.properties.

Note the following best practices:

• It is much more time consuming to manually edit a response file than it is to record it again. If the response file is not edited exactly correctly, you will spend more time editing and adjusting it than you would recording it again.
• Record a response file on a clean machine in which no SAS products have been installed. If a version of SAS is already installed on the machine on which you are recording, you might see different results in your response file than you would see on a clean machine. Consequently, your results will be different when you attempt the installation.
• The test machine should also be typical of the machines that your end users will be using (for example, operating system, bitness, third-party software, drives, group policy, and so on).

Finding Additional Information

Chapter 3, "SAS Deployment Wizard: Command Line Options, Record and Playback section" in the SAS Deployment Wizard and SAS Deployment Manager 9.3: User’s Guide

For SAS 9.4:

• "Provisioning SAS on Windows" in the SAS 9.4 Intelligence Platform: Installation and Configuration Guide. Start with "Provisioning Overview."
• Supported Operating Environments for the latest supported operating systems information
• SAS Note 46876, "SAS 9.4 and SAS 9.3 support information for the Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 operating systems"
• SAS Note 52767, "Windows 8.1 Update 1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 1 might cause a SAS installation to fail and installed SAS Java clients to not open"

Operating System and Release Information