The CHARON-AXP product is distributed in the form of a zip file that contains the CHARON-AXP installation executable ("InstallShell.exe"). The InstallShell procedure offers the option to select which modules to install (optionally). It is recommended to install all modules (the default) by not selecting "Display components" checkbox.

Before installing CHARON-AXP, please perform all hardware and software host system checks to ensure the host platform meets minimum CHARON-AXP installation requirements

Optionally, create a specific CHARON username with administrative privileges

CHARON-AXP installation steps:

• Extract the CHARON-AXP installation procedure files from its archive

• Install CHARON-AXP by running the "InstallShell.exe" installer and follow the instructions

• Install CHARON-AXP license (hardware dongle or software license)

• Configure CHARON-AXP host system, for example, network adapter, disable some Windows features (see Host system preparation further), etc.

Each CHARON-AXP emulated CPU requires a corresponding physical core. The total number of host CPUs must exceed the number of emulated CPUs since some of the host CPUs must be dedicated to serving CHARON I/O operations and fulfil host operating system needs. If several CHARON instances run in parallel, the required number of CPU cores is cumulative.

The following table shows the minimum and recommended number of CPUs required for each models for one instance (note that each model instance is able to run on 2 CPU cores hosts, but this configuration does not support emulation of all the virtual CPUs):

When starting, the CHARON-AXP software checks the available number of host CPU cores. This check is based on the maximum number of AXP CPUs that can be emulated if this number is not restricted by the "n_of_cpus" parameter. If the available number of host CPU cores is below this number, CHARON-AXP will issue a warning message even if the requirements for the configured number of AXP CPUs are fulfilled. The CHARON-AXP software will work despite this warning if the requirements for the configured number of AXP CPUs are fulfilled.

Since CHARON-AXP utilizes LAHF instructions in the HP Alpha CPU emulation, please avoid using early (pre-2005) AMD64 and Intel 64 CPUs for the CHARON host system since they lack this capability. AMD Athlon 64, Opteron and Turion 64 revision D processors from March 2005 and Intel Pentium 4 G1 stepping from December 2005 are LAHF instruction capable.

Concerning CPU speed, the general recommendation is that higher CPU frequency is better since it allows better emulated HP Alpha performance. The minimum recommendation is at least 3 GHz.

The minimum host memory size depends on the amount of HP Alpha memory to be emulated and the number of CHARON-AXP instances to be run on one host.
The minimum host memory is calculated according to the following formula:

The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated) per CHARON-AXP instance.

The total amount of disk space required for CHARON-AXP can be calculated as a sum of all the disk/tape image sizes plus 500 MB for the CHARON software plus space required for the normal host OS. Temporary disk storage is often needed when setting up a new server, for saveset storage, software installation kits, etc.

CHARON-AXP networking requires dedicated host Ethernet adapters; their number must be equal to the emulated adapters to be configured in CHARON-AXP. One adapter (optionally) can be left to the host for TCP/IP networking etc.

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

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

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

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

• Windows 8.1 Professional Edition, 64 bit version

• Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 64 bit version

• VMware ESXi 5.5 and 6.x up to 6.7 (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)

If a network-wide license (red dongle or software license) is going to be used, do the following:

• On server side (where the network license will reside): open port 1947 for both TCP and UDP

• On the client side, if broadcast search for remote licenses is to be used, UDP traffic from port 1947 of the license server to ports 30000-65535 of the client must be permitted.

• Both on server and client sides: set default gateway

Please consult with Windows online documentation for details.