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Supported software platforms

• Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version (please note that only R2 revision is supported) ¹⁾

• Windows 11 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version

• Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1) Standard and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version (please note that only R2 revision is supported) ¹⁾

• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate (SP1) Editions, 64-bit version ¹⁾

• Windows 8.1 Professional Edition, 64-bit version ¹⁾

• VMware ESXi 5.5 and 6.x up to 68.7 0 (requires a supported Windows operating system on top of a ESXi virtual machine)

• Microsoft Hyper-V (requires a supported Windows operating system on top of a Hyper-V virtual machine)

¹⁾ Charon can be installed and will run, but Microsoft Windows versions are EOL and are not recommended for deployment.

Hosting hardware requirements and configuration recommendations

• CPU requirements:

  • The number of available x86/x64 compatible (Intel or AMD) CPU cores in the hosting server should be at least 150% of the number of emulated CPU cores.

  • The recommended number of available (Intel or AMD) CPU cores in the hosting server is twice the number of emulated CPU cores.

  • Intel Xeon E-series v3 and above with a CPU clock frequency from 3GHz; to achieve the best performance use the latest Intel Xeon CPUs from the Scalable Processors family.

• Memory requirements:

  • DDR4 RAM 2133 MHz and above is recommended for optimal Charon performance.

  • The minimum host memory size depends on the amount of emulated AXP memory and on the number of Charon instances running on one host. The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated) per Charon-AXP instance.

• Mid range and high end RAID controllers with at least 1GB cache with write-back enabled and battery backup option is recommended.
  (Using low-end RAID controllers may cause significant performance degradation and Charon-AXP crash. RAID5 and similar configurations are not recommended.)

• Intel HT (Hyper-Threading Technology) should be disabled on the hosting server.

• The hosting server should always run at full speed. Power management, USB power saving management and the screen saver should be disabled on the hosting server.

• Windows UAC should be disabled.

• The Port Group Security Tab containing the Charon network adapter(s) must be set to Promiscuous mode, MAC Address Change and Forged Transmit=Accept.

New functionality

• Feature Request: incoming connection requests are by default filtered for virtual serial lines and then allowed only for the localhost. This is to avoid security scanners that can block the port, OPA0 console mainly. To allow other hosts to connect to the virtual line, add the "set OPA0 access_control = disable" line in the configuration file (ID#5707)

  •  This requires to use the new syntax to define OPA0. Please read the user's guide "Console" chapter.

Problems fixed

• Log rotation now correctly reports ACTUAL license details in log header: it takes care of license change (ID#5720 - Support Case 00033462)

• Installation wizard has stopped working (ID#5710 - Support Case 00033148)

• Domain user cannot install charon products: now a popup window is displayed to ask if the user wants to continue (ID#5718 - Support Case 00033459)

• Driver Signature is not recognized (ID#5711)

• Immediate termination of emulator without grace period on license loss for both production and backup licenses. Related to HASP error 84 / HASP_SHARING_VIOLATION (ID#5717 - Support Case 00033460)Support for Windows 11, Windows Server 2022

Problems fixed

Build 210-08

• Fix emulation of DIGI AccelePort multiplexors and host PCI bridges of various AXP chipsets so that DIGIDRIVER_7 can correctly recognize and initialize the PBXDA board running on OpenVMS 7.1 (ID#5787).

• Fix Network Control Center (NCC, NetDiag utility) to correctly obtain names of host network interfaces. The problem was observed on Windows 10 (ID#5789).

Build 210-07

• Updated End User License Agreement (EULA) text (ID#5782).

Build 210-06

• New End User License Agreement (EULA) text (ID#5782).

Build 210-05

• Add logging an error message indicating syntax error in storage container specification. Previously, such errors were quietly igored or the affected devices were set to offline (ID#5766).

• Cosmetic change to Charon Installation Utility (InstallShell) to correct message text: display Pre-4.8 version is installed instead of Old version is installed (ID#5768).

• Wrong version (6.80) of Microsoft NETVMINI driver was included in product kits (ID#5769, IE#5771). Replaced with version 6.30. Fixed product packaging.

• Fix EW network boot (MOP) of virtual AlphaServer 800 (ID#5773).

Build 210-04

• The hasp_view utility has been fixed to correctly report software licenses in case of no hardware dongles are available (ID#5759).

Build 210-03

• Charon Installation Utility (InstallShell) has been improved to better handle de-installing old versions of products (ID#5752).

• Fixes to products and utilities so that to correctly differentiate Windows 10 and Windows 11, and Windows Server 2016, 2019 and 2022 (ID#5753).

