Working with SAS Visual Analytics in SAS IT Resource Management :: SAS(R) IT Resource Management 3.7: Administrator's Guide

About SAS Visual Analytics

SAS Visual Analytics Administration and Reporting is included in the SAS IT Resource Management solution. For information about accessing and using SAS Visual Analytics, see the SAS Visual Analytics: User's Guide. SAS Visual Analytics includes the SAS Visual Analytics Hub, Administration, and Designer workspaces, as well as the in-memory SAS LASR Analytic Server. (The Explorer component of SAS Visual Analytics is not included with SAS IT Resource Management.)

SAS IT Resource Management customers can use SAS Visual Analytics Administration and Reporting to visually explore SAS IT Resource Management data. Customers can design and create reports. They can also view and interact with those reports on the web or on a mobile device such as a tablet. SAS Visual Analytics Administration and Reporting provides access to the SAS LASR Analytic Server, which is an in-memory engine specifically designed for analytic processing in a scalable manner.

A SAS Visual Analytics environment can be distributed or non-distributed (that is, it can consist of one or multiple machines).

In a distributed environment, the SAS LASR Analytic Server runs on multiple machines and each machine has very large amounts of memory. Distributed environments take advantage of co-located data that is stored on Hadoop, Greenplum, or Teradata. This allows for parallel data loading.
In a non-distributed environment, the SAS LASR Analytic Server runs on a single machine.

How to Work with SAS Visual Analytics

To work with SAS Visual Analytics, perform the following tasks:

Register users as a Visual Analytics Data Administrator or as a Visual Analytics User on the SAS Metadata Server. (A user should be registered as only one of these identities, not both.) For information about performing this task, see How to Register Users on the SAS Metadata Server.
The duties and abilities of the Visual Analytics Data Administrator and the Visual Analytics User differ in these ways:
- A Visual Analytics Data Administrator has the authority to start the SAS LASR Analytic Server.
- A Visual Analytics User has the ability to perform all tasks (other than starting the SAS LASR Analytic Server) that are associated with SAS Visual Analytics.
  
  Note: For best results, a user does not need to be registered as an individual Visual Analytics User. Instead, the person should be a member of the Visual Analytics Users group. Assigning users to this group minimizes setup and maintenance efforts.
Authorize the registered users to work with SAS Visual Analytics. To load data in SAS Visual Analytics and view the reports, users must have authorization that allows them to access the LASR library. For information about performing this task, see How to Set Up a User with the Authorization to Work with the SAS LASR Analytic Server.
SAS IT Resource Management source data and its required formats must be accessible to the SAS Visual Analytics environment. Users must provide this accessibility. For information about performing this task, see How to Access Source Data for SAS Visual Analytics.
[Optional] You can automate the loading of the data into the public SAS LASR Analytic Server. For information about performing this task, see How to Automate the Loading of SAS IT Resource Management Data into the Public SAS LASR Analytic Server.
[Optional] You can launch the ITRM Report Center from the SAS Visual Analytics environment. For information about performing this task, see How to Launch ITRM Report Center from the SAS Visual Analytics Environment.
Use SAS Visual Analytics Designer to create and view reports. For information about using SAS Visual Analytics Designer with SAS IT Resource Management IT data marts, see Using SAS Visual Analytics Designer with SAS IT Resource Management Data Sources.

How to Register Users on the SAS Metadata Server

Before accessing the features of SAS Visual Analytics, a user must be registered on the SAS Metadata Server. To register as a user, perform the following steps:

Identify or create an account with which the user can access the SAS Metadata Server.
Log on to SAS Management Console as an administrator (for example, sasadm@saspw).
On the Plug-ins tab, right-click User Manager, and select NewUser.
On the General tab, enter a name for the user.

For a new or existing user, click on the Groups and Roles tab. Add direct memberships for the new user:

If the user does not perform administrative tasks, move the Visual Analytics Users group to the Member of list.

If the user performs administrative tasks, move one or more of the following groups to the Member of list:

Visual Analytics Data Administrators	(for suite-level administrative tasks)
Visual Data Builder Administrators	(for data preparation tasks)
SAS Administrators	(for platform-level administrative tasks)

On the Accounts tab, click New to add login information.
1. Enter the user ID for the account from step 1. It is not necessary to store a password.
  
  Windows Specifics: Enter the user ID in a fully qualified format (userID@domain.extension, domain\userID, or machine\userID).
2. Select the DefaultAuth authentication domain. Click OK.
  
  Note: If you know that web authentication has been set up, select the web authentication domain instead.
In the New User Properties window, click OK.

Note: For more information about how to set up SAS Metadata Roles for users who want to work with SAS Visual Analytics, see Chapter 1, “Getting Started” in SAS Visual Analytics 7.3: Administration Guide. This document is password-protected. Contact SAS Technical Support to obtain access to it.

