SAS^® 9.4 Support for Web Application Servers and HTTP Servers

The middle tier of the SAS^® 9.4 Intelligence Platform includes a SAS Web Application Server and a SAS Web Server for use as an HTTP server. Both of these components can be installed and configured automatically with the SAS Deployment Wizard when you install the middle tier. The middle tier of the Intelligence Platform software is supported on all 9.4 platforms except for z/OS and 32-bit Windows.

For more information, see the SAS 9.4 Intelligence Platform: Middle-Tier Administration Guide on the SAS Intelligence Platform Documentation page.

SAS Web Application Server

SAS Web Application Server is a lightweight server that provides enterprise-class features for running SAS web applications. Prior to the 15 February 2022 release, the server is based on Pivotal tc Server. After that release, SAS Web Application Server is based on Apache Tomcat. By packaging the server and software that can automate server configuration tasks, SAS simplifies the demands for managing a web application server.

The server is deployed and configured specifically to provide an environment for the SAS web application and the middle-tier environment. The configuration tools packaged with the software ease the administration of the server in a SAS environment and are designed to interact with the SAS Metadata Server and other SAS software products to maintain reliability and reduce administration in the SAS deployment.

SAS Web Server

SAS Web Server is an HTTP server that is based on Apache Open Source HTTP server. It is built and packaged by SAS. 

Pre-Installation Steps for SAS 9.4 Middle Tier

Necessary steps to perform before you install SAS 9.4 software that requires a middle-tier environment. Perform these steps before you run SAS Deployment Wizard on your middle tier.

1. Create the required license directory on UNIX operating systems: /etc/opt/vmware/vfabric. Grant Write permission for this directory to the SAS installer account.
2. Open File Descriptors: SAS recommends the soft limit on number of open file descriptors be at least 20,480 on UNIX operating systems. When running SAS web applications, this increase is required to enable the opening of class files within the web applications. Contact your on-site system administrator for details about increasing this ulimit.
3. Maximum Number of Processes: SAS requires the soft limit on maximum number of processes be at least 10,240 on Linux operating systems. Contact your on-site system administrator for details about increasing this ulimit.
4. Specify Process Limit: SAS requires that DefaultTasksMax be set to 10240 for supported systemd-based GNU/Linux distributions running version 228 or greater of systemd and version 4.3 or greater of the linux kernel. Contact your on-site system administrator to determine if your system is affected and for details about increasing this system limit.