Upgrade To Vmware Tools Version 12.1.0 Or Later

[Kristeen Cheek]

ESXihosts provide tools installers which need to be updated periodically.

Optionally, they can be configured to point to a single shared repository of Tools installers. For more information see VMware Tools for hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy.

Note: All supported Windows guest operating systems support VMware Tools.

Install the latest version of VMware Tools to enhance the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improve virtual machine management. When powering on a virtual machine, if a new version of VMware Tools is available, a notification in the status bar of the guest operating system appears.

For Windows 2000 and later, VMware Tools installs a virtual machine upgrade helper tool. This tool restores the network configuration if upgrading from virtual hardware version 4 to version 7 or later.

Prerequisites

Welcome back to the vSphere Upgrade Blog for the next piece of our Upgrade Journey. We began in Part 1 of this blog series by reviewing our prerequisites & compatibility, gathering our data. In Part 2 we upgraded vCenter Server & migrated VUM from vSphere 6.0 Update3 to 6.7. Part 3 guided us through preparing vSphere Update Manager (VUM) by creating an Upgrade Baseline and using that baseline to remediate our vSphere 6.0 Update 3 ESXi hosts to vSphere 6.7.

VMware Tools and Virtual Machine Compatibility comes in at Step 4 when upgrading a vSphere environment. Although both of these components hold much value for virtual machines (VM) when upgraded, caution should always be at the forefront of upgrading the VM Compatibility version. I mention caution because upgrading the VM Compatibility version may not always be necessary to perform unless specific features are needed.

VMware Tools can be upgraded manually, via vSphere Update Manager, PowerCLI, or by configuring virtual machines to check and install newer versions of VMware Tools when they reboot. The guest OS checks the version of VMware Tools when you power on a Virtual Machine (VM). The status bar of the VM displays a message when a new version is available.

In my vSphere 6.7 lab environment I will be upgrading VMware Tools on a Windows 2012 server VM via the vSphere Client (HTML5) which is considered a manual upgrade. I will begin by logging into the vSphere Client and check the current version of VMware Tools running on my VM.

Now we will review Virtual Machine Compatibility. Virtual machine compatibility determines the virtual hardware available to the VM, which corresponds to the physical hardware available on the vSphere host. Upgrading the compatibility level will allow the VM to take advantage of additional hardware features available to the virtual machine.

In vSphere 6.7, Virtual Machine Compatibility (Virtual Hardware Version) 14 was introduced. VM Compatibility version 14 includes support for features such as; Per-VM EVC, Virtual TPM 2.0, and Microsoft Virtualization Based Security (VBS). Note that when upgrading VM Compatibility some applications or the OS to may have issues working properly. I suggest only upgrading VM Compatibility if you require a feature that comes with the newer hardware version.

Step 3: Choose the VM Compatibility version desired (example: ESXi 6.5 and later or ESXi 6.7 and later). You may also choose to only upgrade after a normal OS shutdown versus when an OS crashes then reboots.

Step 4: Next we can review the status of the upgrade. When VM Compatibility is scheduled to be upgraded, you will notice the status of the upgrade is viewable under the VM Hardware section of the virtual machine.

As you have witnessed updating VMware Tools or Virtual Machine Compatibility are not complex tasks, but absolutely include steps that will require consideration prior to execution. It is always best to consult VMware Documentation pages for further details on VMware Tools as well as Virtual Machine Compatibility prior to upgrading. Also be sure to review the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

In the next vSphere Upgrade Series post, we will focus on upgrading Upgrading VMFS Storage in a vSphere 6.7 environment. Please do not hesitate to post questions in the comments section of this blog or reach out to me directly via Twitter @vCenterNerd.

Just wondering if you usually take a VM snapshot before upgrading the VMWare Tools and Hardware version ? If yes, do you delete the snapshot right away after the upgrade of tools and hardware is fine (or) keep the snapshot for couple of days ?

Once we upgrade the vmware hardware version to a higher number and lets say we had to every restore the VM back to a prior date, when we restore it using Veeam , will the VM now have the older VMWare hardware number ?

The HW version only allows VM to talk directly to more of the underlying hardware The tools not being installed will cause the VM not to have a NIC driver - you can always remove or reinstall the tools.