Build 210-02

• A fix has been provided so that log flush period is correctly maintained during initial license acquisition. With this fix, a failure to acquire license at startup is reported with (periodic) log flush rather than on emulator exit due to missing license (ID#5747).

Build 210-01

• Installation kit now brings a copy of Microsoft NETVMINI drivers, which help to organize Virtual Ethernet link between host and/or Charon Virtual Machine(s). Driver is copyed to local disk drive, but is not installed automatically. Provided AS IS, without any warranty (ID#5724).

Build 210-00

• Charon VM Manager now recognizes disabled services (Virtual Machines), designates them with special icon and prevents attempts of starting them displaying a popup window rather than error message (ID#5687).

• Installation kit now contains correctly signed PCI PassThrough drivers, which eliminates errors Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers...(Code 52) while installing Charon PCI PassThrough driver (ID#5711).

• The processing of the following HASP licensing errors was changed such that the emulator will no longer terminate immediately but instead observe the grace period (ID#5717):
  • HASP_SHARING_VIOLATION (HASP runtimer error code 84)
  • HASP_DEVICE_ERR (HASP runtime error code 43)
  • HASP_SCOPE_RESULTS_EMPTY (HASP runtime error code 50)
• Charon VM Manager now does not ask for confirmation on Exit (ID#5730).
• Default identification of FC attached virtual disks ($1$DGAxxx drives attached through KGPSA) has been changed to "DEC HSG80" following the hardware original (ID#5731).
• Fix mkdskcmd utility to avoid reporting negative virtual disk size (ID#5735).

• Fix Charon Installation Utility (InstallShall) to correctly remove shortcuts from Programs/StartUp menu on product de-installation (ID#5736).

• Emulation of the TOY has been fixed to provide correct synchronization of the guest's time when it is intentionally set to a time in the past (relative to the host) (ID#5737).

Configuration changes required when upgrading from previous versions of Charon-AXP to version 4.

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• Charon license update is required before upgrading. Stromasys might request a HASP dongle state (c2v file) or a host fingerprint taken by HASP Update Service (which is included in the Charon kit) in order to issue a license update. Please refer to License Update Service for details

• Due to a Charon installation procedure update, if you upgrade from a version older than 4.8, it is required to uninstall all Charon products before installing Charon-AXP version 4.11. Please use the Windows Control Panel to perform the operation.

•  If you upgrade from version 4.8, 4.9, 4.10 or 4.11 (previous build):

  • It is not necessary to save boot parameters at the SRM level (console). Parameters will be kept.

  • It is mandatory to update all existing Charon Virtual Machines to make them run the latest version using the Virtual Machines Manager, VM Configuration tab.

• The following Microsoft Windows update has to be installed on Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 in order to support new Charon drivers signed with SHA2 signature:
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/SecurityAdvisories/2015/3033929

• If VMware is used, it must

be upgraded to version 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 or 6.7.

• be upgraded to a supported version.

• The Tru64 kernel might require a rebuild for some emulated AXP models that are included in the Charon-AXP/4100 product.

• It is recommended to archive the old Charon logs before starting the new version in order to avoid mixing character encoding in the log files.

• Intelligent packet processing should be switched off for the network adapters dedicated to Charon with "Network Control Center" (NCC) utility. Please refer to FTP, NFS, and general network issues with CHARON-AXP and CHARON-VAX on Windows for details.

• The user that runs Charon-AXP must have local administrator privileges and be a member of Charon-GRP group (which is created during the Charon installation).

• Charon executables, libraries and data (disk container files) files should be excluded from all the antivirus checks, including on-the-fly checks and scheduled scans.

• HT (Hyper-Threading Technology) should be disabled on the hosting server.

• Power management, USB power saving management and screen saver should be switched off on the hosting server.

• The Charon-AXP configuration file should be reviewed if migrating from Charon-AXP for Linux. Linux specific configuration parameters (for example, network adapter references) should be changed to Windows specific parameters. Please refer to the user manual for details.

• Please note that the actual network communication speed and mode are determined by the Windows network speed and mode settings.

• If Charon-AXP is being moved to another hosting platform and direct SCSI access method is used to access some SCSI devices, the new hosting platform SCSI drivers should support the SCSIport method. If drivers supporting SCSIport method are not available, direct SCSI access cannot be used. This is a case for all Windows Server 2012 (R2) and Windows 8.1 systems, and is often seen for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (R2) systems. The recommended workaround for disk access is to use the \\.\PhysicalDriveX method.
  If any other SCSI device is involved, please contact Stromasys. Charon-AXP for Linux can be considered to work around the limitation.

