Charon-SSP Cloud Instance Prerequisites

Owned by W.Erber
Last updated: Oct 25, 2022Version comment

By selecting an instance type or shape, you select the virtual hardware that will be used for the Charon host instance in the cloud. Therefore, the selection of an instance type or shape determines the hardware characteristics of the Charon virtual host hardware (e.g., how many CPU cores and how much memory your virtual Charon host system will have).

Please note:

  • If you use a Charon-SSP marketplace image to launch your instance, all Linux host operating system requirements are fulfilled.
  • If you use a generic Linux marketplace image to launch your instance, please refer to the Charon-SSP for Linux User's Guide for the software requirements that must be fulfilled.

General Notes

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 following points regarding the sizing guidelines:

  • The sizing guidelines below—in particular regarding number of host CPU cores and host memory—show the minimum requirements.
    Every deployment situation must be reviewed and the actual host sizing has to be adapted as necessary. For example, the number of CPU cores available for I/O must be increased if the guest applications produce a high I/O load. Also, a system with many emulated CPUs is typically able to create a higher I/O load and thus the number of CPU cores available for I/O may have to be increased. In a hyper-threading environment, for best performance, the number of CPU cores (i.e., real/physical CPUs) should be sufficient to fulfill CPU requirements of the active emulators, thus avoiding high-workload threads sharing one physical CPU core.

  • 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.

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). If planning to use the Charon-SSP AL instance in AutoVE mode, be sure to include the AutoVE server information before first launch, otherwise the instance will register with the public license servers (registration only occurs at first launch).
  • 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 and possibly new instance required). Hence, it is recommended to run the VE license server on a dedicated instance.


Instance Prerequisites

General CPU requirements: Charon-SSP requires modern x86-64 architecture processors. This could be Intel Servers based on Haswell v3 processors or later, or Desktop Core I7 (CPU frequency at least 3.0 GHz). AMD processors of the same or higher performance are also supported.

Minimum requirements for Charon-SSP:

  • Minimum number of host system CPU cores:
    • At least one CPU core for the host operating system, plus:
    • For each emulated SPARC system:
      • One CPU core for each emulated CPU of the instance, plus:
      • 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 configuration options. By default, Charon will assign 1/3 (min. 1; rounded down) of the number of CPUs visible to the Charon host to I/O processing.
  • Minimum memory requirements:

    • 4GB or more of RAM for the Linux host operating system. The actual requirements may be higher and will depend on the requirements of the non-emulator services running on the Linux host. The previous recommendation of at least 2GB of RAM for the Linux host will still be valid for many systems, but the increasing requirements of the Linux operating system and applications have led to the updated recommendation for new installations. Plus:

    • For each emulated SPARC system:
      • The configured memory of the emulated instance, plus:
      • 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 is enabled on modern x86-64 CPUs, two threads can run on one physical CPU core providing two logical CPUs to the host operating system. If possible, disable hyper-threading on the Charon-SSP host. However, this is frequently not possible in VMware and cloud environments, or it is unclear whether hyper-threading is used or not. The Charon-SSP hyper-threading option enables Charon-SSP to adapt to such environments unless MMU pass-through is used. See the CPU Configuration section in your general Charon-SSP User's Guide mentioned above for detailed configuration information. Please note: for best performance, Charon-SSP threads should not share a physical CPU core – enough physical cores should be available on the host system to satisfy the requirements of the configured emulator(s).
  • One or more network interfaces, depending on customer requirements.
  • Charon-SSP/4U+ and Charon-SSP/4V+ must run on physical hardware supporting Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-v/NPT (baremetal instances) and therefore cannot run in all cloud environments. Please check your cloud provider's documentation for the availability of such hardware. In cloud environments, MMU pass-through is recommended instead to achieve comparable performance gains.
    In addition, note the following points:
    • MMU pass-through, Charon-SSP/4U+, and Charon-SSP/4V+ are only available when using a Linux kernel supported by Stromasys. Please refer to the general Charon-SSP user's guide for details (see Charon-SSP for Linux).
    • The Plus versions require the SSP+ license upgrade.

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