| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |
Contributed by Dwight Mouton, Customer Intelligence Product Management, SAS
I would consider myself a SAS User rather than an “IT” type, which adds two perspectives to my story.
First, there will be a little less detail than what my Sales Engineer friends might provide.
Second, this proves that a non-IT, though somewhat technical, SAS user can install and configure SAS 9.2 and Marketing Optimization 5.3.
Of course this install was on my laptop, so I’m not recommending that an end-user try this on a complex multi-server system. It’s best to leave that to the IT professionals and the SAS Engineers so that us SAS Users can focus on our real jobs.
That said, this write-up is hopefully useful to those who install and configure SAS for a living.
Before you get any software, be it CDs or a downloaded “Software Depot” you can set up your Users and User Groups. For SAS 9.2 and Marketing Optimization 5.3 this is a critical step. There is a lot more control over security via user groups and if certain groups are not created, Marketing Optimization will not work. Luckily for me I work with the guru’s and had it pounded into my head that I HAD to set these up. Since this was my own machine I simply put all the SAS users (myself plus the SAS created users) into a Marketing Optimization User Group. Of course you would want to get more complex and can set up several levels of user access.
Once everything was set up and I double checked my pre-installation check list, I started the installation of the application server. Since the guru’s around me had the most experience with WebLogic, that’s what I went with. This is also where I made my first error. WebLogic is installed via the CMD prompt and requires two commands. One to set the path for the install and the other to start the install. The first time through I forgot to set the path and it looked like everything was OK so I started the SAS Deployment Wizard. Of course I got through most of the server install but then it errored out. I went back and realized the error of my ways and started over.
The second time through WebLogic was more obvious in telling me something was wrong by giving me a popup window error. Going back to my checklist I realized that I hadn’t fully installed the Java components. There are two files that need to be installed. One ends in JRE and the other in JDK. These are quick installs but to make sure everything was going to work I had to uninstall the SAS components that had already completed. Lesson learned, read your instructions very carefully. This is not like putting together a child’s bicycle on Christmas morning where you can pretty much wing-it based on experience (wheels on bottom, handle bar and seat on top).
In starting over I also realized that the scheduler, LSF Platform Suite, does not install as part of the Deployment Manager. To make sure it was in place ahead of going through the configuration I decided to install it now. It installed with no issues.
NOW, I was ready to start the SAS Deployment Wizard again. This time the Server Tier install went great. I ran the diagnostics that are recommended after the installation and everything checked out. Now it was time to start the Mid Tier.
During the Mid-Tier installation I did get a lot of errors that were due to processes timing out. This should not happen on your systems as you will be going with the recommended hardware and operating systems, unlike what I’m doing since I’m on the inside of SAS and can tempt fate. In the end there was one process that just couldn’t get past the time-out issue so I skipped it so that we could deal with it manually. This is where I realized why we pushed for 64 bit operating systems. In starting WebLogic to add the “ear” file manually, it maxed out my memory usage and took about 20 minutes to start up. SAS R&D assures me that this will not be the case when I switch to my 64 bit OS, so you should be fine. Once the last “ear” was installed the Mid-Tier was complete and I could deploy the Client tier.
Almost immediately the client tier installation gave me an error in trying to install the add-in for Microsoft Office. By selecting “Retry” I was given an option to do a “manual” installation. This gave me the error that an MS Office application was still running. I ended up having to search the processes tab in the Task Manager to find it, but I found that PowerPoint was still running somehow. Stopping that process allowed the Microsoft Office Add-in to finish. Outside of that, the Client Tier completed installing without any issues.
Before clicking “Finish” be sure to click on the link that opens a document about Post Installation manual processes. This document lists out a few steps that must be completed in the SAS Management Console.
In the first step create your user IDs. Note that it says to go to the “logins” tab. This is actually the “accounts” tab in Windows NT. The last step is to give permissions to your users.
If all went well, everything will work.
In my case, my laptop unfortunately couldn’t handle all the overhead of being a three-tier system with SAS 9.2 (Base, Enterprise Guide, BI, Web Reports Studio), Marketing Optimization and having WebLogic as the Application Server. The mid-tier processes just sucked all the memory from the system and it wouldn’t work. I’ll be upgrading to a 64 bit OS soon and that should solve it. In the meantime I’m going to try another install using JBoss since it should take less resources to run. I’ll post the result on twitter.com/dwightmouton.
Good luck on your installations, and enjoy all the new features in SAS 9.2 and Marketing Optimization 5.3.
| This post was kindly contributed by Key Happenings at support.sas.com - go there to comment and to read the full post. |