• For network connections, interface="connection:..." syntax is preferred in the Charon configuration file.

• The packet_port keyword in the Charon configuration file can be used on any hosting platform instead of the platform specific keywords ndis5_chpack_port and ndis6_chpack_port.
  For example, the Charon configuration file lines:

• and

• can be replaced with:

• For the emulated network adapters the communication speed and mode is recommended to be commented out (set to automatic). If it is necessary, see the example below:

• On VMware, legacy_mode should be set in the Charon configuration for emulated AXP network adapters if Promiscuous mode cannot be set (this solution does not work in multi-instance configurations).

• The console definition syntax has been changed in the configuration file starting with v4.9. Please read the User's Guide for instructions on how to apply it if you currently use a Charon version prior to v4.9.

• If "IDLE" utility is going to be used, perform the following commands after its installation:

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• Software licenses have to be renewed as they are not compatible with previous version (prior to 4.11) even if your software license was 4.11 ready.

Known restrictions of version 4.

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Despite the fact that Charon is already optimized for a wide range of the guest OS tasks, there may be some situations (for example OpenVMS compilation tasks) when a performance degradation of about 50% compared to version 4.8 may occur. In this case the following solutions can be applied:

...

Try this solution first. It is recommended to enlarge the ACE cache size at least in 2 times as it is shown in the following example:

set ace cache_size = 2048

If this solution does not work for the specific guest OS tasks, apply also the next solution.

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Set the following set of options in the configuration file:

set session n_of_io_cpus = <N> set ace num_translators = <N> set ace host_options = "--fixed-variant=0 --x64-nooptimize"

where <N> is number of the I/O CPUs dedicated to Charon.

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• Network and tape booting is not currently supported.

• The total number of devices (both controllers and units, including disks) displayed by Charon SRM console is limited to 48. However more devices are available to VMS and Tru64. Note that it does not affect the actual number of configured devices provided to Charon guest OS.

• It is impossible to mount physical tape on some new physical devices (ID#5488),

• The Charon installation may fail with the error message "The installation process cannot replace hasplms.exe because the file is in use". It is known problem of the Sentinel HASP driver installer included in the Charon installation procedure as a 3rd party software. If you face this issue stop the hasplms.exe process manually and re-run Charon installation procedure. See the Installation chapter below for more information.

• In certain situations, mapping to a SAN using the Pass Through method may not be possible. In that case use the presentation mode instead (ID#5424).

• The Charon emulated console supports only 80 symbols in one line.

• In some situations, the virtual disks descriptions can be displayed as "Virtual SCSI Disk (C)SRI" in the SRM console. This problem does not affect the Charon functionality (ID#4729).

• Charon cannot correctly define the total number of available CPUs on multi CPU groups systems (NUMA architecture, etc) - it reports only a number of the CPUs found in its first group. This problem will be fixed in future releases.
  As a workaround, enable "Node interleaving" in the BIOS (if available) to make the BIOS report the total number of available CPUs (as a part of one consolidated NUMA group) to the operating system.
  For example, on HP Proliant servers, the configuration sequence is the following:
  - Boot the server, press F9 and enter BIOS setup.
  - Select "Advanced Options" -> "Advance Performance Tuning Options" -> "Node Interleaving", set it to "Enabled".
  - Boot Windows.

• Hardware partitioning is not supported by Charon. However the same hardware layout can be emulated with multiple Charon instances on the same host.

• The SRM console shows the configured virtual disk names differently for the same *.vdisk containers on each Charon start (ID#4498).

• The OpenVMS/AXP Version 8.4 installation CD media is not mountable under VMS V7.2-1H1. It is a VMS version restriction (ID#4054).

• Older AMD and Intel CPUs without support of the CMPXCHG16B instruction could run Charon-AXP translated code incorrectly. It is recommended not to use those CPUs. If such CPUs are detected on the hosting server, Charon-AXP writes the following message in its log file:

• Charon-AXP does not emulate the LSI 53C810 SCSI controller. Charon-AXP emulates the Qlogic KZPBA SCSI controller, which is the reason for the earliest supported VMS version to be 6.2-1H3, earliest supported Tru64 version to be 3.2. (ID#2291).

• If the driver for KZPBA is installed on an earlier version of VMS or Tru64 before system transfer to Charon-AXP, it will function on Charon-AXP.

• The OPA0 console of the Charon service does not appear if a non "Administrator" user starts the service (ID#3209).

• DS20 initialization might take a long time on Windows Server 2008 R2 (ID#3194).

