Keep Intelligent Infrastructure virtual machines updated

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Overview
VMware Tools
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Overview

Virtual machines (VMs) in the Intelligent Infrastructure environment can last anywhere from a few hours to several years. For VMs that last longer than a few weeks, it's important to keep them up to date. This is different from installing updates and patches to the Guest Operating System contained on the VM.

VMware Tools

VMware Tools refers to a small set of drivers, services, and other software that are installed in the VM's Guest Operating System in order to facilitate communication between the VM OS and VMware's ESXi hypervisor layer. VM admins should keep this software up to date for the best performance, stability, and consistency.

The following are the main approaches VM admins can use to manage VMware Tools.

Manual management

To manually manage VMware Tools, you will need to mount an .iso image to the VM as a CD-ROM. This virtual CD contains an executable file to install or upgrade the VMware Tools software (.msi for Windows, .bin, .rpm, or .deb for Linux).

To start the process of manually managing VM Tools, use the II Self-Service portal to interact with a VM; see Interact with a VM in the Intelligent Infrastructure (II) self-service portal.

Be sure to select the resource action Mount VMware Tools installer.

Chocolatey package management

VMware Tools is also available for Windows through the Chocolatey package manager. Chocolatey uses a maintained package management system from within the OS to keep you up to date, which can be checked and updated programmatically.

To use Chocolatey to install VMware Tools for Windows, go to VMWare Tools for Windows.

Open VM Tools

The same driver and software functionality is also available as open source software as part of the Open VM Tools open source package. Most Linux systems include this software in their standard package management system.

VM admins that use Open VM Tools for Linux need to make sure they use the most recent release of the package for their specific distribution release, including any backported security fixes.

This approach allows VM admins to install and maintain the VMware Tools from within the operating system; for more, see Using Open VM Tools.