On a new Windows Server 2003 server without the VMware Tools installed, there are no TimeOut settings configured.

You can find this setting in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\

The picture below, you’ll see the default settings from Microsoft:

After the installation of the VMware Tools, a new dword value called TimeoutValue is added with the hexadecimal value of 3c. This value represents a timeout of 60 seconds.

On a Linux VM the default timeout is 60 seconds (on a CentOS setup). You can find the timeout settings in:

/sys/block/<disk>/device/timeout

After the installation of the VMware Tools, the timeout value is changed to 180 seconds.

More info about this subject can be found here:

• KB1014

The first step after a fresh install of a CentOS 5.3 server is too install the packages gcc and kernel-devel. When these packages are installed, update them and reboot of the VM:

yum install gcc kernel-devel –y
yum update –y
reboot

Now we have to create a new folder so we can mount the VMware Tools cd-rom.

mkdir /media/cdrom –p

Start the VMware Tools Installer via the GUI:

Mount the cd-rom:

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

create a folder and copy the tar.gz file from the cd-rom to the folder:

mkdir /root/tarz –p
cp /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-4.0.0-xxxxxx.tar.gz /root/tarz/

Open the folder and extract the tar.gz file:

cd /root/tarz
tar zxvf VMwareTools-4.0.0-xxxxxx.tar.gz

Open the vmware-tools-distrib folder and start the installer:

cd vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

You can change the vnic to vmxnet via the following commands:

/etc/init.d/network stop
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vmxnet
modprobe vmxnet
/etc/init.d/network start

The final step is to reboot the VM.

Wow, it’s been a while since the last post.

I’ve been working hard virtualizing and mainting the environment at my work.
One of the things I’m in love right now is Solaris 10. It’s a different world for me, as I’m a Windows user since Windows 3.11. But in 3 days I’ve learned a lot of things, one of these things is how to install VMWare Tools on it.
So… here we go.

First, right click on your Guest Machine, go to Guest and then Install/Upgrade VMware Tools. At this time, the VMware Tool image will be mounted on Solaris.
Now in a Terminal on Solaris type:

#
# bash
bash-3.00# cp /cdrom/vmwaretools/ /export/home
bash-3.00# gunzip /export/home/vmware-solaris-tools.tar.gz
bash-3.00# tar -xvf /export/home/vmware-solaris-tools.tar
bash-3.00# cd /export/home/vmware-tools-distrib
bash-3.00# ./vmware-install.pl

Now customize the installation as you wish and reboot the system.

But, wait wait… As you can see you don’t have a network interface configured on your system.

Type:

sys-unconfig

Now, re-configure your system again and finally your network interface.

Hope it helps you!
See ya!

Having spent some time working for VMware, I know the odd thing about virtualisation, the latest buzz word in the IT game. However, despite the fact that it is undoubtedly the next big thing, a few people are still at odds with this emerging technology. So, in layman’s terms, focusing specifically on market leaders VMware, here’s what all the fuss is about…

Most modern x86 (32-bit) computers were designed to run only one operating system at any one time, dedicating all of the hardware resources to that host OS. In essence, virtualisation allows you to logically divide and allocate these resources as you wish, effectively creating several computers out of one. While the resources are indeed still only logically divided, as far as the guest operating systems and applications are concerned, each resource it can call upon is as physical as that of any home PC running Windows XP as its host. It can be said that virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. With virtualisation, the resources of any x86, or more recently, x64 computer, whether it be the CPU, RAM, network controller, HDD, can be used to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications. It will run exactly like a “real computer”. Multiple virtual machines can be deployed to share hardware resources without interfering with each other so that you can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer.

The accompanying diagram demonstrates how virtualisation operates using VMware’s flagship product, ESX Server, part of its Virtual Infrastructure package, the latest release being VI3.5.

