Automating VMware Tools Upgrades

[bsm033]

Hi

We using ESX server version 3.0.1 and we planning for upgrade to version 3.0.2

I know it is very recommended to upgrade VTOL as well specially if you using high availability options

I would like to know if there is a command to upgrade all VM's online without performing reboot to the VM's

The VMware-vulgate command useful only to powered off VM's and I heard that there is a command that perform this from the ESX server without performing reboot

Thanks

[bsm033]

Still get no answer to this question...

[spex]

If your vm's are windows you have always to reboot since device drivers are exchanged. ESX itself can't do that better.

Unix vm's have to be reconfigured and loose networking for a short time during exchanging driver.

For options to update vmtools see http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/docs/vmwdocs/esx-upgrading.pdf

Regards

Spex

[esiebert7625]

I think it will depend on what component changed inside VMware tools, if it was a device driver (this don't change that much) then yes you will probably need a reboot. If it was the app itself then you probably will not.

[RParker]

I upgraded from 3.01 to 3.02 and there was no change in the tools.

There was a patch (I thin it was the 7/15) that required a tools upgrade, but none since.

But there is no way to automate the tools upgrade, since the VM really has no way to check. But if there were, as everyone has said it will require that the guests reboot, so doing this automated may not be a good idea. You want to control this aspect.

[doubleH]

after i upgraded from 3.01 to 3.02 and upgraded the VMTools in the VMs I saw that the version did indeed change. i'm not sure what exactly changed in the VMTools, but the build number definitely changed.

[RParker]

Well the build may have changed, but from the VC view, I didn't get the status "tools - out of date".

That's how I determine the tools needed to be updated. Maybe a comparison of VM's shows there is a difference between builds, but if VC doesn't complain that I need to update the tools (as evidenced by the tools status) I am not going to worry about it.

So when you see the difference in the build, does the VC reflect this by showing that the tools are out of date?

[doubleH]

i don't know. when i upgraded to 3.02 i upgraded all the VMTools on my VMs because i saw that the build number changed. i wanted to upgrade the tools because of the build number change and the fact that i couldn't find any vmware documentation that said if the vmtools were updated or not.

[steve31783]

Do you use SMS? Push the MSI package using SMS and hold off on the reboot until whenever you can. If you don't use SMS, you could use group policy for your windows VMs to load the package (not sure how the reboot would work)

[doubleH]

manual. don't have too many VM's to upgrade.