Great post on virtualization. I haven't played with VMWare yet, but I know of one product marketing / sales application that I could use this for - demo systems running process simulation on a laptop. Just think - a virtual controller running inside a virtual PC. I wonder how the performance and reliability would work out. I've been using remote desktop instead. Another - sharing workstation images on VMWare for easier pre-release testing of weekly software builds. - Mike Boudreaux from fftogo

Mike, Jim - this is a great approach, especially for engineering and development purposes. We have virtual images of several DCS's - it's a powerful way to demonstrate HMI concepts with customers, to develop control logic, and to keep multiple past versions of DCS software for compatibility testing and for loading existing configuration for plants that have not had a recent DCS upgrade. I wouldn't recommend it for live control applications but virtual controllers on a VM are definitely powerful tools. - Aaron Crews