The advantages of virtualisation are vast. Where 10 physical systems were once needed, now a single piece of hardware will suffice. This saves huge amounts of money, time and space. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. An entire college campus could provide virtual machines to thousands of students from a handful of physical machines. Individual workstations would now only be needed to access the virtualised servers. And say one server with 100 VMs crashes? Not a problem. VMware’s virtualisation products include various tools and applications, such a High Availability, a tool that warm migrates any VMs from a failed server to another functional server, without affecting the productivity of any active VMs. The hardware on which their operating system resides may have completely malfunctioned, but the end user will be completely unaffected by this, and be able to carry on working as normal oblivious to any error having occurred. The advantages of virtualisation are too numerous to list here. And with each passing day more and more tools are being developed for it.

Hypervisor

VMware’s virtualisation products work off of “Hypervisor”, a thin layer of software placed directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. Hypervisor, signified in the illustration as “VMware Virtualisation Layer”, allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently between the multiple operating systems, or the hundreds of interconnected physical computers and storage devices that form the entire virtualised infrastructure. Hypervisor is the name VMware uses for its “virtualisation layer”, and is also to be the name for Microsoft’s debut product in the virtual marketplace. “Microsoft Hypervisor” is set to become the first real competitor to VMware ESX since the product was first devised by Rosenblum over a decade ago. Of course, the major disadvantage with the Microsoft rendition of the virtualisation layer is that their hypervisor has to run in Windows Server 2008, unlike VMware ESX, which installs directly onto the host server, cutting out the cost and inherent problems of running on an OS, especially one like Windows Server 2008.

So at this point we should understand, in a basic sense, what it is that virtualisation is, and what it can, and will do, for the future of all those industries that utilise server technology.

VMware Tools

When using a guest OS installed on a VMware product, it is crucial that VMware Tools are installed. Installing VMware Tools will considerably improve the performance of virtual guest operating systems by, in its most basic sense, installing a further layer of software that will handle drivers more efficiently, resulting in guests functioning identically to physical counterparts. For example, the SVGA driver in tools will improve graphics performance. Installing Tools can be done very easily from the Workstation GUI, but can only be done so to support OS distributions. Supported operating systems, as well as all other Workstation documentation can be found here;

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ws_pubs.html

If an OS is unsupported, Tools can, in some cases, still be installed. Here is one such suggested solution offered by VMware for FreeBSD guests;

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_newguest_tools_freebsd.html

I can confirm that this fix does work with a variety of FreeBSDs. If anyone has any questions regarding getting tools onto any specific unsupported distributions, please don’t hesitate to give me a shout. My time with VMware was spent working with the OS team.

Issues with VMware Workstation

We are all going to encounter problems with VMware Workstation. Two of the most common I find that arise are as follows;

You encounter the error message, “Your CPU does not support long mode. Use a 32bit distribution”, particularly when using Intel Xeon CPUs. You simply need to make a small modification to your BIOS (provided you are using x64 architecture). Go into your BIOS and enable VT (virtualisation technology); this will solve the problem.

Another common issue with Workstation, particularly at CIT, is the authorisation service not starting. This can simply be started manually (now that we have admin privileges) by starting the service manually. This  service has problems starting automatically, particularly on Vista, so a simple batch, like as follows, can be used to launch Workstation and ensure that all the temperamental VMware have started correctly:

NET START “VMware Authorization Service”
NET START “VMware DHCP Service”
NET START “VMware NAT Service”
NET START “VMware Agent Service”
“C:Program Files (x86)VMwareVMware Workstationvmware.exe”

As David Power pointed out to me, make sure that, when using Vista, you run this with admin privileges.

VMware KB article 1006427 presents best practices for Linux timekeeping. These recommendations include specifics on the particular kernel command line options to use for the Linux operating system of interest. There is also a description of the recommended settings and usage for NTP time sync, configuration of VMware Tools time synchronization, and Virtual Hardware Clock configuration, to achieve best timekeeping results.

