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Please note: at the time of writing, there is no marketplace image for IBM cloud. Hence you cannot use the setting-up steps described here to select a pre-packaged Charon-SSP image for installation. After setting up an instance that satisfies the requirements of the Charon-SSP product, you must follow the instructions of the general user's guide to install the RPM packages that make up the Charon software.

Contents

Prerequisites

General Prerequisites

To access and use Charon-SSP in the IBM cloud, you need an account for IBM cloud.

Licensing

Charon-SSP  requires a license to run emulated SPARC systems. There are two different cloud-specific Charon-SSP product variants with two different licensing models (availability may differ depending on cloud environment):

1. The cloud-specific Charon-SSP AL (Automatic Licensing) image utilizing a public, Stromasys-operated cloud-specific license server. Currently, not available on the IBM cloud.
2. Charon-SSP VE (Virtual Environment) utilizing a customer-operated, private VE license server in a supported cloud environment. Charon-SSP VE is available as a pre-packaged image on some cloud platforms, and as RPM packages for a conventional installation. For IBM cloud, there is only the RPM installation option.

Both licensing options are briefly described below. Please contact your Stromasys representative for any questions about product availability and licensing options.

Please note: the user is responsible for any Solaris licensing obligations and has to provide the appropriate licenses

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Charon-SSP Automatic Licensing Overview

Not available on IBM cloud. This section is for information only.

Charon-SSP AL images with automatic licensing use a specialized Charon-SSP environment. They require a license to run emulated SPARC systems. This license is created automatically upon first launch of the Charon-SSP instance. Please note the following points:

• The Charon-SSP instance requires Internet access (via public IP address or NAT) for the license mechanism to work. If NAT is used, the gateway must be an instance in the same cloud-environment (the source address must be from the address range of the same cloud provider in which the Charon-SSP host instance runs). The public, Stromasys-operated license servers must be reachable on port 8080. Also, a DNS service must be reachable to resolve the host names of the license servers, or corresponding entries in /etc/hosts must exist. The license server details will be provided by Stromasys for platforms supporting the Charon-SSP AL images.
• If you change the instance type after first launching the instance and thereby change the number of CPU cores (or if the number of CPU cores is changed by any other method), the license will be invalidated.
• Some license problems (e.g., additional CPU cores needed) may require moving the emulator to a new instance. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to store all relevant emulator data on a separate data volume that can easily be detached from the old instance and attached to a new instance.
• Should access to the license be lost, there is a grace period of 24 hours. If license access is not restored within this period, the emulator will stop (if a guest system is running at the time, this is the equivalent of disconnecting the power without clean shutdown, i.e., it may lead to loss of data).

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Charon-SSP VE Licensing Overview

This licensing option is applicable to pre-packaged Charon-SSP VE images on supported cloud marketplaces (not available on IBM cloud) and to VE-capable Charon-SSP emulator software installed from RPM packages.

Charon-SSP VE license characteristics

The main characteristics of VE licenses are the following:

• Software licenses only.
• Installed on Charon-SSP host or separate license server.
• Require the Charon-SSP VE license server software (RPM package included in the cloud-specific Charon-SSP VE image).
• Require matching Charon-SSP emulator software (preinstalled on the cloud-specific Charon-SSP VE image).

If supported by the cloud provider, the VE license server instance can be moved to a different subnet, as long as the original instance can be moved. It is also possible to backup and restore (to the same instance) the license server data. However, the following actions will invalidate the license:

• Changing the number of CPU cores of the license server system
• Copying the license server data to a different instance
• Seriously damaging the root filesystem of the license server system
• Re-installing the license server system

Charon-SSP VE License Server Communication Requirements

For proper functionality, the system on which the license server runs must be able to communicate with the cloud infrastructure:

• Hosts iam.cloud.ibm.com and resource-controller.cloud.ibm.com.

It must also be able to communicate with the client systems using the license. The following ports are used for this communication by default:

• TCP/8083: must be permitted from the client to license server to enable the use the the license by the client.
• TCP/8084: must be permitted by the the license server for any system that should access the web interface to display license information.

Please note: in current VE license server versions, the default ports can be changed in the file /opt/license-server/config.ini. Please refer to the VE license server user's guide for details.

Charon-SSP License Server API Key Requirements

To run the VE license server in the IBM cloud, an API key must be installed on the Linux host used for the license server. Please refer to Creating and Installing an IBM API Key for details.

Basic License Installation Steps Before an Emulator Can be Started

If there is no VE license server running already, decide on which cloud instance it should run and install the VE License Server package included in the Charon-SSP cloud image (if available) or from a separate RPM package. See Installing the VE License Server Software.

