I’ve been doing a few SAS® platform installations lately and I noticed in the documentation some neat enhancements in SAS 9.3 M2:
- The SAS Download Manager, in addition to downloading a SAS software depot for your order, also downloads specially selected hotfixes for the products in that depot.
- The SAS Deployment Wizard will then apply those downloaded hotfixes during installations from that depot (so you don’t have to manually apply them post-deployment).
- The SAS Deployment Wizard also provides the ability to refresh that depot by downloading additional, more recent, hotfixes. This can be useful if the installation/deployment is being done a little while after the depot was initially downloaded.
You can find a summary of these enhancements in the What’s New in Installation and Configuration for the SAS 9.3 Intelligence Platform section of the SAS® 9.3 Intelligence Platform: Installation and Configuration Guide.
Here’s an example of using the SAS Deployment Wizard to refresh a depot. First step is to select the “Manage this SAS Software Depot” action:
Next select the “Retrieve Hot Fixes” action:
If there are no additional & appropriate hotfixes available, that have not already been downloaded, you’ll see the following message:
Otherwise, it will start downloading any more recent hotfixes that are not already in the depot:
Once complete, it will indicate how many additional hotfixes were downloaded and how long it took:
I think this is a great enhancement as it means any essential hotfixes, present in the depot, will be automatically applied during (actually between) installation and deployment. I don’t have to manually review, download and apply those important hotfixes. As a bonus, since they get applied after installation and before deployment, the SAS web applications will be built with the hotfixes already applied (so they don’t have to be manually rebuilt – at least not for the initial deployment).
Something that did catch my eye whilst reading the documentation was that it doesn’t download all hotfixes, just a specially selected subset. Here’s the relevant quote from the SAS® Deployment Wizard and SAS® Deployment Manager 9.3: User’s Guide
The hot fixes that are included in your initial order are those that SAS feels can be safely applied with your installation. There may be more hot fixes that should only be applied after installation is complete, or after using the software for a while, you may want to determine what new hot fixes are available for your software.
SAS Technical Support has created an application, the SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download and Deployment Tool to evaluate your software deployment and generate a report that includes information and links to hot fixes that are available for your software. The SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download and Deployment Tool is available at http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/SASHFADD.html.
So the HFADD tool is still useful for identifying and downloading post-deployment hotfixes, and perhaps any favourite hotfixes which are not in the special set the SAS Deployment Wizard can download into the depot. I can’t help wondering if perhaps one day the HFADD functionality might be rolled into the SAS Deployment Manager itself? That would be a neat enhancement I think. It’d also be nice to be able to interactively select extra hotfixes for the SAS Deployment Wizard to download into the depot.
You can find more information on these SAS 9.3 M2 enhancements in the SAS® Deployment Wizard and SAS® Deployment Manager 9.3: User’s Guide.
Hi Paul,
Interesting options you address.
We just installed the 9.3 version of SAS, in a unix/windows environment, and in which we carefully need to make sure that versions of the server components match those of the PC-clients vice versa.
Can you tell a bit more on how your explanation relates to client hotfixes. We have an environment with Enterprise Guide, Miner and Customer Intelligence Studio, and Data Integration studio.
Regards,
Ton
Hi Ton,
The refresh of the depot pulls a selection of the latest hotfixes down into the depot. This seems to include some of the client hotfixes too. I just refreshed a 9.3 M2 depot’s hotfixes and can see some SAS Integration Technologies Client, SAS Data Integration Studio and SAS Management Console hotfixes included (but no SAS Enterprise Guide ones). Not all of the client (or server) hotfixes get pulled down, just those ones specially selected by SAS. I assume the selection is based on severity of issue fixed and it’s importance for install/deploy. If someone from SAS Institute is reading this perhaps they could provide more insight?
Since the depot’s hotfixes will only be used during the initial installation there is also a need sometimes to update existing installations with more recent hotfixes post-installation. This is where the HFADD tool is used. It analyses an installation, comparing the installed software & hotfixes with the latest available from SAS and generates a report of outstanding hotfixes that could be installed. You can then review this report to determine which ones are important to you. I just ran this on a Windows client and saw a SAS Enterprise Guide hotfix that I could install.
It’s important to read the analysis because occasionally hotfixes require manual steps too. In the past I remember some client hotfixes also had dependencies on server hotfixes having been applied. I would expect the hotfix installation instructions (linked in the analysis) to provide this information where required.
Cheers
Paul
Hello Paul,
very interesting Post about keeping your Depot up – to – date.
Do you know about doing this with a configuration behind a web proxy, behind a firewall?
With the SAS Download Manager, there is the ability to give a proxy and port for it.
I’ve looked a the SAS Deployment Manager, but i found no Options.
Best regards,
Andreas
Hi Andreas,
Thanks for your feedback and question. I don’t know of any proxy support options for SAS Deployment Manager. I haven’t needed them myself so haven’t looked into it in depth. I did a quick search for info this morning but could not find anything, so it’s probably a good question for SAS Tech Support.
As an alternative you could also look at using the SAS Hot Fix Analysis, Download and Deployment Tool (HFADD) http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/SASHFADD.html In my 2011 post at https://platformadmin.com/blogs/paul/2011/01/sas92hfadd-viewregistry-windows-server-2008-r2/ there are some comments about using it with a proxy server including a link to an 2011 post by Michael Dixon: Using SAS92HFADD behind a “tough” firewall using CURL at http://scorpiosoftware.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/using-sas92hfadd-behind-tough-firewall.html
Given that post and the comments are several years old now, it would be worth contacting SAS Tech Support for more up to date information, and also posting a question on communities.sas.com to see what others in a proxied environment do these days.
Cheers
Paul
Hello Paul,
Is there is a way we can identify list of associate for given order. Thanks for your help.
Thanks,
Ravi Saikam
What do you mean by “list of associate” Ravi?