Understanding SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture

SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture provides functions and capabilities that enable SAS Environment Manager to fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The package implements best practices for resource monitoring, automates and extends the application’s auditing and user monitoring capabilities, and follows industry standards to enable servers to use Application Response Measurement (ARM). These functions enable SAS Environment Manager to function as a key component in providing service-level management in a strategy that is based on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture uses extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes to obtain metric data, convert it to a standard format, and load it into the SAS Environment Manager Data Mart. You can then leverage the data by using the supplied stored process reports and reporting tools or by using your own preferred reporting tools.

SAS Environment Service Architecture consists of the following components:

SAS Environment Manager Data Mart

The data mart is the key component of the Service Architecture and is created if you enable either one or both of the ETL processes in the service architecture. The data mart consists of a set of tables that hold the data collected by the ETL processes. The collected data is stored in a standard format, which makes it easy to run reports and perform analysis. The stored processes in the Report Center use the data in the data mart to produce pre-defined reports. Data is retained in the data mart for 60 days. The infrastructure for the data mart is provided in the SAS Environment Manager Extended Monitoring package.

Audit, Performance, and Measurement (APM) ETL

When this component is initialized, it collects information from various log files (including those generated by SAS servers and web application servers), standardizes it, and stores it in the data mart. A log discovery process runs approximately every 15 minutes to locate all of the logs that need to be included in the APM ETL. After the data is stored in the data mart, you can use it to produce reports in the Report Center or to perform custom reporting and analysis.

Agent-Collected Metrics (ACM) ETL

When this component is initialized, it uses information that was collected by the SAS Environment Manager agent from the computing resources and components in your deployment. The data is processed and loaded into the data mart. After the data is stored in the data mart, you can use it to produce reports in the Report Center or to perform custom reporting and analysis.

Report Center

The Report Center provides a convenient access point for the reports that are provided as part of the Service Architecture. Once one or more of the ETL components have been initialized and enabled, data is available in the data mart. This data is then used to feed the predefined reports in the Report Center. The Report Center is not available until either one or both of the ETL processes is enabled.

Solution kit framework

The solution kit framework can extend the capabilities of SAS Environment Manager to support specific solutions or applications. The framework includes support for collecting and storing operation information about the solution in the data mart and for using the associated reporting capabilities.

SAS Visual Analytics data feed

Data from the data mart can be easily loaded into SAS Visual Analytics. If the data feed option is enabled in SAS Environment Manager, selected data tables from the data mart are copied to a specified drop zone directory. SAS Visual Analytics can then automatically load the tables from the drop zone into the application.

Federated data mart

If you are using a data mart on multiple deployments in your organization, you can create a federated data mart to consolidate analysis and monitoring for all of the deployments. The federated data mart collects into one location the ACM data from the data marts of each deployment. Each deployment still retains its own data mart, but the federated data mart enables you to easily compare the metric data across your organization.

Note: The alerts and reports in the Service Architecture are provided as a best efforts resource to assist in the troubleshooting and performance tuning of your SAS deployment. However, many other factors might influence your user experience, some of which are beyond the monitoring capabilities of SAS Environment Manager. If you need additional assistance or reference information about performance tuning and hardware configuration, please contact the SAS Professional Services Division.

The following diagram illustrates how the components of the Service Architecture work together.