Version: 1 - Published: Aug 28, 2024 

Please review this document before proceeding with the installation of Charon-AXP for Linux

In this document the terms Charon and Charon-AXP are used to refer to the Charon-AXP for Windows products below:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter Editions, 64-bit version (please note that only R2 revision is supported)

• Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1) Standard and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version (please note that only R2 revision is supported)

• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate (SP1) Editions, 64-bit version

• Windows 8.1 Professional Edition, 64-bit version

• VMware ESXi 5.5 and 6.x up to 6.7 (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)

• CPU requirements:

  • The number of available x86/x64 compatible (Intel or AMD) CPU cores in the hosting server should be at least 150% of the number of emulated CPU cores.

  • The recommended number of available (Intel or AMD) CPU cores in the hosting server is twice the number of emulated CPU cores.

  • Intel Xeon E-series v3 and above with a CPU clock frequency from 3GHz; to achieve the best performance use the latest Intel Xeon CPUs from the Scalable Processors family.

• Memory requirements:

  • DDR4 RAM 2133 MHz and above is recommended for optimal Charon performance.

  • The minimum host memory size depends on the amount of emulated AXP memory and on the number of Charon instances running on one host. The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated) per Charon-AXP 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-AXP crash. RAID5 and similar configurations are not recommended.)

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

• The hosting server should always run at full speed. Power management, USB power saving management and the screen saver should be disabled on the hosting server.

• Windows UAC should be disabled.

• The Port Group Security Tab containing the Charon network adapter(s) must be set to Promiscuous mode, MAC Address Change and Forged Transmit=Accept.

None.

• Fix for AXP CPU emulation to avoid CPU halts due to KERNEL STACK NOT VALID exceptions, followed by CPUSANITY or CPUSPINWAIT BUGCHECKs in case of AXP configurations with more than one CPU or more than 4GB of RAM (ID#5836).

• Charon license update is required before upgrading. Stromasys might request a HASP dongle state (c2v file) or a host fingerprint taken by HASP Update Service (which is included in the Charon kit) in order to issue a license update. Please refer to License Update Service for details

• Due to a Charon installation procedure update, if you upgrade from a version older than 4.8, it is required to uninstall all Charon products before installing Charon-AXP version 4.11. Please use the Windows Control Panel to perform the operation.

• If you upgrade from version 4.8, 4.9, 4.10 or 4.11 (previous build):

  • It is not necessary to save boot parameters at the SRM level (console). Parameters will be kept.

  • It is mandatory to update all existing Charon Virtual Machines to make them run the latest version using the Virtual Machines Manager, VM Configuration tab.

• The following Microsoft Windows update has to be installed on Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 in order to support new Charon drivers signed with SHA2 signature:
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/SecurityAdvisories/2015/3033929

• If VMware is used, it must be upgraded to version 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 or 6.7.

• The Tru64 kernel might require a rebuild for some emulated AXP models that are included in the Charon-AXP/4100 product.

• It is recommended to archive the old Charon logs before starting the new version in order to avoid mixing character encoding in the log files.

• Intelligent packet processing should be switched off for the network adapters dedicated to Charon with "Network Control Center" (NCC) utility. Please refer to FTP, NFS, and general network issues with CHARON-AXP and CHARON-VAX on Windows for details.

• The user that runs Charon-AXP must have local administrator privileges and be a member of Charon-GRP group (which is created during the Charon installation).

• Charon executables, libraries and data (disk container files) files should be excluded from all the antivirus checks, including on-the-fly checks and scheduled scans.

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

• Power management, USB power saving management and screen saver should be switched off on the hosting server.

• The Charon-AXP configuration file should be reviewed if migrating from Charon-AXP for Linux. Linux specific configuration parameters (for example, network adapter references) should be changed to Windows specific parameters. Please refer to the user manual for details.

• Please note that the actual network communication speed and mode are determined by the Windows network speed and mode settings.

