Some software (PLC development environments) can be fairly invasive to the operating system that it is installed on. They can also sometimes not interact well with each other (Siemens and Rockwell software) or with older versions of their own software (Beckhoff). ## Virtualisation Software There are a couple of options - VMWare Workstation Pro (use this one) - VirtualBox - Parallels It appears that on Windows the preferred option from PLC developers is VMWare Workstation Pro. VirtualBox also works. Both are free for personal use, VMWare Workstation Pro has a commercial offering (which is what we should use). Parallels is the version for the Mac. It isn't as useful at the moment because the Mac runs on ARM processors and most of the Windows software that we would want to use doesn't. It does somewhat appear as though this sort of software is becoming abandoned. I think Docker might have taken a lot of the air out of the market (2024). ## General Setup We want to try and minimise disk space usage and setup time. As a result I'd recommend - Having a base OS install for each different OS (Win10, Win11, etc.,). This should be setup to have all cruft removed and be ready to go as a clean installation. Once this one is setup it should never be used directly. - Install VMWare Tools - Autologin - Shared folders (ByCompanyDB and Documents) - For each software platform that we want to use we clone the base OS and install the software. This then becomes the base image for that software ## Tips - Use the unity setting to get the VM to take over the full screen completely - Ctrl + Alt keys will break you back out of the VM