SAS Institute Selects NetApp Astra

Blog written on March 17, 2023 by Rajeev Chawla, senior director of product management in the NetApp’s Cloud Data Services BU. Prior to NetApp, he was at VMware where he led the integration of CloudVelox technology into HCX. He joined VMware via the acquisition of CloudVelox where he was co-founder and chief product officer. He brings over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an R&D leader. He is a holder of 20 US patents and several awards. He received a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology.

SAS Institute, Inc., an analytics firm, chose NetApp Astra to provide a solution for its SAS Viya offerings deployed as a hosted managed service in the SAS cloud on Azure.

Viya is SAS next gen cloud-native data analytics platform that helps enterprises speed up their data analysis capabilities. Although organizations that invest in Viya see improvements in arriving at data-driven, insightful decisions, they also require Viya in the SAS Cloud on Azure to be disaster tolerant.

The SAS Cloud delivers the value of SAS software in a managed environment and runs on Azure. SAS hosted managed services in its cloud provide an outsourced enterprise solution to help organizations manage data and analytic assets for its users. Delivered through the SAS Cloud, there is zero hardware footprint for customers to manage. SAS provides hosting expertise to build, update, and support the environment, coupled with expertise to answer the most difficult questions.

Viya: Large enterprises run complex stateful applications on Kubernetes
Viya is a Kubernetes application that is implemented with thousands of Kubernetes resources, including 3rd party databases, messaging, and logging. SAS uses Azure NetApp Files for Viya’s persistent storage needs to deliver the performance that Viya workloads require.

Gone are the days of providing home-grown DR and protection for stateful AI and ML, big data, and database workloads. Enter data protection and DR for an enterprise analytics platform, Viya, with NetApp Astra Control. Astra Control makes analytics applications on Viya more dependable, making business-critical analytics application environment and data recoverable. Specifically, the DR functionality optimizes RTO and RPO windows, increasing the resilience of the Viya platform.

According to Mike Morris, VP (IaaS), SAS: “Solving the SAS DR challenge for solutions deployed as a Hosted Managed Service in the SAS Cloud on Microsoft Azure improved the Viya analytics platform industry-leading adoption. SAS partnered with the NetApp Astra team to deliver robust DR capabilities that exceed our RPO/RTO targets. Our analytics platform benefits from NetApp’s proven data management technology, enabling efficient high-performance backups, replication, and recovery.“

Viya DR: Astra Control and Azure NetApp Files deliver global DR solution
SAS selected Astra Control as its cloud-native data protection services solution. The DR capabilities of Astra Control stood out from competitors’ offerings. Specifically, the tight integration of Astra Control and Azure NetApp Files that drives performance and low latency to the end user was critical to their decision. The integration between Astra Control and Azure NetApp Files also provides automated storage provisioning and instantaneous NetApp Snapshot copies. NetApp plans to continue improving Astra Control DR technology to meet Viya’s growing cloud-native DR service needs.

Eric Han, VP, product management, cloud, NetApp, said: “We are thrilled that SAS has selected NetApp Astra for Viya’s application data protection needs, thanks to the tight integration of Astra with Microsoft Azure NetApp Files. We collaborated with the SAS team to build this solution with their needs in mind, simplifying Kubernetes data management while providing comprehensive DR capabilities.“

Casey McGee, VP of global ISV sales, Microsoft said: “It’s great to see Microsoft’s collaboration with SAS continue to drive innovation. Together, we’re offering our joint customers a powerful DR solution with NetApp Astra that will ensure analytics applications in the SAS Cloud on Microsoft Azure are more dependable and critical data is quickly recoverable.