• Digital UNIX 4.0g fails to install on AS4100 if FC is configured. Specific Tru64 patches and firmware versions might be required. SAN device should be set to SCSI-2 mode (ID#3191).

• The DE500BA device error count after boot is not 0 on OpenVMS 8.2/8.3 (ID#2963). There are no negative side effects.

• Direct SCSI access only supports Windows SCSI devices which use a SCSIport driver. These include most of the device drivers on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (R2), but does not work on Windows 7 and Server 2008 (R2). If SCSIport is not supported (and Storport method is used instead), direct SCSI access cannot be used.
  This is most likely to be the case for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (R2) platforms.

• Performance tests could hang VMS 6.2-1H3 on an emulated AS400.

• Charon-AXP does not emulate VGA adapters, thus OPA0 is always a system console. Applications hard-coded to use OPA0 and TTA0 as their own interfaces may not function correctly.

• Network speed auto negotiation works with some restrictions (see the table below). It is always recommended to use full duplex mode on the hosting server.

• The firmware does not support the command recall using the up/down arrow keys.

• The VMS 7.x Monitor utility shows the maximum CPU quantity instead of actually configured quantity. It does not apply to VMS 8.x.

• Running Alpha Linux on the virtual Alpha is not supported.

• Use of IDE is limited to ATAPI CDROM on the host machine. No iSCSI support is planned for IDE. UETP may produce error messages if IDE emulation is used.

• A Telnet session from OpenVMS running on emulated host freezes console output. The console output can hang when the virtual serial line sends XOFF/XON sequence. The TELNET client sends XOFF to the remote node's TELNET server to suspend output, but for unknown reason XON is discarded and remote node's TELNET server is unable to resume output. The console remains "frozen" as the remote site is not sending any output to it. When that happens, the local node is reachable over network, and can be unlocked by typing the 'break' character - usually "Ctrl-]" and exiting telnet session by typing "exit" at "TELNET>" prompt.

• Emacs hangs if the OPA0 console is used. Emacs works fine over an SSH connection.

• Charon-AXP does not support Microsoft virtual network adapters (i.e. MS bridges, etc.).

• Charon-AXP has limited support for teamed network adapters. They can be used only if the MAC address of the virtual VMS or Tru64 network adapter is not changed during the Charon-AXP session. In which case the desired MAC address should not be set manually in the properties of the network team or in the Charon-AXP configuration file using the "station_address=XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX" configuration option.

• VMS 7.2-1 should be patched to the latest level in order to use Emulex FC adapters in pass-through mode.

• Please note that Charon-AXP has not been tested with SAN attached storage over 2TB per disk in size.

• Tru64 temperature monitoring should be disabled. It could cause Tru64 version 5.x shutdown with the message: "system fan has failed, system is shutting down now". If installing Tru64 from scratch, do not install envmon package. If it is already installed, disable automatic startup by booting into SINGLE USER mode and issue the following commands:

then "exit" (Ctrl-D) to multi user mode.

• A "CRC error" appears when running "$ BACKUP/LIST/REW MKA100:..." on OpenVMS Alpha Version 8.4 (ID#2925).

• Due to the change of "Charon Virtual Machines Manager" to "Charon Virtual Machine Manager", an upgrade from a version prior to 4.11 will create a new shortcut on the desktop and will not remove the one pointing to "Charon Virtual Machines Manager". This then has to be done manually. Please note that both shortcuts point to the same executable file.

New functionality introduced in previous versions

New functionality introduced in

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version 4.11 build 204-14

• Feature Request: incoming connection requests are by default filtered for virtual serial lines and then allowed only for the localhost. This is to avoid security scanners that can block the port, OPA0 console mainly. To allow other hosts to connect to the virtual line, add the "set OPA0 access_control = disable" line in the configuration file (ID#5707). Please note: this requires to use the new syntax to define OPA0. Please read the user's guide "Console" chapter.

New functionality introduced in version 4.11 build 204-11

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Problems fixed in previous versions

Problems fixed in version 4.11 build 204-14

• Log rotation now correctly reports ACTUAL license details in log header: it takes care of license change (ID#5720 - Support Case 00033462)

• Installation wizard has stopped working (ID#5710 - Support Case 00033148)

• Domain user cannot install charon products: now a popup window is displayed to ask if the user wants to continue (ID#5718 - Support Case 00033459)

• Driver Signature is not recognized (ID#5711)

• Immediate termination of emulator without grace period on license loss for both production and backup licenses. Related to HASP error 84 / HASP_SHARING_VIOLATION (ID#5717 - Support Case 00033460)

Problems fixed in version 4.11 build 204-11

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