CentOS 6 and 7 & Virtualization with VMware = open vm tools - rharmonson/richtech GitHub Wiki

CentOS 6 and 7 & Virtualization with VMware = open-vm-tools

If you have been following my wiki posts, you will have seen me use three different methods to install virtual machine device drivers for use with CentOS and VMware Workstation or ESXi. My challenge has been determining which method is best. Well, as of today I feel confident I have made a decision and will stick with it. Use open-vm-tools!

Several items resulted with me selecting the use of open-vm-tools versus tools via VMware vCenter, VMware Workstation, or VMware yum repository moving forward.

  1. As of RHEL / CentOS 7, open-vm-tools is part of the base repository.
  2. open-vm-tools is officially supported by VMware (see the URL below).
  3. open-vm-tools has a smaller footprint than VMware Tools.
  4. open-vm-tools is updated using the same process used to update the operating system packages, yum update.

Here is VMware KB2073803 stating the benefits of using open-vm-tools and that it is supported: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2073803