• If Charon-AXP is being moved to another hosting platform and direct SCSI access method is used to access some SCSI devices, the new hosting platform SCSI drivers should support the SCSIport method. If drivers supporting SCSIport method are not available, direct SCSI access cannot be used. This is a case for all Windows Server 2012 (R2) and Windows 8.1 systems, and is often seen for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (R2) systems. The recommended workaround for disk access is to use the \\.\PhysicalDriveX method.
  If any other SCSI device is involved, please contact Stromasys. Charon-AXP for Linux can be considered to work around the limitation.

• For network connections, interface="connection:..." syntax is preferred in the Charon configuration file.

• The packet_port keyword in the Charon configuration file can be used on any hosting platform instead of the platform specific keywords ndis5_chpack_port and ndis6_chpack_port.
  For example, the Charon configuration file lines:
      load ndis5_chpack_port/chnetwrk EWA0 interface="..."
           and
     load ndis6_chpack_port/chnetwrk EWA0 interface="..."
  can be replaced with
       load packet_port/chnetwrk EWA0 interface="..."

• For the emulated network adapters the communication speed and mode is recommended to be commented out (set to automatic). If it is necessary, see the example below:

  load DE500BA/dec21x4x EWA interface=EWA0
load packet_port/chnetwrk EWA0 interface="..."
set EWA adapter_mode="100BaseT-FD"

• On VMware, legacy_mode should be set in the Charon configuration for emulated AXP network adapters if Promiscuous mode cannot be set (this solution does not work in multi-instance configurations).

• The console definition syntax has been changed in the configuration file starting with v4.9. Please read the User's Guide for instructions on how to apply it if you currently use a Charon version prior to v4.9.

• If "IDLE" utility is going to be used, perform the following commands after its installation:
  $ @sys$startup:charoncp_startup $ charoncp set idle /enable

• Software licenses have to be renewed as they are not compatible with previous version (prior to 4.11) even if your license was 4.11 ready.

Despite the fact that Charon is already optimized for a wide range of the guest OS tasks, there may be some situations (for example OpenVMS compilation tasks) when a performance degradation of about 50% compared to version 4.8 may occur. In this case the following solutions can be applied:

1. Enlarging ACE cache size

Try this solution first. It is recommended to enlarge the ACE cache size at least in 2 times as it is shown in the following example:
         set ace cache_size = 2048

If this solution does not work for the specific guest OS tasks, apply also the next solution.

1. Setting specific ACE host options

Set the following set of options in the configuration file:
        set session n_of_io_cpus = <N> set ace num_translators = <N> set ace host_options = "--fixed-variant=0 --x64-nooptimize"

where <N> is number of the I/O CPUs dedicated to Charon.

Other restrictions:

• Network and tape booting is not currently supported.

• The total number of devices (both controllers and units, including disks) displayed by Charon SRM console is limited to 48. However more devices are available to VMS and Tru64. Note that it does not affect the actual number of configured devices provided to Charon guest OS.

• It is impossible to mount physical tape on some new physical devices (ID#5488),

• The Charon installation may fail with the error message "The installation process cannot replace hasplms.exe because the file is in use". It is known problem of the Sentinel HASP driver installer included in the Charon installation procedure as a 3rd party software. If you face this issue stop the hasplms.exe process manually and re-run Charon installation procedure. See the Installation chapter below for more information.

• In certain situations, mapping to a SAN using the Pass Through method may not be possible. In that case use the presentation mode instead (ID#5424).

• The Charon emulated console supports only 80 symbols in one line.

• In some situations, the virtual disks descriptions can be displayed as "Virtual SCSI Disk (C)SRI" in the SRM console. This problem does not affect the Charon functionality (ID#4729).