What surprised me is the recommendation done by VMware; “Note: In all cases use NTP instead of VMware Tools periodic time synchronization”

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006427

Dando continuidade segue o mini tutorial de instalação do vmware-tool num guest com Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ( Hardy )

Crie um diretório tmp no diretório /home do seu usuário

mkdir ~/tmp

Acesse o diretório criado e faça o download da chave GPG

cd ~/tmp && wget -c http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub

Importe a chave para o chaveiro do apt

sudo apt-key add VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub

Crie o repositório do vmware no sources.list

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vmware-tools.list

Edite o arquivo adicionando o seguinte conteúdo

deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/3.5u2/ubuntu hardy main restricted

NOTA:3.5u2 é a versão do ESXi usado por mim. Mude de acordo com a sua versão podendo ser 3.5u2, 3.5u3, 3.5u4, ou 4.0.

Atualize o cache de pacotes e instale o vmware-tools

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install vmware-tools

Dando continuidade segue o mini tutorial de instalação do vmware-tool num guest com Debian 5.0

Instale as dependências necessárias

aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) psmisc xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse xserver-xorg-video-vmware

No menu da máquina virtual clique em VM -> Install/Upgrade Vmware tools

Monte o CD virtual

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

Acesse o cd montado e copie o arquivo tar.gz para o diretório tmp na sua pasta /home. Não existindo este diretório crie-o.

cd /mnt && mkdir ~/tmp && cp VMwareTools-3.5.0-176894.tar.gz ~/tmp/ && cd ~/tmp

Descompacte o arquivo copiado

tar -xvf VMwareTools-3.5.0-176894.tar.gz

Desmonte o cd virtual

umount /mnt

Crie um novo link para o gcc

cd /usr/bin && rm gcc && ln -s gcc-4.1 gcc

Acesse o diretório vmware-tools-distrib

cd vmware-tools-distrib

Instale o vmware-tools. Pressione ENTER para todas as perguntas

./vmware-install.pl

Segue vários mini tutoriais de como instalar o vmware-tools em hosts ESX quanto ESXi com máquinas Guests Debian 4.0 ( Etch ) e 5.0 ( Lenny ) e Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ( Hardy )

Instale as dependências necessárias

aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) psmisc xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse xserver-xorg-video-vmware

No menu da máquina virtual clique em VM -> Install/Upgrade Vmware tools

Monte o CD virtual

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

Acesse o cd montado e copie o arquivo tar.gz para o diretório tmp na sua pasta /home. Não existindo este diretório crie-o.

cd /mnt && mkdir ~/tmp && cp VMwareTools-3.5.0-176894.tar.gz ~/tmp/ && cd ~/tmp

Descompacte o arquivo copiado

tar -xvf VMwareTools-3.5.0-176894.tar.gz

Desmonte o cd virtual

umount /mnt

Acesse o diretório vmware-tools-distrib

cd vmware-tools-distrib

Instale o vmware-tools. Pressione ENTER para todas as perguntas

./vmware-install.pl

This is a relatively simple process that enhances the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improves the remote management of the virtual machine image. The mouse, keyboard and display functionality are significantly are more responsive and efficient.

To install use the VMware Infrastructure Web Access. Select the ‘Install VMware Tools‘ option in the status panel.

The VMware tools file is mounted on the virtual machine.

Go to the virtual machine and the VMware tools installation begins automatically. Click ‘Install’ when prompted.

Click ‘Next’ at the ‘Welcome’ screen

Depending on your requirements generally selecting the Typical option should be adequate but as I will be using this image on different VMware platforms I have chosen the Complete option.

Select Install

You may receive a message stating that ‘..hardware acceleration is not enabled..’ Select Yes to set the hardware acceleration level

You are then taken to the Display Properties applet. Ensure the correct resolution is set then select the Troubleshoot tab and set the Hardware Acceleration to Full and click OK.

Click Finish once it has completed

Restart the virtual machine to complete the installation and notice the performance  improvements

I am posting this on the basis of issues reported when trying to install VMware Tools on

Windows 7 64-Bit on ESX 4

The issue was reported in the URLs mentioned below

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1263372

The issue was finally resolved when the VRAM (Video RAM) of the Virtual Machine was changed from 4 MB to 128 MB.

