KerryA

Virtual Guidelines

5 posts in this topic

I am one of the company I.T. members and have the resopnsibility of set up and some support for our engineers. I am not very familiar with the PLC world so be gentle - I recently discovered that ABB and Omron are best installed on a virtual PC and that not doing so is probably the reason my users have such head aches and why their Core i7 laptops are essentially no better than a 386 without a math co-pro... I got a little smarter this time and got a Lenovo W541 for the new Tech. I have a few questions about setting up these VMs 1) XP is no longer supported and hence blacklisted by the company, which means XP Mode is out of the question. I have decided to go with Virtual Box - From what I've seen in posts, it's a decent choice. 2) Do I add the VM to Active directory or keep it in a workgroup? 3) Do I bridge the NIC? 4) A separate VM for RSLogix 5000 and a separate VM for Omron CX-One? 5) Should I uninstall unnecessary stuff like Internet Explorer from the VMs? 6) Are there any other guidelines or things-to-watch-out-for that I should be aware of? Regards, Kerry

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1. VirtualBox is not an OS it is a virtual environment to run your needed OS, if that is XP, you will still need XP. 2. Do not use Active Directory. 3. Yes 4. Yes separate for each manufacturer and for major program versions. 5. No, just make sure that the VM's are large enough, drive space and RAM is cheap enough, do not skimp on it. 6. Probably. These

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Do not know about ABB but I run Omron straight in the OS. I have the latest version running on various laptops with XP, Windows 7 x 64 bit, Windows 8.1 x 64 bit and recently Windows 10 x 64 bit with no issues at all. One of the issues that arise is that some of the manufacturers are way behind the eight ball with there software and they often take a long time to update to the latest OS. Another issue is the what I call 'nasty' programs that do not release the serial port for example and you start another set of software and cannot access the serial port. I always run those in a virtual box. I am using VMware Workstation - the purchased variant - worth the money. Windows 7 x 64 bit inside. Another issue I see with some PLC software is that they spray files all over the hard drive - always run those in a VB as well. Great thing about a VB is you shut it down and you shut the whole software down - no nasty grabbing serial ports and the like to cause problems. I prefer Omron CX-One as when it shuts down it shuts down properly and does not leave very much running as a process at all so no nasty surprises. It also only saves 2 files - 1 for the program, including comments, and 1 for the setup. Nice and neat and compact. Some of the others have files all over the place! My latest laptop is HP Omen - a gamers machine - SSD and the like - quite nice. Only issue I have is it does not run the full. Windows - have just updated it to Windows 10 by way of thge free upgrade and have had no issues so far at all. I will have to upgrade to professional though - too many limitations on networking.

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The largest issue I run into time and time again with PLC software is that IT guys do not provide users the proper access to their machines. For Omron software, it's in the manuals that the user must have admin rights. Yet I go to sites all the time and find the engineers have the same level of rights on their PCs as the receptionists. Might as well throw that laptop in the trash, they can't do their jobs that way. IT guys (and BTW I have a Bachelors in Computers and Information System, was in IT before I switched to automation) need to understand that different types of users need different types of computers and different access rights. How the .... am I supposed to see if the USB driver installed properly if they lock me out of Device Manager? And in many cases, they don't even have rights to install a USB driver or use a flash drive. This admin rights issue is not just with Omron, I have seen it documented in many other vendors as well. When installing automation software, be logged in as the administrator, or log in as the user and make sure they have full admin rights on the machine. If they don't, chances are things won't work. That being said, on my personal PC I have multiple VirtualBox machines, each with one vendor's software installed. And they all still run Windows XP, because a bare VM running XP is about 4GB on my hard drive. Windows 7 with nothing else loaded can be about 16GB.

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I use VMWare for all of my automation software, running an i7 host with Win7 x64. The biggest things I can suggest are to max out the RAM and get a big, fast HDD. If you do that, it will run fine. For the VMs (WinXP and Win7 x64), I set up a host-only network for the license activations that are on the host and also have a bridged network connection. I've had a LOT of trouble with the bridged connection when I use the company's wifi network, so I usually disable it in the VM and use a USB NIC connected to the VM through the "Removable Devices" menu. Seamless and clean. The software in the VM can activate through the host-only network and connect to the machine through the USB NIC while the host is happily on the company wifi for internet, email, network storage, etc. The only time I use the bridged connection is when I need more than one VM to be connected at the same time (e.g. RSLogix and FT View Studio, which are in separate VMs). I don't normally do that since I have to jump through a hoop or two with the wifi adapter. I agree with the above: the engineers will need admin privileges. Both to install/maintain their software and to configure the network adapters, install drivers, figure out why the USB thingy isn't working, etc., etc.

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