Keep your VM’s in shape with Auto Tool updates

If you’ve used VMware software, you know the importance of installing and keeping the Tools up to date on the VM guests. VMware Tools provide VM guests OS specific drivers which can greatly increase the speed and stability of virtualized machines. Stressing the importance of these Tools is a continually ongoing battle between administrators and clients who don’t want to incur a scheduled reboot of their server when updates need to be applied.

Thanks to a new feature in VMware ESX, you can enable a setting to have the guest OS automatically upgrade its tools if needed after a reboot. Now instead of scheduling outages, the VM itself will take care of the update after a client initiates a reboot or a reboot occurs due to Windows OS patching. To enable this feature, follow the steps below.

1) Use VMware Infrastructure Client to log into the Virtual Center that manages the desired ESX host or to the ESX host directly.
2) Under the Inventory tab, select the ESX host containing the VM you wish to enable the feature on.
3) Right click on the desired VM guest and choose “Edit Settings”.
SCREENSHOT
4) When the VM properties box pops up, select “VMware Tools” under the “Options” tab.
5) Under the Advanced options, check the box entitled “Check and upgrade Tools before each power-on”
SCREENSHOT
6) Hit Ok.

Note: This setting can only be changed through VI Client when the VM is powered off. If you need to change the setting while the VM is running, use a RCLI script or a Windows Powershell script using the VMware API plug-in.

Related Topics

• Fix - Invalid Guest on Virtual Center
• Remote Shell Access in ESXi
• How-to Repair a Windows Installation