Thanks to HughBorg707 for providing the solution.

Installing VMware Tools from the Command Line with the RPM Installer

1. Power on the virtual machine.

2. After the guest operating system has started, prepare your virtual machine to install VMware Tools.

Choose VM > Install VMware Tools.

The remaining steps take place inside the virtual machine.

3. As root (su -), mount the VMware Tools virtual CD-ROM image, change to a working directory (for example, /tmp), uncompress the installer, then unmount the CD-ROM image.

Note: Some Linux distributions automatically mount CD-ROMs. If your distribution uses automounting, do not use the mount and umount commands below. You still must untar the VMware Tools installer to /tmp.

Some Linux distributions use different device names or organize the /dev directory differently. If your CD-ROM drive is not /dev/cdrom or if the mount point for a CD-ROM is not /mnt/cdrom, you must modify the following commands to reflect the conventions used by your distribution.

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

cd /tmp

Note: If you have a previous installation, delete the previous vmware-distrib directory before installing. The default location of this directory is
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib.

4. At the command prompt, enter:

rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-5.0.0-<xxxx>.i386.rpm

umount /dev/cdrom  

Where <xxxx> is the build/revision number of the VMware Workstation release.

Note: If you attempt to install an rpm installation over a tar installation — or the reverse — the installer detects the previous installation and must convert the installer database format before continuing.

5. Configure VMware Tools:

vmware-config-tools.pl

Respond to the questions the installer displays on the screen. Press Enter to accept the default value.

6. Log off of the root account.

exit

7. Start X and your graphical environment.

8. In an X terminal, launch the VMware Tools background application.

vmware-toolbox &

Note: You may run VMware Tools as root or as a normal user. To shrink virtual disks, you must run VMware Tools as root (su -).

Starting VMware Tools Automatically

You may find it helpful to configure your guest operating system so VMware Tools starts when you start your X server. The steps for doing so vary depending on your Linux distribution and your desktop environment. Check your operating system documentation for the appropriate steps to take.

For example, in a Red Hat Linux 7.1 guest using GNOME, follow these steps.

1. Open the Startup Programs panel in the GNOME Control Center.

Main Menu (click the foot icon in the lower left corner of the screen) > Programs > Settings > Session > Startup Programs

2. Click Add.

3. In the Startup Command field, enter vmware-toolbox.

4. Click OK, click OK again, then close the GNOME Control Center.

The next time you start X, VMware Tools starts automatically.

Uninstalling VMware Tools

To remove VMware Tools from your Linux guest operating system, log on as root (su -) and enter the following command:

From an RPM install

rpm -e VMwareTools

Source

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html

1. Power on the virtual machine.

2. After the guest operating system has started, prepare your virtual machine to install VMware Tools.

Choose VM > Install VMware Tools.

The remaining steps take place inside the virtual machine.

3. As root (su -), mount the VMware Tools virtual CD-ROM image, change to a working directory (for example, /tmp), uncompress the installer, then unmount the CD-ROM image.

Note: Some Linux distributions automatically mount CD-ROMs. If your distribution uses automounting, do not use the mount and umount commands below. You still must untar the VMware Tools installer to /tmp.

Some Linux distributions use different device names or organize the /dev directory differently. If your CD-ROM drive is not /dev/cdrom or if the mount point for a CD-ROM is not /mnt/cdrom, you must modify the following commands to reflect the conventions used by your distribution.

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

cd /tmp

Note: If you have a previous installation, delete the previous vmware-distrib directory before installing. The default location of this directory is

/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib.

4. Untar the VMware Tools tar file:

tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-5.0.0-<xxxx>.tar.gz

umount /dev/cdrom  

Where <xxxx> is the build/revision number of the VMware Workstation release.

Note: If you attempt to install a tar installation over an rpm installation — or the reverse — the installer detects the previous installation and must convert the installer database format before continuing.

