SillyBoy

Understanding the Virtual Machines

8 posts in this topic

Hello Dear Friend,

Need some advice regarding using the Virtual Machines.

I bought a new laptop for office use.

(for Programming various PLC and designing HMI/SCADA etc...)

 

The configurations of the Laptop are as below.

Model - Asus Tuf Gaming F15

Processor - Intel Core I5-10300H 10th Generation

RAM - 8GB DDR4

HDD - 1TB SSD M.2 NVMe PCIe

Graphics - 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GDDR6

2.5 GHz Base Speed, Up to 4.5 GHz Turbo Boost Speed, 8MB Cache, 4 Cores, 8 Threads.

 

I have never used Virtual Machine before, but this time I am planning to install all the automation-related software on VMs.

Main System - Windows 7 64bit + MS Office + Accounting Software + Mail etc.

I am planning to create 4 VMs as of now.

VM1 - Windows 7 + Schneider Software (Control Expert, Machine Expert, Citect, Vijeo Designer, etc...)

VM2 - Windows 7 + Omron + Delta + Fuji Software

VM3 - Windoes 7 + Siemens Software

VM4 - Windows 7 + Rockwell Softwares

 

I am planning to make two partitions of 1 TB SSD.

Partition-1 for Main System (100 GB)

Partition-2 VMs and all other Data (900 GB)

 

I will not run more than 1 VM at a time.

All the VMs will be used to run the software only. I am planning to store all the project backups outside the VMs.

 

Now my Questions - 

1) Should I use the VMs ?

2) Which VM software should I use? (I am preferring Freeware)

3) How much RAM and Processor should be assigned to each VM ?

4) How to configure a Graphics card to improve the performance of VM ?

5) How to access the storage of partition 2 in all the VMs to store all the data outside of VM ?

6) How do VMs use Processing Power of CPU and RAM ?

 

Please share your valuable suggestion and answers.

 

Have a Good Day.

 

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1. i would... years ago i tried running different software on a same machine and it was a pain... splitting it into VMs ensured that dealing with problems of one (such as upgrade) one does not have to worry about others. using VMs means added boot time of VM too, and one need to know a bit of networking to access PLC from within VM so things are clearly not perfect but imho this easily outweighs reloading something like Siemens software for example after some of AB upgrades which are (were) frequent.

2 then you want VirualBox

3. depends on machine, you can easily change it any time. you are not forced to make that decision when creating VM

4. install options for your VM. in case of VirtualBox it is done from menu Devices>Insert Options CD. 

5 each VM has option to chare folder with host machine

6. now sure what you mean here. all software uses CPU and RAM. VM itself is fairly light on resources but guest machine will need sufficient amount of CPU and RAM assigned. 

 

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Panic Mode summed it up pretty well. I strongly recommend the use of VMs for automation software. Due to our IT rules (and the fact that Rockwell supports VMWare and not VirtualBox), we're using VMWare Workstation Player. I started using them when my installation of RSView Studio (now FT View Studio for ME) crashed and wouldn't complete either the uninstall or reinstall process. Another issue we ran into was primarily with the Siemens software at first where we had to support multiple versions of the drive software that couldn't coexist. Later on, we ran into a similar issue with Rockwell where we had to keep using some old versions of RSLogix 5000 (back to v11) that wouldn't reliably work on Windows 7. VMs saved our bacon on more than one occasion.

The biggest issue I see with your setup is the RAM in your host PC. You will want to maximize that. 8GB will run your host OS pretty well, but you'll be struggling with even one VM. I know you said that you'd only ever run one VM at a time, but you should be prepared to run more than that. I did that too when I first started out, but now it's not unusual for me to have 2 or 3 running at once. RAM really isn't that expensive, so I'd max it out. My current laptop has 32GB which seems to serve me well. Remember that the RAM you allocate to the VM is  unavailable to the host and  you want the VM to run well.

For storage, it's very easy to map directories on the host (whether on the same partition or on a different drive altogether) as network drives in the VM. At least, it is in VMWare. It's been over a decade since I used VirtualBox, so I can't speak to that.

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I use Linux's native KVM with VirtManager and VirtViewer.  No more crossing my fingers when updating the OS.

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@pturmel I had some issues with KVM and VirtManager / VIrtviewer connecting USB I/O to the VM but that was Fedora 18/19 era.

Last two jobs I wokred have used VMware partially because of RA.

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I switched from VirtualBox to KVM ~5 years ago.  Got tired of kernel conflicts.

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Thank you everyone for your valuable comments and suggestions, I really appreciate that.

 

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I started doing this with VMware about 15 years ago, then switched to VirtualBox.  Have had no issue with VirtualBox and the brands of controllers I have worked with.

Partitioning your hard drive is not required in any fashion for VMs.  I would avoid doing that and locking yourself into a very small C drive.

And I have never had an issue with Rockwell software inside of VirtualBox, not sure why some think that needs expensive VMware...

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