I would investigate what the underlying bottleneck you are hitting on the Windows server (I/O, memory, CPU) and see if you can't address that. I don't think it is as simple as saying SAS will run faster on Linux. It depends on the hardware and what else is going on.

Alan

Alan Churchill Savian www.savian.net

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of John Seibel Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 8:02 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Linux and/or Windows Server

We are currently running one license of SAS 9.1.3 on a single-processor Windows server (2003 Standard Edition) and we are contemplating adding another SAS license. We currently have 3 programmers running SAS off of this system and it works fine for shorter interactive work. However when one or more longer running and larger SAS batch jobs are running it slows down quite a bit.

We have recently have gained access to a 10 processor Linux hub and wonder if we should add a Linux license instead of another Windows Server license. Our current thought is that we would use the Windows version to build and debug code (and do smaller analyzes - we are primarily a statistical shop), and use the Linux license for the larger/longer (multi-day) batch jobs. We are leaning in this direction as we like the Windows interface for the debugging and suspect SAS will run faster on the Linux platform for the batch jobs.

My specific questions are: 1) can SAS on Linux be run interactively in a manner similar to Windows so maybe it makes the most sense to switch to one or two Linux licenses?, and 2) do SAS jobs on Linux typically run faster than on a SAS server?

Any other insights (especially relative cost$ of 2 Windows licenses vs one Windows + one Linus) are more than welcome. We are just beginning the process so basic ideas on just what to research (I'm googling the internet in general and searching SAS-L in particular), how to test performance would also be appreciated.

Thank you for reading this long post,

John