Virtual PC's for different PLC Apps

cjd1965 · May 9, 2008

Hi
I am wondering if people are having success with running a virtual machine for each different PLC vendor (say AB / Siemens / GE Fanuc etc and would like to know how it is working out and if there are any pitfalls etc in this approach.

I am considering using VMWare Server to do exactly this and am looking for opinions

Cheers

geniusintraining · May 9, 2008

I think its a good idea, BUT.... they are memory/disk hogs, you would need to install your operating system (XP for me) for every virtual machine, so you would need to have a very very large hard drive.

I have never experienced any issues but I know they are out there, Siemens does not like several others also Wonderware has issues playing with others, for me it's better to have a couple of laptops

EDIT: if you ever need a DOS virtual machine look up DOSBOX, its very nice, it works very good and its free

surferb · May 9, 2008

What apps are you running with each vendor? To me it makes sense to consolidate the interface to your clients. Communicating with different vendors is simply a matter of using a pluggable OPC server that can talk to different PLC types.

I've been playing with VMWare ESX (infastructure) on a pair of new Dell Poweredge 1950s. It's REALLY COOL! Your application servers are all disk images. The VMotion feature balances "virtual machines" across physical machines for reliability and performance. For example, you can move all the "virtual machines" to the other physical computer to take one down for maintenance. My setup has a pair of Dell branded EMC AX-150 SANs, which make things a little easier since both physical computers are connected to the storage drive. I'm not sure how VMotion would work if all the images resided on a local hard drive, but I digress...

I'm amazed at the performance that you get with a (relatively) entry level virtualized setup. Even the "heavier" database/email/terminal servers perform well. These servers also have a 4 port GBit NIC card in addition to the builtin 2, which is shared in a pool between the virtual machines. Compare this to running 8 separate servers without fault tolerance...

ghettofreeryder · May 10, 2008

I have a few VM applications out there, well, two to be exact. All of my programming software is installed on a VM(AB, GE, EZ) and we are also running an RSView32 server, active display server, rslinx in another vm. Works good, faster reboots, more flexible as Nathan eluded to

surferb · May 10, 2008

Are the virtual machine images on a local hard drive somewhere or a shared network resource? Having images "somewhere else", loading them quickly, and having some backup scheme seems like the trickiest part to manage.

Like you said, they boot quickly too. More importantly, separating the same functionality to more virtual machines eliminates potential conflicts between different products on an OS (especially with updates). It also gives you increased granularity with what you're running - you can have a setup that resembles many fairly fresh installs, as opposed to my development desktop machine that EVERYTHING installed.

This should be ideal for clunky, industry specific and legacy industrial software. If your applications always behaved properly including updates, weren't difficult to install/migrate, and played well with each other these features would be academic.

ghettofreeryder said:
I have a few VM applications out there, well, two to be exact. All of my programming software is installed on a VM(AB, GE, EZ) and we are also running an RSView32 server, active display server, rslinx in another vm. Works good, faster reboots, more flexible as Nathan eluded to

Amazingmg · May 11, 2008

surferb said:
What apps are you running with each vendor? To me it makes sense to consolidate the interface to your clients. Communicating with different vendors is simply a matter of using a pluggable OPC server that can talk to different PLC types.

I've been playing with VMWare ESX (infastructure) on a pair of new Dell Poweredge 1950s. It's REALLY COOL! Your application servers are all disk images. The VMotion feature balances "virtual machines" across physical machines for reliability and performance. For example, you can move all the "virtual machines" to the other physical computer to take one down for maintenance. My setup has a pair of Dell branded EMC AX-150 SANs, which make things a little easier since both physical computers are connected to the storage drive. I'm not sure how VMotion would work if all the images resided on a local hard drive, but I digress...

I'm amazed at the performance that you get with a (relatively) entry level virtualized setup. Even the "heavier" database/email/terminal servers perform well. These servers also have a 4 port GBit NIC card in addition to the builtin 2, which is shared in a pool between the virtual machines. Compare this to running 8 separate servers without fault tolerance...

Sounds very neat. I have a "spare" 1950 poweredge that I want to try this on. Did you use the VMware converter to convert the physical drives to virtual?

Operaghost · May 11, 2008

I use VMWare Workstation daily. The only issue I run into is the lack of PCMCIA support. Apparently "Smart Card" support is coming in v6.5. I believe that will cover Express Cards but not PCMCIA.

As mentioned previously, they can be a space hog on your HD but there are tricks to minimize the space they use. People often make a virtual disk that is much larger than necessary and they allocate all of that space immediately. Most of my VMs are set with a 20GB virtual hard disk but they only grow to the size they require. So if your apps only require 4GB, then that is all the space it will consume.

Also, linked clones can be a great way to cut down on space. As well as using snapshots instead of clones.

OG

surferb · May 11, 2008

I built the servers from scratch, but will be playing with VMWare converter with VMWare Workstation like Operaghost. Servers are a bit more straightforward (wrt virtualization) because they shouldn't have nearly as many applications installed and data should be stored on a share that doesn't need to be imaged.

Amazingmg said:
Sounds very neat. I have a "spare" 1950 poweredge that I want to try this on. Did you use the VMware converter to convert the physical drives to virtual?

ghettofreeryder · May 13, 2008

Yeah, if you dont need PCMCIA, VMs are the way to go. Just keep a copy of the fresh VM at home on your server, and I just bring all my working VMs on a 32 Gb flash drive. Works great.

Virtual PC's for different PLC Apps

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