Configuration Properties: Concepts

What Is SAS Viya Configuration?

From SAS Environment Manager, you can manage the configuration needs of the various SAS Viya services.

Configuration Components

A service’s configuration consists of the following components:

configuration definition: A schema that describes a type of configuration. You create configuration instances from a configuration definition. Some examples of configuration definitions are: jvm, spring, and sas.reportdata.
Note: Configuration definitions that apply to one or a small set of services are referred to as service configuration definitions. System configuration definitions can apply to any service.
configuration instance: A collection of name-value pairs (a property) that a service uses. (These name-value pairs can sometimes be nested.)
Note: Certain configuration instances are required for a service to be able to run. See Review Default Configuration Values.

How Configuration Definitions and Instances Are Displayed

The Configuration window in SAS Environment Manager contains three views: Basic services, All services, and Definitions.

Configuration Views in SAS Environment Manager

The All services view lists all SAS Viya services that are currently deployed and those that an administrator has not manually stopped. A SAS Viya service can be affected by one or more configuration instances. Most services have a one-to-one relationship with a configuration instance. However, some services are associated with more than one configuration instance. It is important to note that some services do not have any configuration instances, but you can specify configuration properties for any of these services.

The Definitions view lists all the SAS Viya configuration definitions.

The Basic services view contains those services with configuration properties for which SAS cannot create a reasonable default (for example, the machine name for your SMTP service). As an advanced topic, these configuration properties can be specified in an initial deployment using sitedefault.yml. For more information, see Automate Configuration Properties during Deployment (Ansible).

For a tenant within a multi-tenant environment, the services in the Basic services view can seem to be incomplete configuration instances (indicated by a half-filled red circle next to the configuration instance name). For security purposes, tenants cannot see configuration values that apply to other tenants. This means that the tenant administrator sees incomplete red icons, because administrators are not allowed to see a configuration for an item that does not apply to them. For more information, see Manage Tenants in SAS Viya Administration: Multi-tenancy.

What Services Must Be Restarted?

On a non-cloud platform, such as native Linux, whenever a change is made to a Java virtual machine (JVM) configuration property (a Java option), any services that rely on that property must be restarted. For information about how to restart one or more services, see General Servers and Services: Operate (Linux) in SAS Viya Administration: General Servers and Services.

If you change any properties that affect the cache, all services must be restarted in order for the change to take effect.

If you change configuration property values for any of the following services, you must restart the service:

SAS Cache Locator
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (or an equivalent distribution) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.x:
  sudo systemctl restart sas-viya-cachelocator-default
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x (or an equivalent distribution):
  sudo service sas-viya-cachelocator-default restart
SAS Cache Server
Note: If SAS Cache Server is restarted, a full restart is also required.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (or an equivalent distribution) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.x:
  sudo systemctl restart sas-viya-cacheserver-default
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x (or an equivalent distribution):
  sudo service sas-viya-cacheserver-default restart
SAS Configuration Server (Consul)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (or an equivalent distribution) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.x:
  sudo systemctl restart sas-viya-consul-default
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x (or an equivalent distribution):
  sudo service sas-viya-consul-default restart
SAS Message Broker (RabbitMQ)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (or an equivalent distribution) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.x:
  sudo systemctl restart sas-viya-rabbitmq-server-default
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x (or an equivalent distribution):
  sudo service sas-viya-rabbitmq-server-default restart
SAS Infrastructure Data Server (PostgreSQL)
For information, see Operate a Cluster (Linux) in SAS Viya Administration: Infrastructure Servers.

Note: You must be signed in to the machine where these services reside with sudo privileges to run these commands.

How SAS Viya Configuration Works

Spring-Based Microservices

For SAS Viya Spring-based microservices, property changes are made in SAS Environment Manager and stored in SAS Configuration Server. SAS Viya triggers a refresh, and the new property values are applied to the service. In most situations, no restart of the service is required.

How Configuration Properties Are Updated (Spring-Based Services)

Non-Spring-Based Servers

For SAS Viya, non-Spring-based servers, property changes are made in SAS Environment Manager and stored in SAS Configuration Server. A tool, such as the consul-template daemon, extracts the configuration change from SAS Configuration Server and updates the appropriate service configuration file. Some servers, such as SAS Infrastructure Data Server, require you to manually restart them for their configuration changes to take effect.

How Configuration Properties Are Updated (Non-Spring-Based Servers)

Bulk Loading of Configuration Values (sitedefault.yml)

You can deploy SAS Viya with configuration values that are customized for your site by running your Ansible playbook with sitedefault.yml. When sitedefault.yml is present in the playbook roles/consul/files directory, Ansible copies it to the machines that contain the SAS Configuration Server (Consul). When the configuration server starts, the watch script invokes the sas-bootstrap-config CLI to bulk load the key-value pairs that are specified in sitedefault.yml.

For more information, see Automate Configuration Properties during Deployment (Ansible).

Note: The sas-bootstrap-config CLI uses a check and set policy. If a property currently exists in the configuration server, the CLI does not update the property. Therefore, it is extremely important that the initial values applied with sitedefault.yml are correct. After you specify a value with sitedefault.yml, you cannot re-run sitedefault.yml to change that value. You can re-run sitedefault.yml only to specify properties that have not already been specified. To change properties specified with sitedefault.yml, you must use the sas-bootstrap-config CLI directly, or use another administration interface, such as SAS Environment Manager.

How Configuration Properties Are Updated (Non-Spring-Based Services)

Last updated: May 14, 2025