Is SAS Viya running on Red Hat OpenShift Service for AWS?

SAS Viya Running on Red Hat OpenShift Service for AWS

In this blog, we will learn whether SAS Viya is running on Red Hat OpenShift Service for AWS.

This guide delivers practical, step-by-step technical insights for deploying the SAS Viya platform on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA), along with a reference architecture. For broader topics such as security, infrastructure management, and storage planning, you can also refer to earlier related resources.

Through collaboration between SAS and Red Hat, a unified and flexible deployment approach has been established. SAS Viya can now run on a wide range of x86_64 environments that support OpenShift. These include both managed and self-managed setups across on-premises and cloud platforms such as bare metal, VMware, Azure, AWS, and ROSA.

For detailed specifications and updates, refer to the official SAS documentation and system requirement guides. Compatibility between SAS Viya and OpenShift versions should always be verified. For example, SAS Viya 2026.01 supports OpenShift versions 4.18 through 4.20, aligning closely with OpenShift release cycles.

Understanding ROSA

Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) is a fully managed Kubernetes platform designed to simplify application deployment and operations within AWS. It enables organizations to focus on innovation while reducing infrastructure management overhead.

By running SAS Viya on ROSA, users benefit from:

A managed cloud-native platform jointly operated by Red Hat and AWS
Faster deployment and scalability
Reduced operational complexity

ROSA is available directly through the AWS console with flexible, usage-based pricing models. It supports both hourly and annual billing, along with discounted reserved pricing options.

There are two deployment models:

ROSA Classic
ROSA with Hosted Control Planes (HCP)

The HCP model improves efficiency by hosting the control plane in a Red Hat-managed AWS account, reducing costs and accelerating cluster provisioning.

Overview of the SAS Viya Platform

SAS Viya is a cloud-native platform designed for AI, analytics, and data management. Rather than being a single tool, it is a collection of integrated services that support the full analytics lifecycle.

Key characteristics include:

Fully containerized architecture
Kubernetes-based deployment
CI/CD-enabled operations
Collaboration across roles—from data scientists to business leaders

Technically, SAS Viya is deployed within a single Kubernetes namespace and can run either on dedicated infrastructure or shared clusters. Deployment can be performed manually or automated using SAS-provided operators.

Reference Architecture: SAS Viya on ROSA

To maximize scalability and performance, SAS Viya workloads are divided into categories and assigned to specific node groups (machine pools). This ensures optimal resource allocation for each workload type.

Recommended Workload Segmentation:

CAS (Cloud Analytics Services) – High-performance analytics
Compute Services – Data processing workloads
Stateless Services – Microservices and web applications
Stateful Services – Core infrastructure components
Default Pool – General-purpose workloads

Using machine pools with node labels and taints helps enforce proper workload placement and improves performance and resource utilization.

Supporting AWS Services

Several AWS-native services are typically integrated:

Database

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is commonly used to store SAS metadata. As a managed service, it simplifies tasks such as scaling, backups, and high availability.

Container Registry

Amazon ECR is often used to host SAS container images before deployment. Many organizations prefer using a local registry for:

Security scanning
Reduced latency
Version control across environments

Storage

Amazon EBS for block storage (RWO)
Amazon EFS for shared storage (RWX)

These services meet the storage needs of SAS workloads, including high-performance requirements for caching and temporary data.

Deployment Workflow

The deployment process involves setting up both ROSA and SAS Viya.

ROSA Setup

Prerequisites:

Link AWS and Red Hat accounts
Install AWS CLI and ROSA CLI
Configure networking (VPC)
Create IAM roles and OIDC configuration

Cluster Deployment:

Use ROSA CLI or web console
Select ROSA with HCP for optimized performance

Post-Deployment Tasks:

Create additional machine pools
Enable EFS CSI driver
Configure RDS and ECR
Apply required security policies and operators

SAS Viya Deployment

After obtaining a license, SAS provides deployment templates (YAML files) that must be customized.

Key Steps:

(Optional) Mirror container images to ECR
Download deployment assets
Prepare a build environment
Create a new OpenShift project
Customize deployment using `kustomize.`

Important Configurations:

TLS certificates
Storage classes (EBS/EFS)
PostgreSQL database (recommended: external via RDS)
Authentication (e.g., LDAP)
Security settings (fsGroup, SCCs)

Once configured, the final deployment manifest (`site.yaml`) is applied to the cluster using Kubernetes commands.

Conclusion

Deploying SAS Viya on ROSA provides a scalable, cloud-native analytics platform backed by managed services from AWS and Red Hat. By combining Kubernetes orchestration with flexible infrastructure and automation tools, organizations can streamline analytics operations while maintaining performance, security, and scalability.