Managing Desktops

Desktops are SAS Analytics Pro container instances managed by the extension. Each desktop has its own configuration, volumes, and lifecycle.

Creating a Desktop

1. Navigate to Desktops → click New Desktop
2. Complete the tabbed form:
   • Desktop — name, credentials, order, cadence, version
   • Settings — port configuration, web access options
   • Mounts — local directories and network shares (available after first save)
3. Click Create

Each desktop must have a unique name. The name is used to generate Docker volume names and container names.

Starting and Stopping

• Start — pulls the image (if needed), provisions license and certificates, creates volumes, and starts the container
• Stop — stops and removes the container (volumes are preserved)

Start and stop operations run asynchronously on the backend, so they survive UI navigation. The desktop card shows real-time status updates during operations.

Desktop Fleet View

The Home page shows a Desktop Fleet card with:

• Live Docker stats (CPU and memory usage) for running desktops
• Start/stop controls per desktop
• Session time remaining (for time-limited tiers)
• Aggregated CPU and memory progress bars across all running containers

Click View Stats on a desktop row to open Docker Desktop's built-in container stats view.

Desktop Cards

Each desktop is shown as a card (or list row) with:

• Status bar — coloured left border indicating state (grey=stopped, blue=loading, green=running, red=error)
• License expiry — shows expiry date with colour coding (red=expired, orange=expiring within 30 days). Click the chip to check for a newer license from SAS.
• Image status — icon indicates whether the container image is available locally:
  • ☁️ Cloud Done — image is ready
  • ⬇️ Cloud Download — image needs to be pulled (click to pull without starting)
  • 🔵 Update Available — a newer version exists (click to pull the update)
• Action icons — Start/Stop, Open Browser, Settings, Delete, Credentials, Image, Stats, Terminal, Logs

Settings

The Settings tab configures container behaviour. All settings are grouped into collapsible sections.

Services and Ports

Controls which services are exposed from the container:

Service	Default Port	Description	Tier Required
HTTP	8080	SAS Studio and VS Code web access (port 80 inside container)	Any
HTTPS	—	Secure web access (port 443 inside container)	Any
SSH	2222	SSH access to the container	Professional+
SAS Enterprise Guide (IOM)	8591	SAS IOM protocol for Enterprise Guide 8.6	Professional+
VS Code Desktop (Compute Server)	8592	REST API for VS Code SAS Extension	Professional+

Web Access

Tier required: Professional+ to toggle (enabled by default for all tiers)

The Enable Web Access toggle controls the Apache httpd reverse proxy inside the container. When enabled (the default), SAS Studio and VS Code are accessible via the browser at the configured HTTP/HTTPS ports.

When disabled:

• SAS Studio and VS Code are not accessible via the browser
• Port fields are hidden
• The desktop card links to a container terminal instead of SAS Studio

Tip

Disable web access if you only need SSH or IOM connectivity and want to reduce the container's attack surface.

SSH Access

Tier required: Professional+

The Enable SSH Access toggle starts an SSH daemon inside the container. When enabled, you can connect via any SSH client:

ssh -p 2222 sasdemo@localhost

The default SSH port is 2222 (mapped to container port 22). Change it if you have conflicts with other desktops.

External Application Ports

Tier required: Professional+

When enabled, these ports allow external desktop applications to connect to the SAS container:

• SAS Enterprise Guide (IOM port 8591) — Windows only. Requires SAS Integration Technologies Client for Windows and SAS Providers for OLE DB installed on the client machine.
• VS Code Desktop (Compute Server port 8592) — Cross-platform. Requires the SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code. Configure a connection profile in VS Code settings.json:

"SAS.connectionProfiles": {
    "activeProfile": "SAS Analytics Pro",
    "profiles": {
        "SAS Analytics Pro": {
            "endpoint": "http://localhost:8592",
            "serverId": "0001",
            "connectionType": "rest",
            "reconnect": true
        }
    }
}

Note

The Compute Server connection is marked as experimental by SAS.

Host ports auto-increment to avoid conflicts when multiple desktops are configured.

Port Conflicts

The extension warns you on save if a port is already used by another desktop. At start time, the backend validates that no two services on the same desktop share a port — if they do, the start operation fails with a descriptive error.

User Configuration

Tier required: Any

The User section controls how the SAS container manages user accounts. There are three modes available:

Default (sasdemo)

The container creates the standard sasdemo demo user with:

• UID 1003, GID 1001
• Home directory /data
• Auto-generated password (persisted in /data/authinfo.txt)

No configuration needed — this is the default for new desktops.

Rename Demo User

Renames the built-in demo user account. The container still creates a single user with UID 1003, but with your chosen name instead of sasdemo.

