General Prerequisites

As this description shows the basic setup of a Linux instance in Azure, it does not list specific prerequisites. However, depending on the use case, the following prerequisites should be considered:

• To set up a Linux instance in Azure, you need an Azure account.
• Secondly, prerequisites will be different depending on the planned use of the instance:
  • Option 1: the instance is to be used as a Charon emulator host system:
    • Refer to the hardware and software prerequisite sections of the User's Guide and/or Getting Started guide of your Charon product to determine the exact hardware and software prerequisites that must be fulfilled by the Linux instance.
      The image you use to launch your instance and the instance type you chose determine the software and hardware of your cloud instance.
    • A Charon product license is required to run emulated legacy systems. Contact your Stromasys representative or Stromasys VAR for details.
  • Option 2: the instance is to be used as a dedicated VE license server:
    • Refer to the VE License Server Guide for detailed prerequisites.
• Certain legacy operating systems that can run in the emulated systems provided by Charon emulator products require a license of the original vendor of the operating system. The user is responsible for any licensing obligations related to the legacy operating system and has to provide the appropriate licenses.

Azure Login and New Instance Launch

Logging in to your Azure account

To log in perform the following steps:

• Go to portal.azure.com. You will see a Microsoft Azure login screen.
• Enter your login credentials.
• Upon successful login, the Azure home screen will be displayed as shown in the example below:

Creating a Virtual Machine

Step 1: Click on the Virtual machines or on the Marketplace icon on the home page. If you create your instance via the Marketplace icon, please select the Charon listing from the Marketplace offerings, select to create an instance, and continue with Step 3.

Clicking on Virtual machines opens the virtual machines overview list.

Step 2: Click on the Create link in the overview list.

For a basic setup, select Azure virtual machine from the drop down list opened by the Create link. This opens the Basics tab of the Create a Virtual Machine window.

Step 3: Enter your data on the Basics tab. Mandatory data are, for example:

• Your subscription
• Existing resource group (or click on Create new)
• Virtual machine name (cannot be changed after launching the instance)
• Region for the virtual machine
• The Azure image from which to launch your instance. Click on See all images to select the correct image. If installing a prepackaged marketplace Charon image, select the matching image. If you plan to install Charon using RPM packages, use a Linux version supported by your Charon emulator product.
• Size of your VM (click on See all sizes to see a list of available sizes)
• User name for the administrative user of the VM (enter sshuser)
• Authentication type. Select SSH public key and paste the public key of the key-pair to use into the field provided.

Basics tab upper part sample:

Select the image from which to launch your instance and the correct size of your instance (please review the sizing requirements above). Enter the other information in accordance to your environment.

Basics tab lower part sample:

• Enter the user sshuser as the administrative user.
• Select SSH public key authentication. You can then use one of the following steps to install your SSH public key.
  
  • Let Azure create a new key-pair for you.
  • Use the public key from a key-pair on your computer. As shown in the example below, you will have to past your public key into the field provided.
  • Use a key-pair previously created on Azure.
• The default allowed inbound port will allow SSH connections without limiting the source IP range. Some images may also have preconfigured access rules that cannot be changed during the launch of the instance. In either case, remember to adapt the rules to your requirements after creating the instance or in the Networking tab (advanced) during the creation of the instance. 

Please note: if your management system supports it, for RHEL 9.x, Rocky Linux 9.x, and Oracle Linux 9.x use SSH key types ECDSA or ED25519. This will allow the Charon Manager connecting to connect to these Charon host Linux systems using an SSH tunnel without the default crypto-policy settings on the Charon host having to be changed for less secure settings. This is, for example, important for the Charon-SSP Manager. See also: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/security_hardening/using-the-system-wide-cryptographic-policies_security-hardening.

Click on Next: Disks. This will open the Disks tab of the VM creation window.