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There are several ways to access the Charon-SSP AWS Instance.

SSH Command-Line Access

During the configuration of your instance you should have created a security group allowing at the minimum SSH access to the instance. If this has been done correctly, you can use SSH from the command-line or from a tool such as PuTTY to access the command-line of the charon user on the Charon-SSP instance.

If you select your instance in the instance list and then click on Connect, you will see the instructions for connecting via SSH.

In particular, you will see

• the name of the private key that must be used to connect to the instance, and
• the public DNS name of the instance.

The following image shows an example:

 Note that the file permissions of the private key file must be set such that the file is only readable by the user. In the example above, the permissions are set to 400. This means that the only access is read-access by the user.

To connect to the instance as the user charon, use the following command:

The parameter ServerAliveInterval will protect the connection from timing out.

Below, you see sample output of a login:

$ ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=30 -i ./we-test-key2.pem charon@3.81.64.139
Last login: Tue May 21 05:34:33 2019 from myhost.example.com
[charon@ip-172-31-38-252 ~]$ pwd
/home/charon

 Note that this account only allows a very limited subset of commands. In particular, commands that are required to set up an SSH tunnel (e.g., ip, iptables, sysctl) are allowed.

File transfer using SFTP

The SSH security group definition is also used to allow SFTP access to the Charon-SSP AWS instance. This allows file transfers to and from the Charon-SSP AWS instance. The user for file transfers is the storage user.

To connect to the instance as the user storage, use the following command:

Below you see sample output of a connection:

$ sftp -i ./we-test-key2.pem storage@3.81.64.139
Connected to storage@3.81.64.139.
sftp> pwd
Remote working directory: /
sftp> ls
storage

Connecting with the Charon-SSP Manager

To manage Charon-SSP and the emulated SPARC systems, you must connect to the Charon-SSP AWS instance with the Charon-SSP Manager. The Charon-SSP Manager is the main interface to all important functions of the Charon-SSP software.

Prerequisites:

• The Charon-SSP Manager must be installed on your local system.
• For access via the public IP address of the instance:
  • The Security Group on your local system must at least allow SSH access. This allows the built-in SSH tunneling of the Charon-SSP Manger to work. Should you not use SSH tunneling, you must open up additional ports (9091 for the Manager communication, any ports used for the emulated system serial console ports, and ports used for the graphical emulation). However, if the connection runs over the Internet, Stromasys recommends strongly to use SSH tunneling. Otherwise, your Charon-SSP cloud instance and any emulated systems running on it can easily be compromised.
  • The public key installed in .ssh/authorized_keys of the charon user of the Charon-SSP AWS instance must be copied to the local system. The Charon-SSP Manager needs this key to set up SSH tunneling.
  • Public IP address of the Charon-SSP AWS instance.
• For access via an SSH-based VPN:
  • Active SSH-based VPN (see SSH VPN Operation)
  • Private IP address of the Charon-SSP host in the VPN

Copying the Public Key to the Local System

 Required if the integrated SSH tunnel of Charon Manager is to be used.

If not yet done, the public key of the key-pair associated with the Charon-SSP AWS instance must be copied to your local system.

To copy the Charon-SSP AWS public key to the local system, perform the following steps:

Start the Charon-SSP Manager

Start the Charon-SSP Manager using the following command:

This will open the login window of the Charon-SSP Manager.

If the information is correct, the Charon-SSP Manager welcome screen will be displayed: