vmtools update

[edu_vm_admin]

I'm running Cisco Call Manager on UCS C240 M4SX servers, running ESXI 6.7 U3.  VMtools upgrades stalled out at 10.3.24.  I would like to get current, but I want to do it in a safe way.  Should I do this with incremental updates over time, or is it safe to just jump from 10.3 to 12.1 (this seems risky)?  If incremental jumps is the preferred method, what should my version jumps be?

[pmichelli]

Just go right to 12

It will likely need 2 reboots as it will install a new Visual C runtime that needs a reboot before it can complete. Why do you think incremental is better? You're only making more work for yourself.

[edu_vm_admin]

I don't know that it's better, which is why I'm asking.  Its's been my experience in IT that that upgrading over major versions often requires getting to a stable intermediate version before going to the final version.  If it's not required for vmtools, that's awesome.  I'm trying to be a bit cautious because I have 20,000 VoIP users and would hate to blow up the Call Manager 🙂 

[pmichelli]

VMware tools won't break anything even if the upgrade went awry. You can just uninstall then install something else.

I have had no problems going right to 12, but like I said, expect 2 reboots. One mid way though the install and one after it completes.  Newer OS may not need the reboot (Server 2022). Most of mine did though, so plan accordingly

[Kahonu84]

Please answer an age old question for me - what determines if a reboot is needed?

[pmichelli]

Magic. No honestly I have no idea. I have wondered this myself over the years. Identical servers (sometimes clones from the same template), one will update and work the other will need one (or two) reboots.

[edu_vm_admin]

Thank you very much for your input.  I will try doing the update in a single jump on my dev server and see how it goes.

[pmichelli]

I am going to assume you have modern OS running.  Please double check the release notes for tools 12.10 as they have removed support for some older OS like XP , Windows 7, 2003 etc.  Other than that, the process went very well for a few hundred VMs

[edu_vm_admin]

I'm running Cisco Call Manager on these servers, so the OS is Linux CentOS 7.

[pmichelli]

Tools 12.x is Windows only. VMware stopped providing tools for Linux ages ago. It stopped at 10.x.  Everything has been pushed to open-vm-tools and good luck finding an updated package for CentOS7. It won't happen. I can't even find updated tools for Ubuntu 20 or CentOS8.

[Tibmeister]

Cisco Call Manager is a Linux based OS, VMware stopped providing Tools packages for non-Windows OS's in the 10.3.x timeframe.  They now use the OpenVM Tools package from the distribution directly.

CentOS 7 is still in support, but I know Cisco is very finicky about customers upgrading packages inside the OS itself and would rather customers keep hands off and just update the entire crappy image.  In this case, you probably will have to update the Cisco image as it would need to switch the installed package from the old VMware provided package to the current distribution provided package, plus any other security updates Cisco deems safe to apply.