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Planning Your Migration

Migration Planning Worksheet

The Migration focus area at support.sas.com/rnd/migration provides detailed information about SAS®9 migration and cross-release compatibility. The idea is to document every known issue together with their fixes and best practices. This gives the customer a sense of confidence that possible obstacles have been anticipated and resolved ahead of time. With proper planning, the site's resources can be maximized, the migration can proceed more smoothly, and the customer can start using the enhanced power of SAS®9 more quickly.

Because SAS installations can vary so widely, it is not possible for SAS to provide a one-size-fits-all migration timeline. Instead, this document is a framework for your research and planning.

The first two steps help you to collect basic information about your site. Then you use our interactive calculators to learn whether you need the MIGRATE procedure and how to use it. The remaining steps alert you to possible issues that can affect your migration timeline. A number of SAS employees in the field helped to gather information from customer sites, so this document includes a variety of possible issues. You should be able to cross off many of them as not applicable.

Step 1: Inventory the Hardware

• On what hardware is SAS running now? Be sure to include servers and desktops. You might be running on multiple operating environments.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/platform/inventory.html)
  
  
• Is the operating environment supported in SAS®9?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/platform/sas9platforms.html)
  
  
• Are you staying on the same operating environment?
  
  
• Are you staying on the same machine?
  
  
• Are you changing from 32-bit to 64-bit SAS?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/platform/sas9platforms.html)
  
  
• Read the system requirements for the target environment. Do you need to perform operating environment updates?
  (support.sas.com/documentation/installcenter/)
  
  
• Read the system requirements for the target environment. Do you need to perform upgrades in third-party software?
  (support.sas.com/documentation/installcenter/)
  
  
• Do you want to upgrade any equipment or third-party software for any other reason?
  
  
• What operating environment issues do you need to watch for? If you upgrade hardware, see especially issues that can arise from an operating environment change.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/platform/os.html)
  
  
• If performance is crucial to your applications, do you need an operating environment expert for debugging and optimization tuning?
  
  
• Any client-server or n-tier architecture issues?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/platform/inventory.html)

Step 2: Inventory the Files

• Locate SAS data libraries.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/special_findingnotmvs.html)
  
  
• Do you have existing SAS data sets or other SAS files that you will continue to use after you upgrade to SAS®9?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/inventory.html)
  
  
• Under what version of SAS was the data library created?
  
  
• What members are in the library?
  
  
• What kind of processing do you need - input (read), update (modify), output (create)?
  
  
• Do you need access to indexes?
  
  
• You can store files together from different versions. Are all library members from the same release? All libraries from the same release?
  
  
• Do you need SAS®9 file features?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/forward.html)
  
  
• What operating environment were the files created under?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/bestcompat.html#proccontents)
  
  
• If you're currently on HP-UX, Solaris, or AIX in Release 8.2, were the files created in 32-bit or 64-bit SAS?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/bestcompat.html#proccontents)
  
  
• If you're currently on Windows in Version 7 or 8, do any files have short extensions?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/special_shortfileext.html)
  
  
• If you're currently on Windows, will you upgrade to 64-bit SAS?
  (/documentation/installcenter/913/hosts/index.html)
  
  
• Are you changing to a different character encoding?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/bestcompat.html#attributes)
  
  
• Are any files not covered by PROC MIGRATE? How will you move them to the target installation?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/special_notcovered.html)
  
  
• Do any data sets contain non-English characters?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/special_nls.html)

Step 3: Use the Calculators and Prepare to Migrate Files

• Do you need to migrate SAS libraries to SAS®9 format? Use the Compatibility Calculator (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/calculator/) to decide whether to migrate SAS libraries to SAS®9 format. You'll need the answers to the questions above in steps 1 and 2.
  
  
• Are you prepared with the correct SAS syntax to move or migrate your files? Use the PROC MIGRATE Calculator (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/migratecalc/) to get the proper migration instructions for your operating environment and SAS library members. You'll need the answers to the questions above in steps 1 and 2.
  
  
• The MOVE option is not recommended with PROC MIGRATE. Do you have enough disk space to validate the migration in the target library before you delete the source library?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/validtools.html)
  
  
• The migration instructions will tell you whether you need to use RLS, a feature of SAS/SHARE and SAS/CONNECT software. If you don't have access to SAS/SHARE or SAS/CONNECT software, contact the Customer Interaction Center (phone 1-800-727-0025 or send e-mail to CICenter@sas.com).
  
  
• Do you need to migrate ODS templates?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/special_odstemplates.html)
  
  
• Review the PROC MIGRATE documentation to answer any questions.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/index.html)
  
  
• Perform a small, sample migration to test your syntax.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/migrate_2.html#test)
  
  
• Review the compatibility documentation to answer any questions. This page is a gateway to in-depth compatibility topics.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/files/compatibility.html)

Step 4: Inventory the SAS Products and Applications

• What SAS products do you use?
  (Blog post: How to document your SAS environment)
  
  
• Do you have compatibility or migration issues in any of your SAS products?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/software/index.html)
  
  
• Do you need to update SAS and SCL programs for SAS®9?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/software/programs.html)
  
  
• Can you reengineer any processes to take advantange of enhanced features in SAS®9?
  (support.sas.com/documentation/whatsnew/index.html)
  
  
• Do you need to run multiple releases of SAS products and applications on one machine?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/papers/peaceful.html)
  
  
• Do you have globalization concerns?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/nls/index.html)
  
  
• Do you have pharmaceutical industry concerns?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/industry/industry_pharma.html)
  
  
• Is validation a concern? Can you use the SAS OQ and SAS IQ? Any other QA or custom validation needed?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/validation/index.html)
  
  
• Are isolated environments necessary for validation before going production? Do you need extra disk space, CPU time, peaceful coexistence, or live update?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/validation/parallel.html)

Step 5: Inventory the Roles and Timeline

• Read through the typical migration execution tasks.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/procmigrate/execution/index.html)
  
  
• Consider the suggested roles for the migration project team - providers and customers within your organization.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/scheduling/roles_inventory.html)
  
  
• Create a timeline that includes all the migration tasks and contingencies. Assign tasks to team members.
  
  
• Have you accounted for these often-overlooked needs in your timeline?
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/planning/scheduling/needs_drilldown.html)
  
  
  • Do users need help to migrate their libraries?
    
    
  • How will you minimize downtime?
    
    
  • Do you have interdepartmental and workflow dependencies?
    
    
  • Do you have dependencies between SAS and third-party software?
    
    
  • Determine the batch SAS jobs that are regularly scheduled. Who or what depends on the results from those jobs?
    
    
  • If you need to migrate in stages, how does that impact the dependencies?
    
    
  • Do any service-level agreements exist within your organization, or from your organization to clients?
    
    
  • Have you planned for roll-back, a safety net?
    
    
  • Do users need training for migration or for SAS®9?

Step 6: Review the Plan and Timeline

• Consider the best practices and lessons learned from a migration case study and other papers.
  (support.sas.com/rnd/migration/papers/index.html)
  
  
• Review your decisions and your timeline. This is advisable because many planning decisions are interdependent; that is, one decision can affect multiple areas of planning.