Upgrading VMware Tools

[bradyrandolph]

Hi all-

I have ESX 3.0.1 installed on 50 but am showing on most of my VMs that the VMware tools need to be upgraded. Does VMware have a document that lists the advantages of upgrading the tools to the latest version?

Thanks in Advance,

Brady

[Rob_Bohmann1]

you have to look in the patch documentation to see what each patch that is tool related fixes. Since this is changing freqeuntly, I doubt such a doc exists, other than a general policy statement that it is best to keep the tools up to date and apply the patches that apply for your environment.

That said, patches that affect vmtools released recently (last 6 months or so) include vmtools memory leak problems, nic driver upgrades, time keeping fixes if you sync time with vmtools and others.

So the advantages are less problems, best performance, more sleep at night...:)

[bradyrandolph]

Thanks for the information Bob, I know about most of the changes but would like some exact answers to give to our clients as to why they need to be rebooted.

[esiebert7625]

VMware Tools is mainly a collection of drivers specific to the operating system. With a Windows OS you typically have to re-boot with these types of updates because the drivers are in use when they are installed. See the below doc for more info...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/pnp/no_reboot.mspx

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