vCenter Server Appliance - VMware tools not running

[Zippyh]

Hey all

I have recently upgraded the UPS PowerChute version from 4.0 to 4.2.

When going through setup it asks if my vCenter is located on a VM, as there is a VM with "VMware vCenter Server Appliance" I tick: Yes.

Going through the setup I can finish it, but with one error.

"PowerChute cannot locate the vCenter Server VM in the Inventory."

Apparently this happens when the VMware Tools are not running on the VMware vCenter Server Appliance.

And yes, they don't seem to be running. What I see is the following:

VMware vCenter Server Appliance

Guest OS: Other 3.x or later (64-bit)

Comp: ESXi 5.5 and later (VM version 10)

VMware Tools: Not running, version 10277 (Guest Managed)

If you right click the VM with vCenter, under Guest OS it does say "Install VMware Tools..."

When I do this and go via the Monitor the only thing it shows me is:

"VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0.14000

Type: vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller

photon-machine login:

Can anyone point me in the direction to fixing the fact that the tools aren't running, or is there something wrong with my vCenter?

Thanks in advance

[Zippyh]

Update 1: I did find out a open-vm-tools is present on the vCenter server appliance, but apparently not running.

I found this when I mounted the Tools CD and went in with Shell to see if I could install those tools.

As I found this:

Important: If you use an open-vm-tools, the VMware Tools status is Guest Managed on the virtual machine Summary tab. The status Guest Managed means that you cannot use the vCenter Server to manage VMware Tools and you cannot use vSphere Update Manager to upgrade VMware Tools.

I could technically remove the open-vm-tools via

Linux	Log in as root and enter vmware-uninstall-tools.pl in a terminal window.

And re-install it with mounting the vmware-tools CD via vCenter.

But I don't know if I should, opinions?

[flynmooney]

I wouldn't mess with the guest managed tools on the VCSA as this might not be a supported configuration.  Up until recently on Red Hat Enterprise Linux we didn't use the guest managed but installed the normal VMtools as the guest managed tools didn't work with vRealize Automation as we needed.  I tried on my sandbox 6.7 VCSA and the follow commands start and then stop the guest managed service   'systemctl start vmtoolsd', 'systemctl stop vmtoolsd'.  To see that it is running 'systemctl | grep vmtools'

root@tempvc [ ~ ]# systemctl | grep vmtools  

  vmtoolsd.service                                                                    loaded active running   Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware

Disclaimer: As with anything else please test before running in a production environment.