Field	Description	Required
Demo User Name	Name for the demo account (e.g. analyst)	Yes

This sets the SAS_DEMO_USER environment variable. The user is otherwise identical to the default sasdemo account (same UID, home directory, and auto-generated password).

Custom User (Advanced)

Creates a completely separate Linux user account. The standard sasdemo user is not created in this mode.

Field	Description	Required	Default
Username	Linux username for the custom account	Yes	—
Password	Password for the custom account	Yes	—
User UID	Linux UID for the custom user	No	1004

Warning

Custom User mode replaces the demo user entirely. The container will not create sasdemo — only your specified custom user will exist. The SAS_USERNAME, SAS_USERPASSWORD, and SAS_USERUID environment variables are passed to the container, and RUN_MODE is set to suppress demo user creation.

Tip

Leave User UID blank unless you need a specific UID for file permission compatibility with mounted volumes. The default (1004) avoids conflicts with the system UID range.

Debugging

Tier required: Any

Diagnostic settings for troubleshooting SAS issues:

Setting	Description	Default
Enable SAS Debug	Enables verbose SAS diagnostic output	Off
Write Logs to Disk	Persists SAS logs to the data volume	Off
Compute Log Format	Format for compute server logs (text, json, trace)	text

SAS Configuration

Tier required: Any

Setting	Description	Default
Enable SAS Lockdown	Restricts SAS program access to approved directories only	On

When lockdown is enabled, SAS programs can only access directories that are explicitly allowlisted. This is a security feature — mounted directories are not accessible to SAS code unless added to the lockdown path list.

Lockdown Paths

Tier required: Professional+ (to manage paths)

Manage which directories SAS programs can access when lockdown is enabled:

• Click Add to add an absolute path (e.g. /data, /mnt/host)
• Click the × on a path chip to remove it
• The extension auto-suggests paths from your configured mounts and auto-mount location

Warning

If you mount a directory but don't add it to the lockdown paths, SAS programs will get "Physical file is not accessible" errors when trying to read or write files there.

Resources

Tier required: Any

Limit container resource consumption:

Setting	Description	Example
CPU Limit	Maximum CPU cores the container can use	4.0
Memory Limit	Maximum RAM the container can use	8g, 512m

Leave blank for no limit (container uses all available resources).

Container

Tier required: Any

Setting	Description	Default
Hostname	Container hostname visible inside SAS	sas-analytics-pro
Auto-remove container on stop	Remove the container when stopped (volumes preserved)	On

Tip

Disable auto-remove if you need to inspect container logs after stopping. The container will remain in a stopped state until manually removed or the desktop is started again.

SAS Studio Customisations

Tier required: Professional+ (requires Web Access enabled)

Configure SAS Studio behaviour with 17 settings across 5 categories:

General

Setting	Description	Default
Allow Get Record Count	Allow SAS Studio to retrieve record counts for datasets	On
Use Sort Key Function	Enable the sort key function in SAS Studio	On
Auto-complete Libraries	Enable auto-completion for library names	On
Auto-complete Tables	Enable auto-completion for table names	On
Allow Download	Allow users to download files from SAS Studio	On
Allow Upload	Allow users to upload files to SAS Studio	On
Variable Name Validation	Set the validation level for SAS variable names	ANY

File Navigation

Setting	Description	Default
File Navigation Root	Set the root directory for file navigation (USER, CUSTOM, SASROOT)	USER
Custom Root Path	Custom root path when File Navigation Root is set to CUSTOM	—
Studio Data Parent Directory	Parent directory for SAS Studio data files	—

Git

Setting	Description	Default
Allow Git	Enable Git integration in SAS Studio	On
Allow Git Password	Allow password authentication for Git operations	On

Performance

Setting	Description	Default
Long Polling Hold Time (seconds)	Time in seconds to hold long polling requests	30
Max Upload Size (bytes)	Maximum file upload size in bytes	10485760
Large Table Rows	Number of rows that defines a large table	50000
Native Engines	Specify native SAS engines to use	—

Display

Setting	Description	Default
Server Display Name	Custom display name for the SAS server (max 20 characters)	SAS Analytics Pro

Only non-default values are stored. Click Reset to Defaults to clear all customisations.

Volumes

Each desktop creates isolated named volumes:

Volume	Purpose
{name}-data	SAS workspace data
{name}-sasinside	License files and configuration
{name}-code-server	VS Code extension data

Volumes persist across container restarts. Deleting a desktop stops the container and removes it, but volumes are preserved unless manually removed.

Deleting a Desktop

Deleting a desktop:

1. Stops the running container (if any)
2. Removes the container
3. Deletes the desktop configuration from the database

Warning

Desktop deletion does not remove Docker volumes. To reclaim disk space, remove volumes manually:

docker volume rm {name}-data {name}-sasinside {name}-code-server