Tools OLD after patch

[RParker]

Is it just me, or did VM ware not give us a heads up that the tools would be updated?

I have a bunch of VM's that are out of date tools all of a sudden. Is this on the patch notes somewhere? I think they could have notified us that VMs will be affected, normally you just patch the server, reboot, done... now I have to go back and fix all these VM's..

[esiebert7625]

I assume you mean the 5/15 set of patches, there is one patch in there that updated the VMware tools.

Here's another post about it...

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=659090&#659090

[BUGCHK · Accepted solution]

The note is a bit hidden in the Resolved Issues[/b] sections of patches ESX-5095559 and 6704314:

""This patch is a partial fix for memory leaks that can occur in VMware Tools. You must also install patch ESX-6704314 to complete the fix for this issue. Patches ESX-5095559 and ESX-6704314 can be installed in any order. After both patches have been installed, you must upgrade the VMware Tools installed in all virtual machines on that host in order to complete this fix and to end warning messages that your virtual machine does not have the latest version of VMware Tools.""

[rreynol]

It would be helpful if any updates to vmware-tools were better noted in the patch list. We could grep VMware-esx-tools to see if it exists amongst the patches and then determine if the patch could be postponed to be better coordinated with maintenance on the VMs.

We prefer to keep relatively current on patches and firmware but vmware-tools updates are certainly disruptive in the flow.

How do others handle this? We are not a huge installation but still, updating a mix of 250 linux and windows VMs with new vmware tools is not a casual exercise.

[conradsia]

for now it seems we appear to be screwed and must update manually or automatically on our own without any clear forewarning from VMware.