CAS Server Optional for Programming-Only Deployments

By Jack McGuire, Principal Consultant

The SAS Viya CAS (Cloud Analytic Services) Server is the high-performance, in-memory engine for data management and analytics in the SAS Viya platform.

Starting with SAS Viya 2025.12, organisations using the SAS Viya Programming offering have more flexibility in how they deploy their environment. If your use cases rely solely on programming run-time servers such as SAS Compute Server, you can choose to exclude the default CAS server during the initial deployment.

Why exclude CAS?

• If all your programming workflows can run entirely on SAS Compute Server, removing CAS simplifies your deployment.
• Removing CAS will reduce the resource requirements of the platform reducing the overall cost of the platform.

The SAS Computer server was enhanced in the 2025.02 release to enable procedures that would traditionally have run in CAS to be executed by the relevant SAS Programming run-time server. This also means that high-performance SAS Viya platform procedures and other supporting procedures are now available without a CAS server.  For further information on the enhancements to the SAS Compute server please see our previous post: https://katalyzedata.com/news/announcing-enhancements-to-the-sas-programming-run-time-servers/

Key Considerations

• This decision applies only to the initial deployment.
• If you exclude CAS initially but later decide to add it, you can do so post-deployment.
• For requirements, see Deployments with Optional CAS Server in the SAS Viya System Requirements.

Interested in knowing more? Please reach out to the Katalyze team for a free, no-obligation consultation.