SAS^® Product Support for Virtualization Environments

Hardware Virtualization Environments

All SAS products, beginning with SAS 9.1.3 and later, are supported in a hardware virtualization environment, for example VMware, provided the following guidelines are accepted and understood:

• To determine whether the operating environment combination (operating system, third-party products, etc.) is supported by SAS, the following conditions must apply:
  • The virtualization provider must support your operating environment combination as a "guest" environment.
  • The third-party products must independently be supported in the virtualization environment.
  • SAS must support that combination in a physical environment. Support is listed in the system requirements for that specific SAS product.
   
• SAS expects functional equivalence of its products between a virtual and a physical environment. SAS does not do specific testing of its products in a virtualized environment.
  If a functional issue arises, SAS will make good faith attempts to reproduce the issue, but does reserve the right to request the customer to reproduce the issue in a physical environment. This will only be done when there is reason to believe that the issue is being caused by the virtualization environment.

• Due to the nature of the virtualization environments, SAS does not expect performance equivalence in these environments. Analysis must be done within the customer environment for the specific application(s) to determine the appropriate sizing and configuration of the infrastructure. The customer is responsible for properly configuring their virtual machine and applications for that virtualization environment.
• Not all functionality provided by a virtual environment is compatible with SAS. This includes dynamic operations on virtual machines with active SAS processes and includes, but is not limited to, VMware VMotion and VM snapshots. For more information, refer to SAS Note 69450, "SAS® software and the use of VMware VMotion and snapshots."

Presentation Virtualization Environments

SAS 9.2 and later can be deployed into a presentation virtualization environment as per the following guidelines:

• Support is available for the following Virtual User Interface (VUI) environments on Microsoft Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019. This support is available only where applicable for 32-bit or x64 editions and for the system requirements for that specific SAS product. In these instances, the customer assumes responsibility for resolving environment differences if SAS cannot reproduce the problem in-house in a currently supported non-virtualized environment.
  • Terminal Services for Windows Server 2008
  • Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2012
  • Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2016
  • Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2019
  • Citrix Presentation ServerTM 4.0
  • Citrix Presentation ServerTM 4.5
  • Citrix XenAppTM 5.0 and higher

Application Virtualization (Streaming) Environments

SAS will work with customers to support the deployment of SAS 9.3 (and later) desktop applications in application virtualization environments on a reasonable-effort basis. These environments include VMware ThinApp, Microsoft App-V, and Citrix XenApp. In these instances, the customer assumes responsibility for resolving environment differences if SAS cannot reproduce the problem in-house in a currently supported non-virtualized environment.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Environments

SAS will work with customers to support the deployment of SAS 9.3 (and later) desktop applications in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments on a reasonable-effort basis. In these instances, the customer assumes responsibility for resolving environment differences if SAS cannot reproduce the problem in-house in a currently supported non-virtualized environment.

User Virtualization Environments

SAS will work with customers to support the deployment of SAS 9.3 (and later) desktop applications in user profile virtualization environments on a reasonable-effort basis. These environments include AppSense, Citrix UPM, and Microsoft UE-V. In these instances, the customer assumes responsibility for resolving environment differences if SAS cannot reproduce the problem in-house in a currently supported non-virtualized environment.

Cloud Environments

SAS 9.4 and later releases of SAS are supported in cloud environments provided by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and others, under the conditions described here. It is the user’s responsibility to understand and accept the following requirements.

• Operating Environments
  All elements of the operating environment (the operating system, third-party products, and so on) must be supported by SAS, and the following conditions must apply:
  
  • The cloud services provider must support your operating environment combination as a "guest" environment.
  • The cloud services provider must provide the functional equivalent of required hardware for certain configurations (such as in clustered file systems requirements for SAS^® Grid Manager architectures).
    
  • The third-party products must be supported independently by the operating system used in the cloud environment.
    
  • SAS must support that combination in a physical environment. Support is listed in the system requirements for that specific SAS product.
• Equivalence
  • SAS expects functional equivalence of its products whether they are in a cloud or a physical environment. There are, however, some known limitations. For example, configurations that require multicasting do not work in a cloud environment.
    If a functionality issue arises, SAS will make a reasonable attempt to reproduce the issue in the cloud if there is reason to believe that the issue is being caused by the cloud environment. SAS reserves the right to request that the customer reproduce the issue in a physical environment.
  • Due to the nature of cloud environments, SAS does not expect performance equivalence. Analysis must be performed within the customer environment for the specific application(s) to determine the appropriate sizing and configuration of the infrastructure. The customer is responsible for properly configuring their virtual machine(s) and applications for their cloud environment.
    
• Security
  Security is an important consideration when running applications in a public cloud. Customers are encouraged to use security measures such as virtual private environments, firewalls, and encryption to protect their data and application communication.
  
• Licensing
  Because licenses in a cloud environment might differ from licenses in a physical environment, we recommend that you discuss your requirements and available options with a member of your SAS account team. For assistance reaching your SAS account team, please do one of the following:
  
  • Call 1-800-727-0025 and select the option for Software Sales.
  • Use this Contact SAS form.
  • Chat live from this Contact Us page.
• Hosted Environments
  SAS also provides customer environments that are hosted on-site at SAS. Contact a member of your SAS account team for more information or visit this SAS^® Cloud Analytics web page for more information.