If you are running new ESXi and new OSes, the tools for that ESXi version all tools versions are supported, though it, like any other patch and update should remain within line of the existing ESXi version.

Hi Guys! Recently we upgraded our ESXi hosts from version 6.0 U3 to 6.5 U1, after the upgrade a new version of VMware tools was available i.e. 10.1.15 (10287) to be installed. My current VMs are running on version 10.0.9(10249), so we thought of updating the VMware tools to the latest version, after taking a look into release notes. VMware update manager is really handy while doing such updates, it easily scans all the VMs and provides you with a list of VMs which are eligible for the update, also you can schedule the update task.

To understand this behaviour we opened a case with VMware and after several followups, they confirmed that VMware tools update might remove the DNS records given some coincidence and they already have some internal documentation but nothing is available as VMware KB. This issue occurs especially with the VMs running vmxnet3 adapter.

This is an expected behaviour given a special case scenario and there is no fix till now. The only thing which we can do is to re-register the DNS entry by running ipconfig /registerdns. We would be careful going forward before doing any VMware tools update, maybe a validation step after doing the Tools update/upgrade.

Running vSphere Client 5.5 and attempting to upgrade linux VMs that were on the older VMWare tools version. All linux VMs are RedHat v5.0. I go through the VMWare automatic install process and everything completes as expected. Run VMWare tools version check on the command line on my linux box and get the new version. However, overnight something happens (not sure what) and the tools downgrade to their prior version on all linux boxes.

I've tried the VMWare tools auto upgrade from vSphere client, the manual upgrade, all seem to work fine with no error messages and ultimately end up with the right version right after the upgrade, but after so many hours it seems to revert back to the old version. This only happens on my linux VMs as all the old versions on windows VMs are upgrading fine and keeping their upgrade. I've looked in logs in both vSphere tasks and RedHat system logs and neither seem to have anything that would indicate a trigger of this sort of downgrade.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge VMwareTools don't install/upgrade/downgrade themselves. As Zoredache points out, check that there isn't any configuration management solution like puppet (chef, cfengine, some cronjob... whatever) enforce a specific version.

For keeping VMware Tools up to date, there are six different approaches that vSphere administrators can use to accommodate nearly any workflow required for flexible datacenter operations. These different techniques allow optimizing either for automation and standardization or for separation of responsibilities. A previous article provides an overview of the three types of VM Tools.

Each ESXi host has a storage location for VM Tools installers, which is a configurable option and visibly referenced by the /productLocker symlink. The target can be either local to each host or point to a centralized repository of VM Tools on a shared datastore. For more information about setting up a shared Tools repository, see this earlier post or KB 2004018.

In vSphere 6.5, the version of VM Tools running on each guest is compared to the version associated with the underlying ESXi host on a periodic schedule. In vSphere 6.0 and prior this check is performed when certain virtual machine events occur, such as power-on or vMotion,. If the host has a newer version, the VM is considered out of date.

The easiest way to keep VM Tools up to date is to check a box and forget about managing this element of infrastructure. Upon VM reboot, such as after installing guest OS patches, the VM Tools status will be checked and updated when necessary. In many cases, this will result in one additional reboot after the VM Tools installation completes.

This approach may be viable for less-critical workloads, such as labs or test/dev environments. Imagine a scenario where VMs are rebooting unexpectedly due to a widespread infrastructure outage. After scrambling to get applications back online, administrators could find themselves facing unanticipated subsequent reboots if a VM Tools update happened to be available. This is an edge case, but one to keep in mind.

Important note for guests other than Windows and Linux: Solaris, FreeBSD, and Mac OS - VM Tools can only be updated using the manual interactive method. Currently, there is no automatic Tools update for these guests.

The second role VUM has in managing VM Tools is to trigger updates for individual VMs in accordance to baselines. Keep in mind that VUM does this work by leveraging the vSphere methods described in the two previous sections. In one mode, VUM can be used to make various configuration changes to multiple VMs so that a Tools update is checked and performed as necessary on each guest reboot, just like an administrator can do using the technique shown in #1 above. The advantage of using VUM is that many VMs can be configured or un-configured for this option at once.

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