Upgrading VMware Tools
Once the server has been upgraded to ESXi 5.1, you can now start running virtual machines on the server. But not everything has been migrated to Version 5.1 yet. VMware Tools running inside the virtual machines need to be upgraded as well.
VMware Tools include the following:
VMware device drivers for the virtual machine hardware
VMware Tools control panel
VMware balloon driver (
memctl)
VMware Tools are available in specific type of ISOs (guest-operating type) packed with the ESX server. For Linux, they are also available as VMware Operating Specific Packages (OSPs) for download from the following repository URL:
http://packages.vmware.com/tools
In this recipe, we will learn how to upgrade the VMware Tools on the virtual machines.
How to do it...
The VMware Tools upgrade can be either done using vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client. I will show you how to perform the task using the vSphere Web Client:
Note
The virtual machine requires a reboot for a successful completion of the VMware Tools upgrade. So, plan for a scheduled downtime to perform this task on the production virtual machines.
Connect to the vCenter Server using the Web Client.
Navigate to the VMs and Templates Inventory view.
Locate the VM and make sure it is powered-on and running.
Right-click on the VM and navigate to All vCenter Actions | Guest OS | Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.
Choose the Automatic Upgrade option and then click on Upgrade to initiate the upgrade.
How it works...
The Automatic Upgrade option requires no user interaction. It will:
Automatically uninstall the older version of VMware Tools
Install the new version from the ISO that gets mounted
Reboot the guest operating system (GOS) to finish the tools upgrade
To verify whether the tools upgrade is successfully completed, log on to the guest operating system then right-click on the system tray icon for VMware Tools, and click on About VMware Tools, which should show you the version of the VMware Tools.
On clicking the About VMware Tools menu item, it should bring up a dialog box showing the tools' version.
You can also check the virtual machine's tools version by navigating to vCenter Servers | Clusters | Related Objects | Virtual Machines. This will list all the virtual machines and its VMware Tools version status. The VMware Tools version status column is not enabled by default, you will have to enable it manually.
There's more...
Since we generally upgrade the virtual machine hardware or VMware Tools after a host upgrade, you will have to perform the upgrade on many virtual machines. Following the procedure we learned so far when dealing with hundreds of VM is always a tedious task. Fortunately we have an alternative method:
Once you are at the vSphere Web Client interface for vCenter, select the datacenter/cluster for the VMs and navigate to the Related Objects tab.
On the Related Objects tab, select the Virtual Machines subtab.
Highlight all or the needed VMs from the list and click on the Actions gear icon to navigate to the Compatibility and the Tools upgrade menu item.
Since you have multiple VMs selected, which may be running on different version of ESX server, you will get an option to choose between the compatible versions of the virtual machine hardware and the number of virtual machines to which the changes will be applied.
