advantages and disadvantages for programming in VMware

[bertvanderwegen]

Hey

What are advantages and disadvantages for programming in VMware?
I program in VMware for SCADA and PLC ? Have someone
experience in that region? What have you come across against?

Thanks

 

[mcnaughtc]

Bert

Have used Vmware several times with programming PLC'S and SCADA'S with no problems exeprience as of yet.

I Have used it with RSLOGIC 5,500 Rsview32 and RSVIEW ME.

Have laso had it working with Siemens Simatics PCS7, apart from that particular one being a bit of memory abuser and a bit slow, on the system i was using Have had no ill effects yet from using it

Regards
C.McNaught

 

[ahackwor]

Are you guys using VMWare on your own PC or on a plant floor HMI PC? For a plant floor HMI PC, it seems like VMWare would be useful in copying images from machine to machine. Also, you could have a standard image, then deploy it on any type of hardware.

 

[mcnaughtc]

Am currently running Vmware on my Laptop, As I need to support multiple operating Systems.

For a plant floor HMI PC, it seems like VMWare would be useful in copying images from machine to machine. Also, you could have a standard image, then deploy it on any type of hardware

I suppose that would be useful if you had more that one system to maintain but pointless if it only needs to talk to one system, and would also be handy if you wanted to take it back to the office to fault find a bug, but bear in mind if you wanted to transfer it sometimes these VM ware images depending on who set it up could be rather big in size.



But what I have done is just make it 4.4 gig in size which is normally just enough to get XP on there + service pack and simatic PCS7 or whatever, and then burn it to a dvd so I always have a fresh copy available if need be.


But while on this topic has any tried Microsoft Virtual Pc?




Regards,
Craig

 

[Kael]

Virtual PC doesnt work as well as VMWare. With the Siemens software, Virtual PC has a lot of display issues that I never see with VMWare.

On a side note, VMWare doesnt let you use any special hardware drivers outside the realm of USB drivers. VMWare doesn't support any PCMCIA cards, which might not be a problem for some people but worth mentioning.

Serial programming cables and USB programming cables seem to work just fine, but outside those your mostly out of luck based on my experience.

 

[mcnaughtc]

Kael

Thanks for refreshing my memory there for a second, if you use still use the old AB-PIC rs232 to Rs485 converter for the allen bradleys it does not work in VMware, or shall I say I never got it to work in VMware, but the 1747-AIC works fine.

 

[SCADA_Dude]

I use VMWare for all my development. It saves alot of time when there is an OS problem, instead of having to reload the OS, I just revert to a previously backed up VM image.

Also, since most development packages dont play nice with eachother, you can have a seperate VM for each product type.

This also allows me to put a VM image on a server and access it from different clients (even non windows ones).

 

[RussB]

VMWare is the best invention since "BASIC". The only down side is that once in a while it will not support something "new" that I want to try. But that is getting less and less too, as OS changes are getting farther apart.

 

[ggchavhan]

I have use VMware with Simatic Manager and WinCC it works fine with ethernet as well.
But when I tried to install PCS 7.0 .. installation stops showing error "The network is not available". I tried with VMWare 7 and 8. In VMware I tried all possible setting of network adaptor.

What could be the problem?

 

[iant]

ggchavhan has reposted this to a new thread
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=75897