A SAS
grid computing environment is one in which SAS computing tasks are
distributed among multiple computers on a network, all under the control
of SAS Grid Manager. In this environment, workloads are distributed
across a grid of computers. This workload distribution enables the
following functionality:
enabling multiple users
in a SAS environment to distribute workloads to a shared pool of resources.
allowing users to distribute
subtasks of individual SAS jobs to a shared pool of resources. The
grid enables the subtasks to run in parallel on different parts of
the grid, which completes the job much faster.
allowing users to schedule
jobs, which are automatically routed to the shared resource pool at
an appropriate time.
SAS Grid
Manager provides load balancing, policy enforcement, efficient resource
allocation, and prioritization for SAS products and solutions running
in a shared grid environment. It also separates the SAS applications
from the infrastructure used to execute the applications. This enables
you to transparently add or remove hardware resources as needed and
also provides tolerance of hardware failures within the grid infrastructure.
SAS Grid Manager integrates the resource management and scheduling
capabilities of the Platform Suite for SAS with the SAS 4GL syntax
and subsequently with several SAS products and solutions.
SAS Grid Manager includes these components, as illustrated in Grid Topology. :
a plug-in for SAS Management
Console that provides a monitoring and management interface for the
jobs and resources in your grid
the SAS syntax necessary
to grid-enable the SAS workload
components provided
by Platform Computing to provide efficient resource allocation, policy
management, and load balancing of SAS workload requests
The Platform Suite for SAS includes these components:
Load Sharing Facility (LSF)
dispatches all jobs
submitted to it, either by Process Manager or directly by SAS, and
returns the status of each job. LSF also manages any resource requirements
and performs load balancing across machines in a grid environment.
this is the interface
used by the SAS scheduling framework to control the submission of
scheduled jobs to LSF and manage any dependencies between the jobs.
Grid Management Services (GMS)
this is the interface
to the Grid Manager plug-in in SAS Management Console. It provides
the run-time information about jobs, hosts and queues for display
in SAS Management Console.