• Charon cannot correctly define the total number of available CPUs on multi CPU groups systems (NUMA architecture, etc) - it reports only a number of the CPUs found in its first group. This problem will be fixed in future releases.
  As a workaround, enable "Node interleaving" in the BIOS (if available) to make the BIOS report the total number of available CPUs (as a part of one consolidated NUMA group) to the operating system.
  For example, on HP Proliant servers, the configuration sequence is the following:
  - Boot the server, press F9 and enter BIOS setup.
  - Select "Advanced Options" -> "Advance Performance Tuning Options" -> "Node Interleaving", set it to "Enabled".
  - Boot Windows.

• Hardware partitioning is not supported by Charon. However the same hardware layout can be emulated with multiple Charon instances on the same host.

• The SRM console shows the configured virtual disk names differently for the same *.vdisk containers on each Charon start (ID#4498).

• The OpenVMS/AXP Version 8.4 installation CD media is not mountable under VMS V7.2-1H1. It is a VMS version restriction (ID#4054).

• Older AMD and Intel CPUs without support of the CMPXCHG16B instruction could run Charon-AXP translated code incorrectly. It is recommended not to use those CPUs. If such CPUs are detected on the hosting server, Charon-AXP writes the following message in its log file:

• Charon-AXP does not emulate the LSI 53C810 SCSI controller. Charon-AXP emulates the Qlogic KZPBA SCSI controller, which is the reason for the earliest supported VMS version to be 6.2-1H3, earliest supported Tru64 version to be 3.2. (ID#2291).

• If the driver for KZPBA is installed on an earlier version of VMS or Tru64 before system transfer to Charon-AXP, it will function on Charon-AXP.

• The OPA0 console of the Charon service does not appear if a non "Administrator" user starts the service (ID#3209).

• DS20 initialization might take a long time on Windows Server 2008 R2 (ID#3194).

• Digital UNIX 4.0g fails to install on AS4100 if FC is configured. Specific Tru64 patches and firmware versions might be required. SAN device should be set to SCSI-2 mode (ID#3191).

• The DE500BA device error count after boot is not 0 on OpenVMS 8.2/8.3 (ID#2963). There are no negative side effects.

• Direct SCSI access only supports Windows SCSI devices which use a SCSIport driver. These include most of the device drivers on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (R2), but does not work on Windows 7 and Server 2008 (R2). If SCSIport is not supported (and Storport method is used instead), direct SCSI access cannot be used.
  This is most likely to be the case for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (R2) platforms.

• Performance tests could hang VMS 6.2-1H3 on an emulated AS400.

• Charon-AXP does not emulate VGA adapters, thus OPA0 is always a system console. Applications hard-coded to use OPA0 and TTA0 as their own interfaces may not function correctly.

• Network speed auto negotiation works with some restrictions (see the table below). It is always recommended to use full duplex mode on the hosting server.

• The firmware does not support the command recall using the up/down arrow keys.

• The VMS 7.x Monitor utility shows the maximum CPU quantity instead of actually configured quantity. It does not apply to VMS 8.x.

• Running Alpha Linux on the virtual Alpha is not supported.

• Use of IDE is limited to ATAPI CDROM on the host machine. No iSCSI support is planned for IDE. UETP may produce error messages if IDE emulation is used.

• A Telnet session from OpenVMS running on emulated host freezes console output. The console output can hang when the virtual serial line sends XOFF/XON sequence. The TELNET client sends XOFF to the remote node's TELNET server to suspend output, but for unknown reason XON is discarded and remote node's TELNET server is unable to resume output. The console remains "frozen" as the remote site is not sending any output to it. When that happens, the local node is reachable over network, and can be unlocked by typing the 'break' character - usually "Ctrl-]" and exiting telnet session by typing "exit" at "TELNET>" prompt.

• Emacs hangs if the OPA0 console is used. Emacs works fine over an SSH connection.

• Charon-AXP does not support Microsoft virtual network adapters (i.e. MS bridges, etc.).

• Charon-AXP has limited support for teamed network adapters. They can be used only if the MAC address of the virtual VMS or Tru64 network adapter is not changed during the Charon-AXP session. In which case the desired MAC address should not be set manually in the properties of the network team or in the Charon-AXP configuration file using the "station_address=XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX" configuration option.

