Overview

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machines guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality.

If a new version of VMware Tools is available for a virtual machine, an alarm icon

with a corresponding message appears on the particular VM in the VM management of the Self-Service-Portal¹.
For VMs in the Enterprise Cloud, the responsible VM administrators are also informed byCentreon by email.

¹VM management Enterprise Cloud
VM management Research Cloud

How to upgrade the VMware Tools of a virtual machine?

Linux

The Open Virtual Machine Tools (open-vm-tools) are included in the official package sources of current Linux distributions and can be conveniently installed via package management. The update is performed automatically during the regular update process of the operating system.

Virtual machines that have been deployed with a preinstalled operating system already include the open-vm-tools package. If necessary, or if you installed the operating system yourself, you must post-install the open-vm-tools package as follows:

Debian / Ubuntu
- ```
sudo apt install open-vm-tools
```
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
- ```
zypper install open-vm-tools
```
CentOS
- ```
yum install open-vm-tools
```

Windows

By default, the update is performed automatically at VM restart.
Alternatively, the VMware Tools can be updated in the VM management of the Self-Service-Portal by clicking on Update VMware Tools in the respective 3-dot menu. If necessary, the guest operating system is restarted automatically.

Under a few circumstances, a manual update or installation of the VMware Tools is required. You can do this using the VM Remote Console (VMRC) as follows:

1. In the Virtual Machine menu, select the Update VMware Tools... entry.
If the VMware Tools are not yet installed, the menu item is named Install VMware Tools...

2. By clicking the Install button, the VMware Tools installation media is mapped to the virtual CD/DVD drive of the VM.

3. If the installation program does not start automatically, run setup64.exe on the virtual CD/DVD drive (D:\ by default).

4. Run through the installation program using the default settings.

5. After the installation is complete, restart the operating system.