Cloud Instance Minimum Hardware Requirements

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 and possibly new instance 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, 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 default allocation and configuration options
      

• Minimum memory requirements:
  • At least 2GB of RAM for the host operating system, 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. See the CPU Configuration section mentioned above for detailed configuration information. Please note: under sustained high workloads, 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 addition, note the following points:
  
  • 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, a system with many emulated CPUs is usually able to create a higher I/O load and thus the number of CPUs available for I/O may have to be increased. Additional CPUs may also be required in hyper-treading environments to avoid threads with a high workload 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.