Using SAS on USC's Compute Facilities
SAS is installed on the Research Compute Facility (RCF), Basic Compute Facility (BCF), and Student Compute Facility (SCF) servers. Users must have an account on one of these compute facilities in order to use SAS or any of the other statistics packages with their UNIX accounts.
SAS is also available in some departmental computer labs and on computers in some USC libraries, including the library at the USC Marshall School of Business, Norris Medical Library on the Health Sciences campus and others. These labs are not maintained by ITS.
ITS automatically creates UNIX accounts for faculty, staff, and current students. For more information on accounts, including how to activate your account, go to www.usc.edu/its/accounts/.
- Faculty and staff members have access to the Basic Compute Facility on the host mizar.usc.edu.
- Students have access to the Student Compute Facility on the hosts aludra.usc.edu and nunki.usc.edu.
- Faculty and staff members at the Health Sciences Campus have access to the host hsc.usc.edu.
- Faculty and staff members who require advanced computing power can request access to the High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) on the Research Computing Facility host almaak.usc.edu.
Moving your data to your UNIX account
Before you can use your data in SAS on UNIX, you must first move it to your UNIX account. Depending on whether you are a faculty or staff member, student, or faculty or staff member at the Health Sciences Campus, you will need to log into mizar.usc.edu, aludra.usc.edu, or hsc.usc.edu respectively. If you are using an HPCC account, you will need to log into almaak.usc.edu. For more information about the Secure File Transfer Programs (SFTP) that you will need to use to transfer your data, see the Secure File Transfer (SFTP and SCP) Overview page.
Setting up SAS on your UNIX account
You can access SAS on UNIX from computers running both the Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
For instructions on how to access SAS on UNIX from a Windows computer, please see the
How to Run SAS on UNIX (Win) documentation.
For instructions on how to access SAS on UNIX from a Mac computer, please see the
How to Run SAS on UNIX (Mac) documentation.
Please note, SAS software cannot be installed directly on Macintosh computers. Mac users will need to use the UNIX version of the software.
Basic UNIX concepts
ITS also has documentation that explains the basic concepts you will need to understand, access, and use SAS on UNIX. See our UNIX help pages for more information.
Getting Help
For more information, call the ITS Customer Support Center at 213-740-5555, visit the walk-in support center in the Leavey Library Lower Commons, or send an email to consult@usc.edu.
Last updated:
June 01, 2011