How to Set Up a User with the Authorization to Work with the SAS LASR Analytic Server

To load the data and view the reports in SAS Visual Analytics, a user must be able to access the LASR library. To do this, perform the following steps:

In SAS Management Console, navigate to FoldersShared DataSAS Visual AnalyticsPublicLASR.
Right-click the LASR folder, and select NewFolder.
Enter ITRM as the name of the folder. Click Finish to create the new ITRM folder.

Note: The ITRM folder is loaded with the SAS package that contains the SAS Visual Analytics reports.

How to Access Source Data for SAS Visual Analytics

SAS IT Resource Management data requires access to SAS IT Resource Management formats. If the data was originally created from an adapter based on MXG, it requires the MXG formats. The source data and the required formats must be accessible to the SAS Visual Analytics environment.

If the SAS IT Resource Management and SAS Visual Analytics environments are on different machines (including different operating systems), move the data and the formats from one environment to the other. You can do this by creating a transport file.

If you need to move the SAS IT Resource Management formats, create a transport file from the catalog called SASHELP.ITMS_FORMATS.

If you need to move the MXG formats, create a transport file from the catalog called LIBRARY.FORMATS.

Use PROC CPORT to create the transport file that resides in the SAS IT Resource Management environment.
Use PROC CIMPORT to import that data to the SAS Visual Analytics environment.

To use the SAS IT Resource Management formats catalog, navigate to the sasv9_usermods.cfg file for the SAS Application Server. This file can be found on the SAS Application Server at the following locations:

Windows Specifics: <config-dir>\Lev1\<application-server-context>

UNIX Specifics: <config-dir>/Lev1/<application-server-context>

z/OS Specifics: <config-dir>/Lev1/<application-server-context>

Then, update the sasv9_usermods.cfg file using these statements:

      -set FMTLIB "SASEnvironment/SASFormats/itmsformats" 
      -insert fmtsearch (FMTLIB.itms_formats)

Note: For information about the INSERT option, see SAS 9.4 System Options: Reference.

To access data that was sourced from MXG adapters such as SMF, you need MXG formats. Add the following statement:

       -set MXGFMT '<formatlib>'

where <formatlib> is the path to the MXG format library that you created and to which you imported the SAS IT Resource Management and possibly the MXG formats. (This library is sometimes referred to as MXG.MXG.FORMATS.)

Note: The MXGSRC configuration setting that is usually seen in SAS IT Resource Management configuration files is not needed in this case.

Add the following macro call to appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas (located in the same folder) on the SAS Visual Analytics server:

%RMMXGINI;

Note: The RMMXGINI.sas macro code, along with code for the five SAS IT Resource Management macros that work with SAS Visual Analytics, should be added to the SASEnvironment/sasmacro location. For more information about these macros, see SAS Visual Analytics Macros.

How to Automate the Loading of SAS IT Resource Management Data into the Public SAS LASR Analytic Server

You can automate the loading of SAS IT Resource Management data into the public SAS LASR Analytic Server. This approach uses a drop box and is an alternative to registering, staging, and loading tables. The drop box is periodically scanned by a scheduled task. The task loads any table to memory that has not already been loaded.

In general, this approach requires the following steps:

Place the SAS IT Resource Management data in a designated host folder (specified during installation), which functions as a drop box. The location of the host folder is shown on the Extended Attributes tab of the Visual Analytics Public LASR library.
Locate the AutoLoad.sas program. To do so, navigate to C:\SAS\Config\Lev1\Applications. In the folder where SAS Visual Analytics is configured, find the VisualAnalyticsAdministrator folder. For example, for SAS Visual Analytics 7.3, the AutoLoad.sas program would be here:

C:\SAS\Config\Lev1\Applications\SASVisualAnalytics7.3\VisualAnalyticsAdministrator.
Copy the AutoLoad.sas program from its configured location and revise it to point to your designated host folder.
Create a script to run the revised AutoLoad.sas program.
Schedule the script to run according to your needs.

The data that is placed in the drop box is loaded according to the schedule.

Note: The automated data loading feature is supported by the predefined Public LASR Analytic Server and the SAS Visual Analytics Public LASR library. These objects are established when SAS Visual Analytics is configured.

For more information about automatic loading of data, see the SAS Visual Analytics: Administration Guide and the SAS Visual Analytics: User's Guide.

How to Launch ITRM Report Center from the SAS Visual Analytics Environment

In SAS deployments where the SAS IT Resource Management solution and SAS Visual Analytics use the same SAS Metadata Server, you can launch ITRM Report Center from the SAS Visual Analytics Hub. To launch ITRM Report Center from the SAS Visual Analytics Hub, select Open ITRM Report Center from the drop-down list on one of the following sites on the SAS Visual Analytics Hub:

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