CHARON-PDP V4.8 Build 183-02 for Windows - Release Notes

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Please review this document before proceeding with installation of CHARON

Products included in the CHARON-PDP version 4.8 build 183-02 for Windows

In this document the terms CHARON and CHARON are used to refer to the products below:

• CHARON-PDP version 4.8 build 183-02 for Windows

Supported software platforms

• 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)

• Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise Editions, 32 bit and 64 bit version

• 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, 32 bit and 64 bit versions

• Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional Edition, 32 and 64 bit versions

• VMware ESXi 5.5 and 6.x up to 6.5 (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)

Hosting hardware requirements and configuration recommendations

• A physical system or virtual VMware appliance with a dual CPU of at least 2 GHz, one dedicated Ethernet adapter, an optional USB port for the license key and enough disk space to keep the PDP data.

• The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of PDP memory emulated) per CHARON-PDP instance.

• Mid range and high end RAID controllers with at least 1GB cache with write-back enabled and battery backup option is recommended.
  (Using low-end RAID controllers may cause significant performance degradation and CHARON crash. RAID5 and similar configurations are not recommended.)

• Intel HT (Hyper-Threading Technology) should be disabled on the hosting server.

• Hosting server should always run at full speed. Power management and the screen saver should be disabled on the hosting server.

• Windows UAC should be disabled.

• On VMware, E1000 network adapters must be used for CHARON; VM network adapters dedicated to CHARON and vSwitch dedicated to CHARON network segment should be set to Promiscuous mode.

New functionalities introduced in build 183-02 since previous release (build 158-04)

• New platform support

  • Microsoft Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 32 bit and 64 bit versions

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (please notice Server 2012 is not supported)

  • VMware ESXi 6.0

  • Microsoft Hyper-V on Server 2012 R2

  • Please notice Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are not supported (ID#4498)

• Performance improvements

  • HASP libraries have been upgraded (ID#4709, ID#4450)

  • Preserving console saved state across product upgrades is implemeted (ID#4782)

  • VLANs are supported (ID#4401)

  • The log file language is set to English (ID#4509)

  • CHARON console log rotation has been implemented (ID#4639)

  • CHARON log file format switched to UTF-8 (ID#4188)

  • Rotating log file switch can be configured to be triggered by maximum file size and time period (ID#4639)

• Installation improvements

  • New installation procedure is introduced starting from this version. It is not compatible with old CHARON installations, so the previous versions of CHARON must be uninstalled first.

  • Installation procedure is able to collect logs from executables it executes during installation/deinstallation (ID#4756)

  • All emulated PDP models are installed by default. Allowed PDP models are controlled by CHARON license (ID#4711)

  • New icons and graphical design for CHARON executables, utilities and installation procedure (ID#4586, 4587, 4588, 4688, #4973)

• New configuration options and configuration changes

  • CHARON must be installed as a Virtual Machine service using the new "CHARON VM Manager" utility. This utility also provides a central point to access all CHARON utilities (ID#4870, ID#4872)

  • The default log mode has been set to "append" in the configuration templates (ID#4752)

  • Updated CFG template files copyright message to year 2016 (ID#4720)

  • Windows Registry path for CHARON products is updated to "HKLM:\Software\CHARON" (ID#4746)

• New licensing options. Please refer to User Manual and online Knowledge Base for details, technical restrictions, and best practices.

  • Field Test and Production builds offer identical functionality (ID#4552)

  • One license can serve CHARON instances on one host or different hosts by choice (ID#4884)

  • A special utility "License Alert" ia added. It monitors CHARON license expiration date and warns user about it (ID#4903). Jul 20, 2017 Note: automatic installation removed when installing Charon-PDP. It has now to be installed manually

  • Software License transfer feature is disabled (ID#4787)

  • Software licensing (SL) is available. Software license is bound to physical system hardware components or virtual machine hardware components (ID#4344)

  • Network licensing is available, for both hardware dongles (requires special dongle) and software licensing

  • CHARON instance counter on a Network license switched to instance mode from station/instance mode, which allows CHARON instances to be spread around the network at user convenience. For example, a Network license with 6 CHARON instances allows to run 3 instances on a first hosting server, 2 instances on a second hosting server, and one instance in a third hosting server. In the previous versions of CHARON Network license controlled number of hosting systems and CHARON instances per host system.

  • CHARON license check order can be managed via configuration file, Production and Backup license IDs can be specified (ID#4249) 

  • New parameter "license_key_lookup_retry" has been introduced allowing to set a number of license retries with specified time interval for the license checks on CHARON startup (ID#4399) 

  • License protection run time package (Sentinel) has been upgraded to the current stable version (ID#4209, 4711)  

  • Please notice that CHARON HASP runtime environment is customized by Stromasys. Environment downloaded directly form SafeNet would not provide full functionality (specifically, Software Licensing will not work). Stromasys will maintain and distribute HASP environment updates as CHARON product patches if necessary

• CHARON utilities

  • New CHARON Virtual Machines Manager is introduced (ID#4836)

  • Tape Utilities package is added (ID#3589) 

  • Network Control Center is not allowed anymore to change the configuration of a disabled network adapter (ID#4725)

  • MkDisk utility graphics has been updated (ID#4743)

  • Network Control Center is able to save log (ID#4755)

  • LOGMOND utility provides sample scripts (ID#4902)

  • Logmond supports multi instance and rotating log configurations

  • MTD utility supports SCSI Passthrough mode for tapes without Windows driver (ID#3927)

  • Network Control Center (NCC) performs CHARON network driver cleanup on request (ID#4610)

  • CHARON utilities fully support mixed encoding in log files (ID#4642, 4646)

  • mkdskcmd utility does not allow to reduce vdisk size (ID#4506)