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

Contents

Prerequisites

General Prerequisites

To install and configure Charon-SSP in the OCI cloud, you need an Oracle Cloud account.

Licensing

Charon-SSP requires a license to run emulated SPARC systems. For a typical cloud-based installation, there are two different Charon-SSP product variants with two different licensing models (availability may differ depending on cloud environment):

1. The cloud-specific, prepackaged Charon-SSP AL (Automatic Licensing) image utilizing a public, Stromasys-operated cloud-specific license server.
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 prepackaged image on some cloud platforms, and in RPM package format for a conventional installation.

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.

Charon-SSP Automatic Licensing Overview

The Charon-SSP AL image 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 licensing problems or other requirements (e.g., additional CPU cores needed) may make it necessary to move 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).

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

VE Licensing Overview

This licensing option is applicable to prepackaged Charon-SSP VE images on cloud marketplaces and to VE-capable Charon-SSP emulator software installed from RPM packages. For the OCI cloud environment, only the RPM installation of Charon-SSP VE is available.

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 prepackaged, cloud-specific marketplace Charon-SSP VE image).
• Require matching Charon-SSP emulator software (preinstalled on the prepackaged, cloud-specific marketplace 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:

• The metadata server of the cloud environment (169.254.169.254)

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

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

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 on the selected system. The VE License Server RPM package is included in the prepackaged Charon-SSP VE marketplace images. Alternatively, Stromasys will provide a download location. See Installing the VE License Server Software.

• If you don't already have a license, contact your Stromasys representative to procure 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 you will receive 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.

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).

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 of your Charon-SSP version (see CHARON-SSP for Linux), in particular, the CPU Configuration section.

Please note: 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.

Important general information:

• To facilitate a fast transfer of emulator data from one cloud instance to another, it is strongly recommended to store all relevant emulator data on a separate disk volume that can easily be detached from the old instance and attached to a new instance.
• Please make sure to dimension your instance correctly from the beginning (check the minimum requirements below). The Charon-SSP license for Charon-SSP AL is created when the instance is first launched. Changing later to another instance size/type and thereby changing the number of CPU cores will invalidate the license and thus prevent Charon instances from starting (new instance required). The license for Charon-SSP VE is created based on the fingerprint taken on the license server. If the license server is run directly on the emulator host and the emulator host later requires, for example, a change in the number of CPU cores, the license will be invalidated (new license required).

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

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 processing (at least two, if server JIT optimization is used). See the CPU Configuration section mentioned above for default allocation and configuration options
      

• 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.
• If hyper-threading cannot be disabled on the Charon-SSP host, configure the hyper-threading option in the Charon-SSP Manager. See the CPU Configuration section mentioned above for additional configuration information.
• One or more network interfaces, depending on customer requirements.
• Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+ must run on physical Intel hardware supporting VT-x/EPT (baremetal instances) and therefore cannot run in all cloud environments. Please check your cloud provider's documentation for the availability of such hardware. In addition, note the following points:
  
  • The support of these product variants on AMD processors (AMD-v/NPT required) is currently experimental.
  • Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+ are only available when using the Linux kernels provided by Stromasys.
  • Please contact Stromasys or your Stromasys VAR if you need this type of emulated SPARC hardware to discuss your requirements in detail.

Please note:

• 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 CPUs for I/O processing may have to be increased.

• The CPU core allocation for emulated CPUs and CPU cores for I/O processing is determined by the configuration. See CPU Configuration in the general Charon-SSP User's Guide for more information about this and the default allocation of CPU cores for I/O processing.

OCI New Instance Launch

Please note: 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 for Charon-SSP, 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 click on Create 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 correct image for it. If installing a prepackaged marketplace Charon-SSP image, this image must be used. If you plan to install Charon-SSP using RPM packages, use a Linux version supported for Charon-SSP.

 

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

The image below shows an example of the image selection screen:

Optionally, change the compartment. Select the correct image and confirm your selection by clicking on Select Image at the bottom of the page. This will take you back to the Create Compute Instance window.

Step 4: in 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. If required, you can also create a new virtual cloud network or a new subnet here.

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. Currently, it will only allow you to select one of the fixed OCPU Intel shapes.

Select the appropriate shape and confirm your selection by clicking on Select Shape at the bottom of the page. This will take you back to the Create Compute Instance window.

Step 5: near the bottom of the Create Compute Instance window create a new SSH key-pair or upload the public SSH key of an existing key-pair that you will use to access your instance. If you create a new key-pair, you must download the private key and store it in a save place for later use. Optionally, you can also download the public key.

Step 6: optionally define non-default parameters (including the size) for the boot volume.

The boot volume section allows you to configure the boot volume of your instance with additional non-default parameters. For example, you can configure disk encryption parameters and a non-default system disk size (recommended minimum system disk size: 30GB).

Step 7 (supported starting with Charon-SSP marketplace images version 4.2.2 and VE license server 1.0.33): support an IMDSv2 authorization header for applications relying on the IMDS service to improve security. For this, open the additional options by clicking on Show Advanced Options at the bottom of the instance creation page, select the Management tab, and activate the authorization header, as shown below:

On existing instances, this parameter can be changed, by editing the instance metadata service settings for the instance (go to Instance Details and click on Edit in the line Instance Metadata Service).
Only change the configuration to IMDSv2 if the image you launched the instance from supports it. Otherwise, you may not be able to connect to your instance. Please note: at the time of writing, the official CentOS 7 image on OCI did not support the new feature. If you create an instance to be used as a host for a manual VE license server or Charon-SSP VE installation, verify the capabilities of the image used before you enable the new IMDSv2 feature.

Step 8 (only for Charon-SSP versions before 4.1.32): the correct networking type selection is important. Charon-SSP disables offloading parameters on the Ethernet interfaces it uses. This is required for proper functionality and good performance of the emulator. To allow this configuration to be correctly reflected in the underlying cloud instance NICs for Charon-SSP versions before 4.1.32, the correct networking type (HARDWARE ASSISTED (SR-IOV) NETWORKING) must be chosen for the instance. For this, open the additional options section by clicking on Show Advanced Options at the bottom of the instance creation page and select the Networking tab as shown below:

On this tab select HARDWARE ASSISTED (SR-IOV) NETWORKING (after creation, the instance will display the NIC Attachment Type VFIO). Please observe the warning displayed: not all shapes support this type properly.

Step 9: Click on Create at the bottom of the page to create your instance.

Step 10: verify your instance is running.

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

Please note: 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).