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Due to hardware obsolescence and lack of spare or refurbished parts, software and systems developed for these older SPARC-based workstations and servers have become harder to maintain. To fill the continuous need for certain, end-of-life SPARC-based systems, Stromasys S.A. developed the Charon-SSP line of virtual machine products. The following products are software-based, virtual machine replacements for the specified native-hardware SPARC systems. A general overview of the emulated hardware families is shown below:

Charon-SSP/4M supports emulates the following virtual systemsSPARC hardware:

• Sun-4m family (for example Sun SPARCstation 20): Originally, a multiprocessor Sun-4 variant, based on the MBus processor module bus introduced in the SPARCServer 600MP series. The Sun-4m architecture later also encompassed non-MBus uniprocessor systems such as the SPARCstation 5, utilizing SPARC V8-architecture processors. Supported starting with SunOS 4.1.2 and by Solaris 2.1 to Solaris 9. SPARCServer 600MP support was dropped after Solaris 2.5.1.

Charon-SSP/4U(+) supports emulates the following virtual systemsSPARC hardware:

• Sun-4u family (for example Sun Enterprise 450): (U for UltraSPARC) – this variant introduced the 64-bit SPARC V9 processor architecture and UPA processor interconnect first used in the Sun Ultra series. Supported by 32-bit versions of Solaris starting from version 2.5.1. The first 64-bit Solaris release for Sun-4u was Solaris 7. UltraSPARC I support was dropped after Solaris 9. Solaris 10 supports Sun-4u implementations from UltraSPARC II to UltraSPARC IV.

Charon-SSP/4V(+) supports emulates the following virtual systemsSPARC hardware:

• Sun-4v family (for example SPARC T2): A variation on Sun-4u which includes hypervisor processor virtualization; introduced in the UltraSPARC T1 multicore processor. Supported Selected hardware was supported by Solaris version 10 starting from release 3/05 HW2 (some hardware will most models - including the hardware emulated by Charon-SSP - require newer versions of Solaris 10), and several Solaris 11 versions.

 For up-to-date information about supported features and versions refer to the detail sections of this guide Virtual Hardware and Guest OS Supported by Charon-SSP AWS and to the release notes of your product.

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Charon-SSP/4U+ supports the same virtual SPARC platforms as Charon-SSP/4U, and Charon-SSP/4V+ the same as Charon-SSP/4V. However, the 4U+ and 4V+ versions take advantage of Intel’s VT-x/EPT hardware assisted virtualization technology in modern Intel CPUs to offer end users better virtual CPU performance. Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+ require Intel CPUs with VT-x/EPT capability and must be installed on a dedicated Intel-based host. Running these product variants in a VM is not supported.

 Unless otherwise mentioned, the terms Charon-SSP/4U and Charon-SSP/4V also include Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+.