VMware Tools - Paiet/Tech-Journal-for-Everything GitHub Wiki

Understand what VMware Tools are and why they are important.

Explain the basic concepts of VMware Tools.

Identify the reasons why an organization needs to use VMware Tools.

Define the steps necessary to install the VMware Tools in a virtual machine.

External Resources:

VMware Tools is a set of services and modules that enable several features in VMware products for better management of, and seamless user interactions with, guest operating systems.

VMware Tools Lifecycle Management provides a simplified and scalable approach for installation and upgrade of VMware Tools. It includes a number of feature enhancements, driver-related enhancements, and support for new guest operating systems.

Open VM Tools (open-vm-tools) is the open source implementation of VMware Tools for Linux guest operating systems. For the latest copy of the Open VM Tools source code, see GitHub: https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools

List of operating systems with open-vm-tools:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 and later releases - SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and later releases - Ubuntu 14.04 and later releases - CentOS 7 and later releases - FreeBSD 10.3, 10.4 & 11.1 - Debian 7.x and later releases - Oracle Linux 7 and later - Fedora 19 and later releases - openSUSE 11.x and later releases

NOTE: If you use an open-vm-tools, the VMware Tools status is Guest Managed on the virtual machine Summary tab. The status Guest Managed means that you cannot use the vCenter Server to manage VMware Tools and you cannot use vSphere Update Manager to upgrade VMware Tools.

For vSphere deployments, VMware provides operating system specific packages (OSPs) as a packaging and distribution mechanism for VMware Tools.

The VMware Tools services start when the guest operating system starts. The service passes information between host and guest operating systems.

  • VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service or VGAuthService: VGAuthService in taskmgr provides support for SAML based authentication for vSphere Guest Operations.

  • VMware Snapshot Provider Service: VMware Snapshot Provider Service provides support for freezing or thawing file systems for VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service).

Note: This is applicable for Windows guest operating systems only.

  • VMware Tools Daemon Service: This application runs in the background. It is called vmtoolsd.exe on Windows guest operating systems, vmware-tools-daemon on Mac OS X guest operating systems, and vmtoolsd on Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris guest operating systems. The VMware Tools service performs the following tasks using the plug-ins:

  • autohidpi - Set guest screen resolution for Mac OS X guest operating systems. - autoLogon - Bypasses the guest operating system login when powering on a VM. - autoUpgrade - Handles VMware Tools upgrade operations. - bitMapper - Creates a bit map of disk blocks used by the guest operating system, used in vMotion. - deployPkg - Handles guest customization operations. - desktopEvents - Starting or stopping VMware Tools user service based on screen/X11 changes. Note: This is a VMware Tools user service plugin. - disableGuestHibernate - Disables option for hibernation in guest operating system. - diskWiper - Releases unused guest disk blocks so they can be reclaimed by the hypervisor. - dndcp - Drag and drop, copy and paste operations. Enables copying and pasting of text, graphics, and files between guest operating systems and hosts or client desktops. Note: This is a VMware Tools user service plugin. - appInfo - Collects the information about running applications inside the guest and publishes the information to a guest variable. - guestInfo - Collects and reports guest information and statistics to hypervisor. - hgfsServer - HGFS server for transferring files, drag and drop and VMware Tools upgrade operations. - hgfsUsability - Handles mapping HGFS folders to special user folders, adds HGFS links to the desktop. - hwUpgradeHelper - Handles changes due to virtual hardware upgrade. - powerOps - Handles graceful shutdown and reboot of the guest, and execution of scripts for a power operation. - resolutionKMS - Handles communicating guest user interface topology to the vmwgfx drm (direct rendering manager) driver. Note: This plugin is for Linux only. - resolutionSet - Handles guest screen re-sizing when vmwgfx drm (direct rendering manager) driver is not available. - timeSync - Synchronizes guest clock with host clock at power on or resume. - vmbackup - Handles freezing and thawing file systems during a quiesced snapshot operation. - vmtray - Provides VMware Tools tray icon and pop-up menu. Note: This is a VMware Tools user service plugin. - vsep - Manages NSX file and network introspection. - vix - Handles guest operations related to files, processes and registry.

Overview of VMware Tools (340): https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/340

How to install VMware Tools (1014294): https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1014294