Windows virtual machine with labview on a Mac

[David_Lieberman]

I am about to buy a Mac laptop with virtualization software (either VMware or Parallels), then create a Windows 7 virtual machine and put Labview for Windows Professional on it.

I searched the board and found some discussion of this configuration but it is several years old.

I would just like to hear from people who have done this and learn from their experiences.  Are there any pitfalls, features that don't work, performance problems, setup difficulties, whatever.  Also, do you prefer VMware or Parallels. 

One other thing:  I would like to create at least four virtual machines (Windows with Labview development, Windows without LV to test the applications in a non-labview environment, and similar for MacOS}.  Is this a reasonable thing to do?

Regards,

David

[johnsold]

David,

I have not used either VMware or Parallels, just Bootcamp.  Will you be using any hardware, such as DAQ devices?  Some hardware drivers do not seem to work well through virtualization.  For hardware intensive systems Bootcamp may be the best choice.

I may be pushed into going your route before too long, so please keep this thread updated with what you learn.

Thanks,

Lynn

[Matthew_Williams]

Hi David.  I have had good luck running Win 7 and XP guests with various versions of LabVIEW (8.5 - 2011) on a CentOS host laptop using virtualbox.

I don't use any PCI hardware, just USB, serial and ethernet (cFP and cRIO), all with good results.  I have found that the USB devices like

cDAQ must be powered up after the VM is running or they never do connect properly.  Don't know why, and it doesn't matter for my use.

Make sure you get enough ram to handle all of the vms you want open at the same time, and the host.  I have 8G in a two year old dual core,

would definitely go for 12 or 16G now, and quad core.  If the system starts hitting virtual memory it becomes unusable.  Dedicate a vm to each version of LV, if

you need multiple versions.

One huge advantage of the vm approach is that when it is time to update the host, you just copy over all of the vms to the new host and pick up where you left off.

I have found that LV can not access shared volumes on the host via the project manager, so I can't store all of my code on the host.  Not a big deal for me,

more of a minor annoyance.

Matt

[David_Lieberman]

A quick update.

Since I last wrote I purchased a Macbook 17" running Lion.  I purchased and installed VMware Fusion.  Then purchased a copy of Windows 7 and installed it as a virtual machine under VMware.

Today I received my copy of Labview 2011 for Windows and installed it on the Windows 7 virtual machine.  All of this went without a hitch.  Tomorrow I will begin moving five years of Labview 7 applications over to the new machine.

I have just one disappointment. It was my intention to create two windows virtual machines, one of which would be my development machine with the  Labview development system installed and the other my test machine without the labview system.  Unfortunately, Windows will not let me do that; I would have to buy two windows licenses and at $200 a pop that begins to run into money.  Not to let Apple off the hook;  they do not let you run two copies of Lion on the same machine even if you were to buy two copies.  If anyone has a workaround, let me know.

David

[SnowMule]

Can't say specifically with Labview, but I use Parallels on my Mac to do all my windows- and linux-y stuff. 

Need windows for some device interaction where software isn't available in *nix/Mac (Radio programmers, power commander, multisim, some GPS tools, etc) so nearly everything I do with the VM's requires some additional hardware.

Overall things have worked well.  There's some oddball things that happen sometimes (I haven't been able to repeatably get the devices to fail) but I'm 99% certain it's because i'm in a VM and the vm-to-hypervisor-to-host channel is wonky somewhere along the lines.  Programs my radios, talks to my GPS, so overall I'm happy with the setup.  Certainly easier than lugging around another machine.  TuneECU has been known to brick ECUs when run in a VM... if the cost of replacement hardware in the event that something goes horribly wrong is overly expensive I'd look into a cheap dedicated 'doze box.  Something to keep in mind.

Another possibility for something like that is to use a dedicated windows box and just remote into it from the Mac.  LogMeIn and VNC are cross-platform and both work well.  You can get a used/refurb'd laptop for cheap online.

[David_NMRSA]

Hi David,

This is an old thread and i'm not sure what you and the others have resolved in the meantime, but I have been using a MacBook Pro single core i5, with 4G RAM. Running Parallels with Win7 really chews up the RAM. In speaking with a bloke at the Apple store he says they recommend at least 8G when using Parallels - 4G for the VM and 4G for the host. I was told that this would drammatically improve performance (the Activity Monitor showed about 190 MB of available RAM when the Win8 machine was open - i have both Win7 and Win8).

I intend to upgrade the MacBook to a quad-core i7 and follow the same approach above.

I am yet to run LabVIEW and test my hardware interaction but I have a good feeling about my success. Unfortunately, I know what software does for good feelings and am interesting to receive any further updates you - and the other people - can offer in your intended approach.

Regards,

David.

[David_Lieberman]

Hi David,

As indicated above I have been running a windows virtual machine using VMware on a 17 inch macbook pro for quite a while now.  I have not experienced significant problems.  Labview and labview generated apps work fine in the virtual environment.

But would I do it again?  I think not.  The economics don't work.  You can buy a quite capable Windows laptop for less than $500.  The virtual machine alternative costs $200 for a copy of Windows, $80 for virtualization software (Parallels or VMware) plus extra memory on the Mac (I have 8 gb) plus a more powerful machine, etc.  I ended up paying over $3,000 for the Mac hardware and extra software.  The alternative would have been $1,500 for a 15 inch Mac plus $500 for a Windows laptop.

Also, there is definitely a performance penalty.  Virtualization is not free.  Start up and shutdown times for Windows are more than twice as long under VMware than with a cheap HP laptop.

It is nice having all my files (Mac and Windows) on the same machine but I could have easily networked the Mac and Windows and had effectively the same result.  Expected benefits, such as a single backup disk for both operating systems didn't work out.  Apple's time machine software views the entire Windows environment as a single lump, so I am still stuck with two backup drives.

So the good news is that it works.  The bad news is that the costs (in my opinion) exceed the benefits.

David'

[RH2013]

Could you give tips on how you set up your network settings to have LabView operate via VirtualBox to connect to a RIO device via ethernet.

I am not able to do this.

Thanks.

[Yamaeda]

If you're using Win7 pro you can install a virtual XP in that with the same license. Ofcourse it's dual virtual machine if win7 already runs in VMWare, but you can e.g. have LV7-8 on XP and 2009+ on win7. 🙂

/Y

[Christopher123]

I find it so annoying that I have to reboot my Macintosh every time I want to work on a Microsoft program.
Can anybody please tell any other way to do that?