Trying to sort a very large dataset using PROC SORT and it is throwing unusual error

Question

Running this piece of code on LINUX and dataset is on MAINFRAME and has 60000000+ obs...

proc sort data=test_history force;
by acct score;
run;

I'm getting this following error...

NOTE: There were 67397829 observations read from the data set test_HISTORY.
435 ERROR: Failure while merging sorted runs from utility file 1 to final output.
436 ERROR: Failure encountered during external sort.
437 ERROR: Attempt to communicate with server AMDAHL refused by server.  The current request failed.
438 NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
439 NOTE: SAS set option OBS=0 and will continue to check statements. This might cause NOTE: No observations in data set.
440 WARNING: The data set test_HISTORY may be incomplete.  When this step was stopped there were 20002488 observations and 148
441          variables.
442 ERROR: The connection to server AMDAHL has been lost.  The current request failed.  This error may reoccur on subsequent requests.

Answer 1

Refer to this SUGI paper

Several options are indicated to reduce the probability of getting an error when proc sorting a large dataset in the mainframe environment. I have pasted one option below.

This code limits the number of sort work areas in the SAS code...use SOTWKNO option either as a global option or as a PROC SORT option. This option determines the maximum number of sort work areas that PROC SORT is allowed to use.

options SORTWKNO=3;
proc sort test_history SORTWKNO=5;
by acct score;
run;