General Information

To manage Charon-SSP and the emulated SPARC systems, you must connect to the Charon-SSP AWS instance with the Charon-SSP Manager. The Charon-SSP Manager is the main interface to all important functions of the Charon-SSP software.

Prerequisites:

• The Charon-SSP Manager must be installed on your local system.
• For access via the public IP address of the instance:
  • The Security Group on your local system must at least allow SSH access. This allows the built-in SSH tunneling of the Charon-SSP Manger to work. Should you not use SSH tunneling, you must open up additional ports (see Firewall and AWS Security Group Considerations). However, if the connection runs over the Internet, Stromasys recommends strongly to use SSH tunneling to protect your Charon-SSP cloud instance and any emulated systems running on it.
  • You must have the public IP address of the Charon-SSP AWS instance. To determine this address refer to the instance information displayed on the AWS EC2 management console.
  • To use the Charon Manager integrated SSH tunnel, you need the private SSH key of the key-pair associated with your instance.
• For access via an SSH-based VPN:
  • Active SSH-based VPN (see SSH VPN - Connecting Charon Host and Guest to Customer Network)
  • Private IP address of the Charon-SSP host in the VPN

 Before connecting to the Charon-SSW AWS host with the Charon Manager for the first time after initial installation you must set the management password. This can either be done via the command line (see SSH Command-Line Access) or via the Charon Manager as described below. 

Starting the Charon Manager and Login to Charon Host

Starting the Charon Manager

Charon Manager on Linux

To start the Charon-SSP Manager and to open the Charon Manager login window, use the following command:

$ /opt/charon-manager/ssp-manager/ssp-manager

Charon Manager on Microsoft Windows

To start the Charon-SSP Manager and to open the Charon Manager login window, click on the Charon Manager icon.

The steps above will open the Charon Manager login window which has two tabs.

Filling in the Charon Manager Login Information

Step 1: the Charon Manager Login tab

If the management password has not yet been set, perform the following steps: Enter the public IP address of your Charon-SSP instance. Enter a random string into the password field. Enable the SSH tunnel configuration. Change to the SSH tab to fill in the required information there. If the management password has already been set, perform the following steps: Enter the public IP address or the private VPN IP address of your Charon-SSP instance. Enter the Charon-SSP management password. Enable the SSH tunnel configuration unless you use a connection across a secure VPN. If enabled, change to the SSH tab to fill in the required information there.

Step 2: the Charon Manager SSH tab

If you use the integrated SSH tunnel, perform the following steps: Enter the Charon-SSP user (charon or sshuser). Enter the path to the private key file (click on the three dots to open a file browser), In rare cases, you may need to add the path to the public key on the local system. Enter the passphrase for the private key if required.  Adjust the server port (default 22) if required.  The public key of the AWS key-pair can copied from the .ssh/authorized_keys file of the sshuser of the instance.

Step 3: connecting to the Charon host system

After entering all the required information, click on Connect to connect to the Charon-SSP AWS instance.

If the management password needs to be set, you will receive a prompt to enter the new password:

Enter the desired password and confirm it. Then click on Save. This will take you back to the Login tab.  Enter the new password. Click on Connect again.