Case Study: Department of National Defence, Canada preserves Aurora VAX systems and cuts costs with Stromasys CHARON‑VAX

CHARON™-VAX Aids Aurora Aircraft for Canadian Department of National Defence

The Software Engineering Squadron (SES) at 14 Wing Greenwood supports the CP-140 Aurora’s onboard and ground systems, maintaining over 500,000 lines of mission‑critical code since 1980. By 2007 their VAX 6510/6520 hardware had become obsolete, support was scarce, and a full platform migration was impractical—complicated further by missing source code and a proprietary Rockwell card—while the aircraft’s 24/7 surveillance and OpenVMS security requirements left no room for hardware failure.

SES adopted Stromasys CHARON-VAX virtualization, deploying it on an HP ProLiant DL380 with implementation support from Quayle Consulting. After configuring a virtual DHQ11 to meet serial‑port baud requirements, their virtual VAXes now boot and run like the originals, enabling continued development without rewriting code, while reducing energy use, freeing data-center floor space, increasing storage capacity, and cutting maintenance costs.

Department of National Defence, Canada

Wayne Graham

Resource Manager, 14 Software Engineering Squadron