Virtual Machine questions

[hardaysknight]

Hey guys, I had a few questions about using virtual machines with Siemens software.



Do you guys prefer VMWare Player/Pro, or would Virtual Box be suitable for this type of thing?



What kind of settings do you guys use for your virtual machine in order to set up the networking?


Thanks!

 

[Engineerj22]

I prefer VMware. Be prepared for it to run like trash (super slow).

 

[Engineerj22]

attached is what I use for the network setting in VMWare. I haven't had an issue with it.

 

[Engineerj22]

Other TIA guys, don't come at me with 8gb isn't enough! I can do the max for my machine (16gb) and then the VM and main computer will run like trash.

 

[andrewwei]

I prefer VMware. Be prepared for it to run like trash (super slow).

If you good hardware, it will run just as good as on local.
Good many mores CPU, lots ram, SSD, assign lots resource to it; it will run well.

 

[Engineerj22]

I do not have that luxury. So it runs like trash. It is on an SSD though, so it could be worse. I'm running a 4 year old dell here man, not all of us get new computers.

 

[mylespetro]

I've asked this before on here, but never really got a straight answer. How does everyone handle OS licenses on your VMs, both Win10 and older (7/XP)? Do you get legit OEM licenses or is it a bit of a wink-wink thing using unlicensed installs of Windows? Asking because I got a new Win10 Pro desktop recently with great specs, so I was poking around using Hyper-V, but it seems like it would get very expensive to have a license for each OS.

 

[Engineerj22]

I grab a few 7 licenses from old laptops for win10. With permission!

 

[ArcReactorKC]

I have multiple licenses, also have used enterprise licensing when I worked for larger corporations.

 

[ArcReactorKC]

For the OP's question, I usually use VirtualBox. It has been more reliable on windows 11 for me.

 

[JesperMP]

I have run VMware in smaller PCs with only 2-core i5 and 8 GB and then it runs truly horribly.
On my not-so-new 8-core i7 with 32 GB, TIA in the VM runs 'acceptably'.

Windows is corporate volume licensed.

 

[Operaghost]

Many use VMware and many user VirtualBox. It just comes down to preference. I personally have used VMware for years. With VMware you typically want the full version, not the Player. Only the full version supports snapshots, which is the most important feature for me. Others are fine with using Player.

With VMware you typically want the network settings Engineerj22 posted. Bridged networking allows your VM to have its own IP address on your network. It appears just like any other device on the network.

Selecting NAT has your host computer acting like a virtual router. Your VM sits on an isolated network and your host computer routes data to and from that network. This is handy in that your VM doesn't use an IP address on the live networks and it connects your VM to all networks the host is connected to. But on the downside, it may be more difficult to view or discover devices on the automation network since the VM isn't actually on that network.

Host-only is good when you don't want the VM to talk to the outside world. I use this frequently for testing. I might have one VM setup to emulate my PLC programs and have a second VM running my HMI. This allows me to make sure my HMI is viewing and interacting with my PLC properly. The VMs can talk to each other, and with the host, but they can't reach the outside world.

An issue that was mentioned was Windows licensing. Windows licensing can be a sticky issue. Using a license from a laptop often is not legit as the vendors typically usually use OEM licenses which are not transferrable. We have used Enterprise licensing which requires us to activate from our company license server. That license has to be reactivated every three months (happens automatically). This allows our IT group to know how many licenses we need without me having to keep coming back to them for license info.

My host is a 3-year old Dell with an i7 and 16GB of RAM and I can run one 8GB VM without issue. It runs just fine. When I need two VMs I usually reconfigure them to 4GB. Slower, but it still runs OK.

OG

 

[Engineerj22]

My company is a small 14-15 person operation, we don't have a lot of fancy things.

 

[tdoa]

VMWare Player is much faster than VirtualBox.

On my old company we used VirtualBox, on my current one they all use VMWare Player, and launching TIA Portal takes 30-60 seconds less on the VMWare..

You need to be sensible with the settings, and assuming you have a 4 core CPU, only allocate 2 cores to the VM, never max out the cores, because then the VM and Windows will fight for a core to be unused to be able to use it and it just makes things worse.

Also, given that it is a 4 year old laptop, clean it up, repaste with a good high viscosity thermal paste, and undervolt it with ThrottleStop assuming that it is an Intel CPU. You will get better performance, lower temps, and longer battery run times.

Also, consider maxing out the RAM, 4 year old means that its either DDR4 2133Mhz or DDR 2400Mhz, its cheap-ish, slap two sticks of 16GB(assuming its not some laptop with soldered RAM...) and VMs/TIA loves to have lots of RAM.

 

[Engineerj22]

I'll try that, the ram is maxed out. 20gb LOL for some reason. I would do more work in it, but this laptop is a major pain to work on, cause dell is a jerk. Any settings for Throttlestop?