• Unless you have done so before, contact your Stromasys representative to purchase an appropriate license.
• Log in on your Charon-SSP VE License Server instance.
• Create a C2V file and send it to the email address Stromasys will provide to you.
• Install the V2C file received from Stromasys.
• Configure the emulator instance(s) to use the license server.

Please refer to the VE License Server User's Guide for more information.

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IBM Virtual Server Profile Prerequisites (Hardware Prerequisites)

By selecting a profile you select the virtual hardware that will be used by Charon-SSP on IBM cloud. Therefore, this selection determines the hardware characteristics of the Charon-SSP virtual host hardware (e.g., how many CPU cores and how much memory your virtual Charon host system will have).

The minimum hardware requirements are described below. To learn about the default settings and how to use the Charon-SSP configuration options to determine the resource allocation, refer to the different configuration sections of the general Charon-SSP user's guide for your product version (see CHARON-SSP for Linux), in particular, the CPU Configuration section.

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IBM Cloud Login and New Instance Launch

Logging in to IBM Cloud

To log in perform the following steps:

• Go to https://cloud.ibm.com. You will see the login screen.
• Enter your login credentials.
• Upon successful login, your cloud dashboard screen will be displayed.

Preparation

Please note: if you want to use an existing resource group and VPC, select the correct VPC from the resource list (click on the menu symbol at the top left of the cloud console screen and select Resource List).

Creating a Resource Group if Required

To organize resources in your account, you can group related resources in a resource group. If you have not already created a resource group, you can do so by selecting:

Manage > Account > Resource Groups and then clicking on the Create button. Add the name of the group in the pop-up window and confirm with Create.

A sample screen is shown below.

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Creating VPCs and Subnets for Instance

If the necessary VPC and the associated subnets do not exist yet, create them before you create your virtual server. A virtual server can be a member of one VPC.

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Step 1: go to the VPC section.

Select the Menu at the top left, and then VPC Infrastructure > Network > VPCs. This will open the list of existing VPCs or an empty list as shown in the sample below:

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Step 2: start the VPC creation.

To open the VPC creation window, click on the Create button at the top right of the VPC list.

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Step 3: enter the required information for the new VPC and the first subnet.

At the top of the VPC creation window, enter the following information as shown in the sample below:

• VPC Name
• Resource group to which the VPC belongs
• Tags (optional)
• Access allowed by the default security group.

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In the middle of the VPC creation window enter the following information as shown in the sample below:

• Whether a default address prefix should be created for each zone.
• Information for the first subnet in the VPC:
  • Subnet name
  • Resource group for the subnet
  • Location of the subnet

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At the bottom of the VPC creation window enter at least the following information as shown in the sample below:

• IP range for the subnet (the size of the subnet cannot be changed later!)
• Whether a public gateway for Internet traffic should be attached to the subnet (enables outgoing Internet access for systems on this subnet)

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You can add additional subnets later.

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Step 4: confirm your data and create VPC and subnet.

To complete the creation of VPC and subnet, click on the blue button Create virtual private cloud on the right pane of the window:

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After this, your new VPC should be visible in the VPC list.

If required, you can now configure the ACL for the subnet (by default, it allows all traffic), or other parameters of the VPC. To get to these options, click on the name of the VPC in the list.

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Creating a New Virtual Server Instance

Step 1: open the virtual server list and start the creation of a new server.

In the VPC infrastructure section under Compute, click on Virtual server instances. This opens the list of existing virtual servers. At the top right of this list click on Create. The image below provides an illustration of these steps:

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This will open the section for creating a virtual server.

Step 2: enter the required information to create a new virtual server.

At the top of the Virtual Server creation window, enter the following information as shown in the sample below:

• Name of the virtual server
• Resource group to which the server will belong
• Tags (optional)
• Location of the virtual server

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In the next section of the Virtual Server creation window, enter the following information as shown in the sample below:

• Operating system and version for your instance (refer to the general Charon-SSP User's Guide for supported distributions and versions).
• Select the hardware profile (it must fulfill the requirements of the emulated SPARC system(s) you plan to run on the instance. To select the profile you need, click on View all profiles. The profile cannot be changed after the instance has been created.
• If necessary add a new SSH key or use an existing one.

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In the next section of the Virtual Server creation window, enter the following information as shown in the sample below:

• Verify the boot volume configuration.
• Add a new or existing data volume as required.
• Select the VPC for the virtual server.

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At the bottom of the Virtual Server creation window, enter the the required network interfaces. Editing them allows adding IP Spoofing (necessary for routing).

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Then, in the right pane, click on Create virtual server instance to create the server instance. The new server will be displayed in the virtual server list.

Step 3: add a public IP address if required.

Once the virtual server is available in the list of active servers, perform the following steps to add a public IP address:

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