5. Run the .tar VMware Tools installer:

cd vmware-tools-distrib 

./vmware-install.pl

Respond to the configuration questions on the screen. Press Enter to accept the default value.

6. Log off of the root account.

exit

7. Start X and your graphical environment.

8. In an X terminal, launch the VMware Tools background application.

vmware-toolbox &

Note: You may run VMware Tools as root or as a normal user. To shrink virtual disks, you must run VMware Tools as root (su -).

Starting VMware Tools Automatically

You may find it helpful to configure your guest operating system so VMware Tools starts when you start your X server. The steps for doing so vary depending on your Linux distribution and your desktop environment. Check your operating system documentation for the appropriate steps to take.

For example, in a Red Hat Linux 7.1 guest using GNOME, follow these steps.

1. Open the Startup Programs panel in the GNOME Control Center.

Main Menu (click the foot icon in the lower left corner of the screen) > Programs > Settings > Session > Startup Programs

2. Click Add.

3. In the Startup Command field, enter vmware-toolbox.

4. Click OK, click OK again, then close the GNOME Control Center.

The next time you start X, VMware Tools starts automatically.

Uninstalling VMware Tools

To remove VMware Tools from your Linux guest operating system, log on as root (su -) and enter the following command:

vmware-uninstall-tools.pl

Source

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html

Disclaimer: use this script at your own risk

In part 1 you could find a script to upgrade your templates to hardware version 7. In this post you’ll find a script that will upgrade your VM’s to hardware version 7.

Note: This script will upgrade the VMware Tools if necessary and will shutdown the VM!!!!!

You can download the script here: upgrade-vhardware_vm and here: http://poshcode.org/1217

The script will perform the following actions:

• Connect to vCenter
• Get all the VM’s in the folder you need to specify
• Create a CSV file with some info about the VM. I will post the content later.
• Update the VMware Tools if necessary (The VM will restart after the installation)
• Shutdown the VM
• Upgrade the vHardware to version 7
• Start the VM
• Create an Excel sheet with an overview of the VM’s and their IP settings

During the process of the script, the VM will be unavailable for 5 minutes or less. So be sure that nobody uses the VM.

The beforeHWchange.csv will look like this:

The script in action:

The last step, the creation of an Excel sheet with an overview of the VM’s. Here you can see if the IP Address is changed or not.

To do list:

• Create a proper VM report function (export to csv) so I can capture multiple network adapters.
• Create a before Excel sheet with a nice overview of the environment.

Installing VMware Tools from X with the RPM installer:

1. Choose VM > Install VMware Tools.

The guest operating system mounts the VMware Tools installation virtual CD.

2. Double-click the VMware Tools CD icon on the desktop.

3. Double-click the RPM installer in the root of the CD-ROM.

4. Enter the root password.

5. Click Continue.

The installer prepares the packages.

6. Click Continue when the installer presents a dialog box saying Completed System Preparation.

A dialog appears for Updating system, with a progress bar. When the installer is done, VMware Tools are installed. There is no confirmation or finish button.

7. In an X terminal, as root (su -), configure VMware Tools.

vmware-config-tools.pl

Respond to the questions the installer displays on the screen. Press Enter to accept the default value.

Note: Be sure to respond yes when the installer offers to run the configuration program.

8. Launch the VMware Tools background application:

vmware-toolbox &

Starting VMware Tools Automatically

You may find it helpful to configure your guest operating system so VMware Tools starts when you start your X server. The steps for doing so vary depending on your Linux distribution and your desktop environment. Check your operating system documentation for the appropriate steps to take.

For example, in a Red Hat Linux 7.1 guest using GNOME, follow these steps.

1. Open the Startup Programs panel in the GNOME Control Center.

Main Menu (click the foot icon in the lower left corner of the screen) > Programs > Settings > Session > Startup Programs

2. Click Add.

3. In the Startup Command field, enter vmware-toolbox.

4. Click OK, click OK again, then close the GNOME Control Center.

The next time you start X, VMware Tools starts automatically.

