This chapter describes how to set up a basic Charon-SSP for OCI instance.

Contents

Prerequisites

General Prerequisites

To access and use Charon-SSP for OCI, you need an Oracle Cloud account.

Licensing

Charon-SSP for OCI requires 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 OCI instance (the source address must be from the OCI range). At the time of writing, the license servers that must be reachable are cloud-oci1.stromasys.com and cloud-oci2.stromasys.com 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.
• If the number of host CPU cores is changed in any way, it will invalidate the license. 
• 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 block 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).

 You will be billed by Oracle for your use of the Charon-SSP instance. Stromasys will not bill you directly.

Please contact your Stromasys representative or your Stromasys VAR for information about the available licensing options. For contact information see About this Guide.

The user is responsible for any Solaris licensing obligations and has to provide the appropriate licenses.

OCI Shape Prerequisites (Hardware Prerequisites)

By selecting a shape in OCI, you select the virtual hardware that will be used for Charon-SSP. Therefore, the selection of an instance type 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).

To facilitate a fast transfer of emulator data from one OCI instance to another, it is strongly recommended to store all relevant emulator data on a separate block volume that can easily be detached from the old instance and attached to a new instance.

General CPU requirement: Charon-SSP requires modern x86-64 architecture processors with a recommended CPU frequency of at least 3.0GHz.

The OCI non-baremetal shapes available at the time of writing offer CPU frequencies up to 2.2GHz. This limits the ability of the emulator to deliver the highest performance. Please contact Stromasys to discuss your requirements if you have any concerns.

Minimum requirements for Charon-SSP:

• Minimum number of host system CPU cores:
  • At least one CPU core for the host operating system.
  • For each emulated SPARC system:
    • One CPU core for each emulated CPU of the instance.
    • At least one additional CPU core for I/O. If server JIT optimization is used, add an additional I/O CPU for improved translation speed.
• Minimum memory requirements:
  • At least 2GB of RAM for the host operating system.
  • For each emulated SPARC system:
    • The configured memory of the emulated instance.
    • 2GB of RAM (6GB of RAM if server JIT is used) to allow for DIT optimization, emulator requirements, run-time buffers, SMP and graphics emulation.
• One or more network interfaces, depending on customer requirements.
• Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+ must run on hardware supporting VT-x (baremetal shape). These product variants are not supported on AMD processors. Please contact Stromasys or your Stromasys VAR if you need this type of emulated SPARC hardware to discuss your requirements in detail.

 Please note that the sizing guidelines above—in particular regarding number of host CPU cores and host memory—show the minimum requirements. Every use case has to be reviewed and the actual host sizing has to be adapted as necessary. For example, the number of I/O CPUs may have to be increased if the guest applications produce a high I/O load. Also take into consideration that a system with many emulated CPUs in general is also able to create a higher I/O load and thus the number of I/O CPUs may have to be raised. 

OCI New Instance Launch

 This section only shows a very basic example. Please refer to the Oracle Cloud documentation for more detailed information.

To start the creation of a new cloud instance using Charon-SSP for OCI, perform the following steps:

Step 1: log in to your Oracle Cloud environment.

Step 2: go to the instance list in the compute section and select to create an instance.

This opens the Create Compute Instance window.

Step 3: on the first part of Create Compute Instance window, name your instance and select the Charon-SSP image for it.

To select the correct image, select Change Image Source. This will allow you to browse the different available categories for the Charon-SSP image. 

The image below shows an example:

Selecting the image and confirming your selection will take you back to the Create Compute Instance window.

Step 4: on the middle part of the Create Compute Instance window, select the appropriate shape (i.e., the virtual Charon host hardware), the subnet membership of the instance and whether to assign a public IP address.

To select an appropriate shape conforming to the hardware requirements of the emulated SPARC system, click on Change Shape.

This will open a window where you can select the correct system type.

Confirming you selection will take you back to the Create Compute Instance window.

Step 5: on the bottom of the Create Compute Instance window configure your boot device as required and upload the public SSH key of the key-pair you will use to access your instance.

Click on Create to create your instance.

Step 6: verify your instance is running.

Your instance should now be visible in the list of compute instances.

It is recommended to create separate storage space (disk volumes) for Charon application data (e.g., disk images). If required, such volumes can later easily be migrated to another instance (see Storage Management).