VMware Cloud Community
spilko
Contributor
Contributor

Is VM Tools required for VM Monitoring in ESX 4.0?

We are introducing a small HA cluster at work and thie initial set-up has been done for us. Looking at the cluster settings we have VM Monitoring enabled but none of the VMs have VMware tools installed. All the literature I can find tells me that the host to VM heartbeat monitoring requires VMware tools.

Is this correct?

If so, what is the correct way to install VMware tools?

Reply
0 Kudos
4 Replies
marcelo_soares
Champion
Champion

VMware tools is required. Depending on the OS you have, there are different ways of installing it:

- On Windows, is a self extracting installer

- On red hat based linux, is an RPM installer

- On other linux/FreeBSD, you have the sources to compile

You can access the VMware Tools installation files by right clicking the VM and choosing "Install/Upgrade VMware tools". This will insert an ISO on the virtual CD drive of the VM, and after that you need to start the installation and follow its steps. Don't forget to have a virtual CD/DVD attached to VM before booting it and installing the tools.

Hope this helps,

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310/410

Virtualization Tech Master

Globant Argentina

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

Marcelo Soares
Reply
0 Kudos
spilko
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Marcelo

Thank you very much for the swift response.

We are using RHEL5 so I will give your instructions a try.

Thanks again.

Steve

Reply
0 Kudos
spilko
Contributor
Contributor

Apologies, but I wanted to ask a follow-on question. With VMware Tools not installed and VM monitoring enabled, would I expect anything to be happening. There will be no heartbeats from the guest so should VMware HA be detecting anything?

Reply
0 Kudos
marcelo_soares
Champion
Champion

In the case of a host failure HA will work even if VM have or not the tools installed, but will never be able to recover from a Guest OS stop (i.e a bluescreen or kernel panic).

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310/410

Virtualization Tech Master

Globant Argentina

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

Marcelo Soares
Reply
0 Kudos