• VMS 7.2-1 should be patched to the latest level in order to use Emulex FC adapters in pass-through mode.

• Please note that Charon-AXP has not been tested with SAN attached storage over 2TB per disk in size.

• Tru64 temperature monitoring should be disabled. It could cause Tru64 version 5.x shutdown with the message: "system fan has failed, system is shutting down now". If installing Tru64 from scratch, do not install envmon package. If it is already installed, disable automatic startup by booting into SINGLE USER mode and issue the following commands:

      # mount -u /
   # mount /usr
   # rcmgr set ENVMON_CONFIGURED 0
  then "exit" (Ctrl-D) to multi user mode.

• A "CRC error" appears when running "$ BACKUP/LIST/REW MKA100:..." on OpenVMS Alpha Version 8.4 (ID#2925).

• Due to the change of "Charon Virtual Machines Manager" to "Charon Virtual Machine Manager", an upgrade from a version prior to 4.11 will create a new shortcut on the desktop and will not remove the one pointing to "Charon Virtual Machines Manager". This then has to be done manually. Please note that both shortcuts point to the same executable file.

• The Charon installer (InstallShell.exe) now records the latest installation kit location and installation date/time in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CHARON\Installation) to help in case an installation repair must be performed. This information in reported in the Charon Report Utility starting with version 1.40 (ID#5734)

• Feature Request: incoming connection requests are by default filtered for virtual serial lines and then allowed only for the localhost. This is to avoid security scanners that can block the port, OPA0 console mainly. To allow other hosts to connect to the virtual line, add the "set OPA0 access_control = disable" line in the configuration file (ID#5707)

  • This requires to use the new syntax to define OPA0. Please read the user's guide "Console" chapter.

• Log file numbering implemented when log rotating is used: when starting the Charon emulator the first log file name will be like <configuration_name>-YYYY-MM-DD-hh-mm-ss-xxxxxxxxx.log where xxxxxxxxx will be 000000000, this number will increase with each log rotation (ID#5702)

• The emulator UPTIME is reported on every log rotation (ID#5683, ID#32702)
  Example: 20210916:000000:INFO :0:00000479:ethane.cxx(3479): "ds10test" started at Wed Sep 15 17:28:14 2021 (uptime 0 06:31:46).

• Consolidating update to PBXGA: additional parameter "application", multi-screen support, 8bit graphics (ID#5589, ID#5609, ID#5692)

• Added support for 8-bit depth on PBXGA-AA (ID#5667).

• PBXGA-AA and PBXGA-BA (ZLXp-E2) can now be used with the Charon Virtual Machine Manager using the provided PBXGA_TV.exe application (see PBXGA graphics card chapter in the user's guide).

• Charon Network Packet NDIS Signed driver for Windows 10, Windows Server 2016/2019 working with Secure Boot enabled.

• Sentinel Runtime upgraded to version 8.13.

• Implemented serial line logging capability for serial lines attached through virtual PBXDA (DIGI board).

• Implemented support for booting AXP emulators via MOP. MOPv3 (DECnet) and MOPv4 (LANCP) are supported. Both EW and EI adapters are supported for MOP network boot.

• The parameter "log_flush_period" is available on all serial line implementations (ID#5633).

• New parameter "connection_override" for console that allows new connection to override existing connection, if any.

• New version of PuTTY, supporting "-title" option and new way of storing/loading sessions definitions in the registry to avoid unnecessary duplication of session definitions for each user (ID#5590).

• MkDisk utility logo is updated (ID#5246).

• Sample configuration files are updated (ID#5246, #5622).

• "Charon Virtual Machines Manager" is changed to "Charon Virtual Machine Manager" (ID#5246). Note: if you're upgrading from a previous version, the "Charon Virtual Machines Manager" icon has to be removed manually.

• The NDIS driver is upgradable: during installation of a Charon kit, a newer driver version is installed automatically (ID#5585).

• A specific dialog is added for recommended actions if a container cannot be extracted in the process of a Charon installation (ID#5586).