Uninstalling VMware Tools

To remove VMware Tools from your Linux guest operating system, log on as root (su -) and enter the following command:

rpm -e VMwareTools

Source

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html

In this post you will learn how to change the VMware Tools settings in the Options menu which you can find in the vSphere Client:

You can enable or disable these features via the following PowerCLI script:

$vCenter = Read-Host "Enter vCenter Server name"

Connect-VIServer $vCenter

$vmConfigSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$vmConfigSpec.Tools = New-Object VMware.Vim.ToolsConfigInfo
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.AfterPowerOn = $true
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.AfterResume = $true
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.BeforeGuestStandby = $true
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.BeforeGuestShutdown = $true
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.SyncTimeWithHost = $true
$vmConfigSpec.Tools.ToolsUpgradePolicy = "Manual" # "UpgradeAtPowerCycle"

Get-VM | % { (Get-View $_.ID).ReconfigVM($vmConfigSpec)}

Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

Just change the $true values to $false if you want to disable the feature. If you want to change the Tools Upgrade Policy to Upgrade at startup just remove "Manual" # and it should change the Policy.

This is what you see when the VM is still active:

This script will change the configured settings on All the VM’s.  If you want to change the settings on a particular VM just change Get-VM into Get-VM vmname

I have been working through our upgrade to vSphere, and so far the only thing that has really been a big issue is the UNINSTALL of vmware tools on our existing Windows Server 2008 vms. If you run the upgrade for vmware tools, it will of course attempt to uninstall the previous version. Problem is, it doesnt work. It basically half uninstalls the previous version, leaving you with registry entries and so forth that make the new install of tools FAIL. If you find yourself in this predicament, try these steps.

1. Keep in mind, this is AFTER the uninstall of vmware tools has failed when upgrading on a Server 2008 vm.

2. Go to the vm in question, and open the console. Go to the VM menu, then guest, then install/upgrade vmware tools. This will mount the iso for installation. Exit out of the autorun box that comes up.

3. Get to a command prompt, and switch over to your cd drive that has the tools iso mounted. Now run this command……..”setup /c” This command will force remove all the registry entries and so forth and completely remove the old version of vmware tools.

4. Now, you may be tempted to just run setup from the command prompt at this point. DONT DO IT. Instead, go back out to the desktop and autorun the cd, and run setup from there. This will make sure that the install iso is available upon the reboot of your vm to finish the install process. Again, run it from autorun, NOT from the command prompt.

5. Once the vm reboots, it should finish up the tools upgrade, and you will be ready to upgrade the vm hardware to version 7.

6. One thing about upgrading the hardware on a server 2008 vm….When the vm comes back up after hardware upgrade, it will seem like the server is ready to go. In Server 2003, after hardware upgrade, you get the standard “Windows has installed new devices, you need to reboot” prompt. You dont get that prompt with Server 2008. REBOOT AFTER THE HARDWARE UPGRADE ANYWAY. There are a bunch of services that dont start properly on the first boot after hardware upgrade. A reboot will get these services going again.

After resurrecting an old VMware installation (I started with the first freely available version of VMware.. version 1) and upgrading successfully (see this post), I was not able to update Vmware Tools within my guest OS (Windows XP SP3). I tried the automatic update option as well as the interactive update option. Both resulted in Visual Studio’s JIT (Just-In-Time) Debugger complaining and aborting the upgrade (on the guest OS).

Solution: Within the guest OS (WindowsXP in my case), uninstall VMware Tools and restart the guest OS. After restarting the guest OS the VMware UI “VMware Tools”-section will have changed from “Upgrade VMware Tools” to “Install VMware Tools”. Clicking the latter installed a fresh version of VMware tools without any problems.

This worked with VMware-server-2.0.1-156745 in combination with host OS Ubuntu 9.04 and guest OS Windows XP SP3.

