New engineers often question why a company runs STEP 7, WinCC, SIMATIC Manager, and similar packages inside VMware when they visibly run slower than on bare metal. The performance penalty is real, but it is the accepted cost of solving four structural problems with engineering software: version coexistence, installation collapse, hardware migration, and operating-system compatibility.
Why Engineering Workstations Use Virtual Machines
Engineering packages from different vendors — and even different versions from the same vendor — frequently conflict when installed side by side. Siemens software is a repeat offender: field experience includes intermittent failures to connect to a PLC that were only resolved by reinstalling the software. Isolating each fragile toolchain in its own VM contains that breakage. When one environment corrupts, you discard it and copy a known-good VM instead of rebuilding the whole workstation.
Two further drivers are migration and OS support. Moving to a new laptop means installing the hypervisor and copying the VM files — no re-installation of licensed, activation-bound engineering suites. And some legacy packages simply do not support current operating systems; the fix is to run them on the older OS they were built for inside a VM. For Siemens products, verify supported operating systems against the official compatibility list in Siemens Industry Online Support (support.industry.siemens.com, entry 8250891) before choosing a guest OS.
Grouping Software Across VMs
A proven grouping strategy puts mutually conflicting or version-sensitive packages on dedicated VMs and consolidates well-behaved, rarely used tools together:
| VM | Contents | Reason for isolation |
|---|---|---|
| One per TIA Portal version | Each TIA major version; minor versions such as V15 and V15.1 also separated, with related Siemens components | TIA versions do not coexist reliably |
| Legacy TIA VM | TIA V10.5 on a Windows XP guest | Legacy OS requirement |
| STEP 7 Classic VM | STEP 7 Classic alone | Conflict avoidance with TIA installations |
| Rockwell VMs | RSLogix 500 on one VM, RSLogix 5000 on a separate VM | Version/platform separation |
| Consolidated VM(s) | Omron CX, Unitronics, Yaskawa, Weintek, Mitsubishi GX, CODESYS variants, Beckhoff, EcoStruxure Machine Expert, B&R, Inductive Automation | These coexist without issues and are seldom used |
Adjust the groups to your own conflict history — the rule is that any package that has ever broken a shared install earns its own VM.
Backup, Project Storage, and Recovery Practice
Keep real project files on the host, not inside the guest, and back them up daily; only temporary or practice projects should live inside a VM. Back up every VM image, refresh backups of frequently used VMs regularly, and archive seldom-used VMs to external storage, copying them back to the laptop only when needed. If a VM develops problems, verify nothing of value remains inside it, set it aside, restore a clean copy, confirm the restored VM works, then delete the broken one.
Mitigating the Performance Penalty
VMs do run slower — on aging hardware, practically only one VM at a time, and TIA Portal is noticeably sluggish. The mitigations are straightforward: run the VMs on a fast host, always place VM disks on an SSD, and limit concurrent VMs to what the hardware can handle. Accepting some lag is the trade for never losing a week to a collapsed engineering installation.
FAQ
Why do companies install STEP 7 and WinCC in VMware instead of natively?
Engineering packages conflict with each other and with other versions of themselves, so isolating them in VMs prevents installation collapse, allows legacy operating systems, and makes migration to new hardware a file copy rather than a re-installation.
Can TIA Portal V15 and V15.1 be installed on the same machine?
Field practice is to give each TIA major version — and even minor versions such as V15 and V15.1 — its own VM, along with any related Siemens components, because they do not coexist reliably.
How do you make TIA Portal run faster in a virtual machine?
Place the VM disks on an SSD, use a fast host machine, and run only one VM at a time on limited hardware. Keep real projects on the host with daily backups so a slow or broken VM can be replaced without data loss.
