Charon Emulator products require a product license to run. Stromasys offers several different licensing methods from which the one best suited to the customer requirements must be selected. This page provides an overview of the different methods and their applicability to different emulator environments.

The three basic licensing technologies that will be described in the following sections are:

• Sentinel HASP licensing, a third-party solution offering local and network-based hardware and software licenses - now owned by Thales.
• VE (Virtual Environment) licensing developed and owned by Stromasys offering local and network-based software licenses.
• Automatic licensing for cloud instances developed and owned by Stromasys (currently for Charon-SSP only) offering cloud-specific metered licensing.

Additional information:

• Sentinel HASP Licensing Documentation: detailed information about HASP licensing and managing the licensing option on different emulator products.
• Virtual Environment (VE) License Server Documentation: detailed information about installing, configuring, and managing a VE license server, and about managing the licensing option on different emulators.
• Charon-AXP,  Charon-VAX, Charon-PAR, and Charon-SSP user's guides: detailed information about the product installation, in particular license drivers and utilities included in the product distribution. Detailed information about the configuration file content of each product.

Contents

Product Support Overview and General Recommendations

The different licensing types are described in more detail below. This section shows which options are supported by the individual products, and for which environments the options are best suited.

Licensing Options Characteristics

Common Characteristics of HASP and VE Licenses

Both, Sentinel HASP and VE licenses, have some common characteristics despite the differences in the technical implementation:

• Several products can be licensed on one license.
• Several emulator instances can be licensed on one license.
• A license can be limited by a specified expiration date.
• A license can be limited by a specified number of runtime hours (mostly used as backup licenses).
• The license used by the emulator can be on the Charon emulator host itself or served over the network. Since software licenses are very sensitive to any hardware change or backup restoration, dedicated stable license server systems are recommended in production environments using software licenses.

Sentinel HASP Licenses (Thales) - Specific Characteristics

Sentinel HASP Overview

Sentinel HASP licenses are the "traditional" licensing method for Charon emulator products. Their main characteristics are:

• Software and hardware (dongle) licenses.
• Based on third-party vendor solution.
• Require special third-party license driver software which is distributed with the Charon emulator products.
• Installed on Charon host or separate license server.
• Problematic in cloud environments and somewhat difficult to use in VMware environments.
• Hardware dongles are a flexible and host-hardware independent solution for on-premises installations (as long as there is a free USB port).
• The customer is billed by Stromasys depending on the number and type of the emulated systems allowed by the installed license(s). The license driver software itself is free of charge.

Please refer to the Charon License Handbook (Licensing Documentation) for details about these licenses.

USB Hardware Dongles

HASP Software License

Charon VE (Virtual Environment) Licenses - Specific Characteristics

VE License Basic Overview

The main characteristics of VE (Virtual Environment) licenses are the following:

• Software licenses only.
• Developed by Stromasys.
• Installed on the Charon host or a separate license server. Since software licenses are very sensitive to any hardware change or backup restoration, dedicated stable license server systems are recommended in production environments using software licenses.
• Require the Charon VE license server software.
• Require matching VE-capable Charon emulator software.

Modes of Operation

VE licensing can be used in two different modes described below.

General VE Mode

Operational information:

• The license server is owned and operated by the customer.
• The customer requests a license from Stromasys and installs it on the license server.
• The customer is billed for the license by Stromasys depending on the number and type of the emulated systems allowed by the installed license(s).
• The license server software itself is free of charge.

AutoVE Mode

Operational information:

• Offered on selected clouds only (requires AL marketplace image).
• At the time of writing Charon-SSP AL marketplace image only.
• The license server is owned and operated by the customer.
• The customer requests a license from Stromasys and installs it on the license server (due to the sensitivity to hardware changes and data restoration, the license server should be a stable dedicated instance).
• The customer is billed for the license and the cloud instance by the cloud provider.
• The license server software itself is free of charge.

AutoVE mode is an extension of automatic licensing and introduces metered billing (by the cloud-provider) for VE licenses in cloud environment. It defines how many Charon emulator cloud instances can be run based on the respective license. The number of emulated systems on each host instance is limited by the host resources, not the license.

Supported Platform Information

Support at the time of writing:

Charon-SSP Automatic Licensing (AL) for Cloud Environments

 Main characteristics:

• For special Charon-SSP AL marketplace image in selected clouds. The cloud instance automatically receives a license upon first launch.
• The customer is billed for the cloud instance and the Stromasys product by the cloud provider.
• Software license.
• Licenses served by a Stromasys-operated public license server.
• Licensing is not based on the number of Charon emulator instances, but per cloud instance - independent of the number of emulators run on the instance. The number of emulated systems on each host instance is limited by the host resources, not the license.

For a similar solution, but with a private, customer-operated license server, see AutoVE in the VE licensing section.