@vmdavinci asked the following on Twitter:

These are the registry settings you can change:

If you want to disable the notify if upgrade is available warning:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools]
@=dword:00000000

If you want to hide the Tools icon change the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools]
"ShowTray"=dword:00000001

Or

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools]
"ShowTray"=dword:00000001

I ran into an interesting problem when attempting to load my shiny new Windows 7 operating system into a virtual machine on an ESX 3.5 host. The install went fairly straightforward, I actually added it as a 64 bit “Other” virtual machine since ESX 3.5 obviously does not natively support Windows 7. I was able to boot into the W7 desktop and like always, the first thing to do with a new vm is to install VMware tools for that extra oomp. I mean without it your vm will crawl. Anyway kept getting an error when trying to run the installer for VMware tools.

Then it hit me, because W7 is in beta and not supported by VMware I should switch the type of VM from 64 Bit Other to 64Bit Windows Vista, and lo and behold when I did the tools installed perfectly. BTW, I will give my thoughts on Windows 7 a bit later but the way it is looking now 7 appears to be shaping up to be what Microsoft claimed Vista would be. I like it!

After reading the post on http://www.virtualvcp.com/content/view/82/1/ about the VMware Tools status “not running” and in particular the part about the preferred work around:

I find that restarting the VMware Tools Service in the guest OS always gets by the problem, but loggin into every single VM that reports the wrong status for it’s VMware Tools could be a bit of a drag. So I choose to do this remotely rather that logging on to each VM.

From any Windows workstation/server, open a command pompt and run:

sc \\{vm-name-or-ip-address} stop "VMTools"
sc \\{vm-name-or-ip-address} start "VMTools"

I thought that can be done via Powershell and the VI Toolkit. So I created the following script that will restart the VMware Tools service on every running Windows VM.

$vCenter = Read-Host "Enter the vCenter servername"

Connect-VIServer $vCenter

$Service = "VMtools"
$VMs = Get-VM | Where-Object {
        $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredON" `
        -and `
        $_.Guest.OSFullName -match "Windows"
    }

foreach($VM in $VMs)
{
    Write-Host "-------------------------------------------"
    Write-Host "Restarting the VMware Tools Service on" $VM
        $Svc = Get-WmiObject -Computer $VM win32_service `
        -filter "name='$Service'"
            $Result = $Svc.StopService()
            sleep 5
            $Result = $Svc.StartService()
    Write-Host "Done.. "
    Write-Host "-------------------------------------------"
}

Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

This script generates the following output:

Other useful blog posts or kb articles on this subject:

• http://www.boche.net/blog/
• http://www.dailyhypervisor.com/
• http://kb.vmware.com/

Source for the restart service part in my script: http://blog.geekpoet.net/2008/10/manipulating-remote-services-with.html

I ran into this today and thought I would document it somewhere.  In trying to save space on an ESX host, I wiped out (almost) everything in the tools-isoimages directory.  I didn’t realize what I had done until I tried to install VMWare Tools on a few new machines I created.  It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I had only deleted the iso on one of the two ESX hosts I maintain, but I managed to wipe both — yay!  In order to replace the ISO file, it’s necessary to extract the file(s) from the RPM directory on the ESX installation media. 

1. Mount the ESX ISO file (or insert the CD) into a machine that has file system access to the ESX host.  (I use Veeam Backup and FastSCP for transferring files)
2. Navigate to the the VMWare/RPMS directory
3. Transfer the VMWare-esx-tools-%version%.rpm file to the ESX host
4. SSH into the host and navigate to the RPM location.  I stuck mine in the tools-isoimages directory just to make it easier on myself
5. Replace the tools package by running the command rpm -i %file.rpm% –replacepkgs where %file.rpm% is the name of the RPM file.
6. If everything works, you will be put back at the command prompt and a few new .iso files will be present in your tools-isoimages directory
7. Attempt to install VMWare Tools on your host and all should be well
8. If you were as adept as me, copy the Windows.iso and Windows.iso.sig to the other host you hosed!

I hope this helps someone out there!