• All relevant Charon components are installed independently by each Charon build to be installed on the host if these components are not "upgradable" (shared between builds) (ID#5504).

• Charon installation procedure graphics are updated to display correct slogan (ID#5558).

• MkDisk utility graphics are updated to display correct slogan (ID#5562).

• Charon stability is improved (ID#5483, 5331).

• Support of modern SAN (MSA-2050) is improved over Emulex PT (ID#5421).

• Log is flushed regularly and asynchronously to facilitate online LOG monitoring by third-party tools (ID#5532).

• Correct installation of x64 HostPrint utility in all Charon products is implemented (in the folder beside the corresponding executables) (ID#5570).

• VMware Ethernet adapters: in addition to the E1000, E1000E and VMXNETx adapters are now fully supported.

• Copyright notes are updated in all sample configuration files (ID#5399).

• EXE/DLL copyright is updated (ID#5503).

• The value of "log_repeat_filter" parameter is "off" by default (ID#5405).

• Licensing mechanism is improved (ID#5375, 5458, 5459).

• Network License management processing changes (ID#4631).

• Redistributable Visual C++ runtime is upgraded (ID#5385).

• Installation procedure detects inconsistent and/or damaged installation and deals with it properly (ID#5476).

• In "Repair" mode installation, the procedure keeps the current Charon installation in case of errors (ID#5477).

• All Charon components are installed independently for every build (ID#5504).

• Patches to Charon kits are able to keep all the previous executables independent from each other (ID#5506).

• Backup patch scripts are installed for each build independently (ID#5517).

• Virtual Machines renaming feature is disabled (ID#5394).

• "hasp_view" command line mode is extended to output all available licenses details to a file (ID#5442).

• NCC utility is improved (ID#5497).

• Security improvements

  • To address security issues, new Sentinel LDK 7.6 is used for building this release; most up-to-date Sentinel run-time (v7.63) is included (ID#5211, ID#5227)

• Performance improvements

  • Network performance and stability has been significantly improved (ID#5111, ID#4987).

  • Built-in serial lines (OPA0 and TTA0) have been re-considered and alternative implementation is provided to resolve multiple issues (ID#4844, Case #00028691).

  • USB physical drive support is improved (ID#3323).

  • Deep queuing of disk I/O requests is implemented (ID#3144).

• New configuration options and configuration changes

  • Virtual PBXDA serial lines controller is implemented (ID#4776).

  • DS15 and DS25 preloaded network adapter model (EW* or EI*) can be specified (ID#4886).

  • New feature for the AXP emulator SRM console has been implemented to allow booting Tru64 from SAN volumes having no UDID (ID#5238).

  • "\\.\Scsi<N>:<X>:<Y>:<Z>" notation is not used anymore (ID#5051).

  • Soft limit on the required host CPU number is set according to the "n_of_cpus" parameter (ID#5137).

  • User part of Charon configuration (set by CFG file) is reflected in the log (ID#5156).

  • Some improvements of the messages in the log (ID#5356).

• New licensing options.

  • Hard-coded upper limit on license check interval to 168 hours is increased (ID#5031, Case #00029470).

  • Hard-coded host system limits are replaced with limits encoded in the license's memory block (ID#3263).

  • New configuration options "license_use_any_key" and "license_id" are implemented (ID#5289).

• Installation improvements

  • Charon installation wizard (InstallShell) is improved (ID#4231, ID#4915, ID#5081, ID#5176).

• Charon utilities 

  • Charon VM Manager is improved (ID#4989, ID#4990, ID#5032, ID#5063, ID#5064, ID#5223, ID#5244, ID#5016, ID#5349).

  • TapeUtil (CharonCP) is improved (ID#3589).

  • "mkdskcmd" and MkDisk utilities are improved (ID#5033, ID#5142, ID#5143, ID#5225).

  • "HASP License Details" is improved (ID#5027, ID#5047, ID#5214, ID#5242).

