The Charon-SSP VE License server provides a new type of licensing for the Charon-SSP product. This is in addition to the already existing licensing models. This section briefly describes the different licensing concepts and products.

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Charon-SSP VE Licenses

The main characteristics of VE (Virtual Environment) licenses are the following:

• Software licenses only.
• Developed by Stromasys.
• Installed on Charon-SSP host or separate license server.
• Require the Charon-SSP VE license server software.
• Require matching Charon-SSP emulator software.
• Can currently only be used in cloud environments (at the time of writing: AWS, OCI, Azure, and GCP).
• Currently only available for Charon-SSP products.

This document describes the use of this type of licenses.

Sentinel (Gemalto) Licenses

Sentinel HASP licenses are the "traditional" licensing method for Charon emulator products. Their main characteristics are:

• Software and hardware (dongle) licences.
• Based on third-party vendor solution.
• Require special third-party license driver software.
• Installed on Charon-SSP host or separate license server.
• Problematic in cloud environments.
• Dongles are flexible and host-hardware independent (as long as there is a free USB port).

Please refer to  the Charon License Handbook (Handbooks) for details about these licenses.

Automatic Cloud Marketplace Licensing

When installing a Charon-SSP image from a supported cloud marketplace (at the time of writing: AWS, OCI, Azure, and GCP), the cloud instance automatically receives a license at first launch. The license server must be reachable via a cloud-specific public IP address.

Reason for VE Licenses

Other license types have drawbacks that prompted the development of VE licenses:

• USB dongles are by nature not suitable for cloud environments and their use in VMware environments is somewhat complex.
• Sentinel software licenses are easy to install in a cloud or VMware environment. However, their ties to real hardware characteristics also make it easy to inadvertently invalidate them in such environments. Hence they are also not suited for use in cloud environments. Other Sentinel software license types do not provide the same level of license security.
• Marketplace automatic licensing does not allow a customer-specific environment in the cloud without Internet access. This is not suitable for many customers.

VE licenses are designed to enable the ease-of-use of software licenses while providing a high level of security for licensing Charon-SSP products in virtualized environments. At the time of writing, VE licenses are specific to cloud environments.