Virtual Environments

I have several different manufacturers' PLCs and HMIs that I support. One is a Modicon Quantum system programmed with Concept. My laptop in Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and Concept will not run in that environment so I use the Windows XP Mode virtualization to run Concept, and it works quite nicely. I was even able to run the PLC simulator in that environment and test an Citect HMI project developed on my base Window 7 OS, all on the same laptop. Which got me to thinking...

...about using setting up different virtual machines on my laptop, one for each manufacturer's software, or at least the major ones I use. For instance, I use Rockwell Software, Siemens and Schneider quite a bit. The software for all three manufacturers is installed in the Windows 7 Pro base OS of my laptop. I know each one has different services, etc. that run in the background and, "knock on wood", I have not seen any conflict between them, but having all those services unnecessarily running in the background seems like a waste of resources.

What I am considering is setting up those virtual machines and only installing Rockwell Software on one, Siemens on another and Schneider on a third. In theory, only services, etc. associated with that manufacturer would load and run only when I load that virtual environment.

Thoughts?

VM's all the way. Either by segregation of brands or clients. It's just so easy to have a backup ready to go when things go bad.

The downside of the VM route is that you may save on having all those services running in the background, but you also end up having windows running twice on your machine when the VM is going.

That said, I'm a huge fan of the VM plan, and thats what I use for everything.

Based on the early returns it seems VMs are the way to go. Any suggestions on whose VM platform works well?

We use VMware Workstation. Rockwell tests their software in this environment and will actually support it. We typically use one vm with all the current Rockwell Software loaded. We use client/project specific vms to support particular versions of FTView for instance.

Vote for using virtual machines as well. I use VMware workstation for mobile applications, such as laptops. However, i do have an ESXi server setup for plant-wide access to multiple virtual machines.

Thanks for all the feedback on VMs. Today's the day I will take the plunge. I not VMware Workstation seems to be the most mentioned and it is more feature rich than Player. Would Player work just as well or should I not bother and go ahead with Workstation?

There is a new technology that seems to be giving VMs a run for the money. This is referred to as containers. Docker is one of the popular ones. I have not tried it yet, so I cannot speak for it in either good or bad, but it may at least be worth looking into. This page gives a bit of a comparison between VM and containers:

https://www.docker.com/what-docker

dmned64 said:

Thanks for all the feedback on VMs. Today's the day I will take the plunge. I not VMware Workstation seems to be the most mentioned and it is more feature rich than Player. Would Player work just as well or should I not bother and go ahead with Workstation?

Click to expand...

Workstation is less than £200 over here so no reason to use use player, also you don't really get all the configuration and workflow you need to run and mange things properly, VM Ware Unity is awesome, basically allows you to run run applications from the VM direct on your desktop.

One thing though, make sure your host machine has at least 16GB RAM.

I know this discussion has been more about VMs than controls hardware/software, so please forgive the tangent. One thing that seems to make VMs less workable is the need to have a separate operating system license or product key for each VM you create.

Thoughts, or is that too big a can of worms to open?

dmned64 said:

I know this discussion has been more about VMs than controls hardware/software, so please forgive the tangent. One thing that seems to make VMs less workable is the need to have a separate operating system license or product key for each VM you create.

Thoughts, or is that too big a can of worms to open?

Click to expand...

Can of worms, none of ours are as they are development only non production applications. Have a look at MSDN licensing or whatever MS call it now.

dmned64 said:

I know this discussion has been more about VMs than controls hardware/software, so please forgive the tangent. One thing that seems to make VMs less workable is the need to have a separate operating system license or product key for each VM you create.

Thoughts, or is that too big a can of worms to open?

Click to expand...

The OS licensing is the biggest hurdle. VM's are great and make our jobs easier, but you still have to be responsible for doing things the right way. Volume licensing makes it easier if your business uses that model. If they don't, then you should be purchasing licensing for each VM.

Archie said:

There is a new technology that seems to be giving VMs a run for the money. This is referred to as containers. Docker is one of the popular ones. I have not tried it yet, so I cannot speak for it in either good or bad, but it may at least be worth looking into. This page gives a bit of a comparison between VM and containers:

https://www.docker.com/what-docker

Click to expand...

So, while VMs seem attractive for what I would like to do the need to have distinct OS licensing for each VM dampens the idea a bit. Looking at @Archie's suggestion regarding Docker, that scheme doesn't require a guest OS for each instance so I suppose that is a way around the need for multiple OS licenses.

My original goal was to have the different manufacturer's services, library files, bins, etc. to be "offline" until I need to work on a project using their software. For example, Rockwell's FactoryTalk automatically loads several services which are always running in the background. It would be nice to only have them running when I boot to a VM or something similar. Same for Siemens, Schneider, and others I have installed on my laptop.

We grew tired of fighting issues with FTView ME that were often caused by configuration changes on the computers it was run and instead installed it on a VM running Windows Server 2012R2 hosted on our VCenter cluster. No problems so far, and some of the immediate benefits we've realized are:

- Multiple users can log into the server and work on their own HMI project (up to the license count)
- We can delegate who can use the server through Active Directory
- The FTView installation is without conflicting software
- The FTView version is 'plant-standardized'
- The projects are guaranteed to be the latest, 'plant-standard' version
- Server backups are regularly run
- The VM can be allocated more resources (memory, CPU core/socket count) as needs grow, without the need to reinstall the operating system or FTView

EDITORIAL COMMENT: I can see the obligation to have distinct operating system licenses for each VM that would be created on a server or network that would be accessible to multiple physical machines. In fact, this is the use I have seen most frequently, where a company configures several Windows Server 20xx virtual machines to function in a domain, perhaps one as a file server, another as an email server, etc.

However, it seems restrictive to not allow a virtual machine or machines to be created on one physical machine (e.g., my laptop), with a guest OS the same as the OS on the physical machine, and only accessed by that one physical machine, without having to obtain OS licenses for each instance.

I can understand if the VM is to run a guest OS different than the physical machine, e.g. I also have Modicon Concept which will not run on Windows 7 64-bit. For that I use Windows XP Mode, which is free, and works just fine, and if I wanted to use VMware instead I completely understand the need to have a licensed copy of XP, which I do own.

I am now uncertain what I want to do going forward as it seems to do it properly I need to have more than the original OS license from my physical machine to create multiple VMs on that physical machine.