  • LOGMOND utility is improved (LOGMOND invokes license_changed.bat when it sees message with code 0000040B) (ID#5000)

  • Charon Network Control Center is able to display configuration options for DE500AA, DEBNI and PMAD-AA  network cards (ID#5362).

• New platform support

  • Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit version

  • VMware ESXi 6.5

• Performance improvements

  • Performance is improved (ID#2381, ID#3144).

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

  • Instruction scheduling is updated with Ivy Bridge and Haswell tables (ID#4619).

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

• 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).

  • PCI I/O Bypass controller is available. It allows to specify disk controllers as DI<x>, DR<x> and DU<x>, where x is selected according to VMS naming scheme (ID#4786).

  • 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).

  • CFG template files are updated to provide correct examples for "hw_model", "system_name", "architecture" and "dsrdb" parameters (ID#4697).

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

• New licensing options

  • 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" is added. It monitors Charon license expiration date and warns user about it (ID#4903). 20 Jul 2017 Note: automatic installation removed when installing Charon-AXP. It has now to be installed manually.

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

• 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 the executables it runs during installation/deinstallation (ID#4756).

  • New icons for utilities are introduced (ID#4973).

• Charon utilities

  • New Charon Virtual Machine 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 have been updated (ID#4743).

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

  • MTD utility supports Charon-SMA format (ID#4842).

  • LOGMOND utility provides sample scripts (ID#4902).

• New platform support

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

  • VMware ESXi 6.0

  • Microsoft Hyper-V on Server 2012 R2

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

• Charon product packaging

  • All emulated AXP models are installed by default. Allowed AXP 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)

• Performance improvements

  • General performance improvement up to 10% for some usage scenarios (ID#4474)

  • Deep I/O queuing is implemented for virtual SCSI adapters. Using up to 8 parallel I/O threads per disk and up to 16 per controller can significantly improve I/O performance if guest applications can benefit from multi threaded I/O (ID#3144)

  • Internal Charon-AXP performance counters for various subsystems (CPU, DIT, Network I/O, and Disk I/O) may be streamed to the Charon log file. The log has to be sent to Stromasys for analysis (ID#4141)

  • Stability in FC Presentation mode has been improved (ID#4294)

• New configuration options and configuration changes

  • MPIO storage path support is implemented (ID#4328)

  • Write-through caching of virtual disks is implemented; it can be set with a parameter "use_io_file_buffering = write-through".  By default it is switched off. (ID#4613)

  • VLANs are supported (ID#4401)

  • Sample configuration files are updated with correct values for "hw_model", "system_name", "architecture" and "dsrdb" parameters (ID#4697)

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

  • CARON 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)

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

• New licensing options. Please refer to User Manual and online Knowledge Base for details,  technical restrictions, and best practices (ID#2856, #4137, #4285)

  • 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) 

  • Software License can be relocated to another host

  • 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 note that Charon HASP runtime environment is customized by Stromasys. Environment downloaded directly from 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 

  • Logmond supports multi instance and rotating log configurations

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

  • DE602 network adapter is added to Network Control Center configuration page (ID#4655)

  • Network Control Center (Network Control Center) 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)

• New "HASP View" utility is able to show all the available license keys and the content of the license they contain (ID#4461)

• Charon log is created in English language only, the rest of localization are disabled (ID#4509)

• DS10 emulator is added to Charon-AXP/DS10 product (ID#4176)

• EI device support - DE602 (Compaq NC3131) network adapter is added (ID#4185)

• Sentinel Software Licensing (SL) is fully supported (ID#4344)

• HASP View utility is able to display the multi site configuration license parameters and it is improved (ID#4059, 4165)

• PCI device multifunction is fully supported (ID#4007)

• CPU IDLEing is enabled for all Alpha emulators on OpenVMS (ID#4090)

• Charon licenses can be controlled via CFG file now: it is possible to specify main and backup key (ID#4249)

• PCI-to-PCI bridges are supported (ID#4428)