After upgrade VMWare tools I wasn't able to ping my server anymore until I rebooted

[ncentech]

I have VI 3.0.1 and I just aupdated to the lastest patches 89840 so all of my VMs were out of date on the VMWare tools. I decide to install the Tools on some of them but did not rebooted the VM since it was in production, I was going to wait until tonight to do a reboot. After a few minutes I got a called stating that users were not able to ping the server and cannot reach the SQL server. I then looked at the server that was not responding to pings and it was one of the ones that I upgraded the tools on. We looked at the DNS server and the DNS entry was gone for that server. After reboot the VM in question everything went back to normal and everyone started pinging the server again.

Is this something normal when installing the tools, I know it goes and updates the drives but can someone explain to me the process that goes on when installing the tools. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[IB_IT]

quoted from VMWare's Install and Configure courseware:

"VMWare Tools is a software package that you install into the guest OS after you have finished installing it. It gives you device drivers specific to VMWare virtual devices where those are necessary, AND IT ALSO INSTALLS SEVERAL COMMUNICATION CONDUITS BETWEEN THE VM AND THE VMKERNEL FOR SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS."

I am guessing that since you installed VMWare tools on "some" of your servers, yet only your SQL server was unreachable, then maybe the VMWare tools installed something that broke the SQL connection?

It's good practice to install VMWare tools when you are prepared to reboot the guest OS.

[AWo]

During the VMware Tools install the network driver maybe has been exchanged. That shuts down the network for at least a short period. It seems that your guest hasn't recovered from that condition.

[jitendrakmr · Accepted solution]

VMWare tools updates various drivers to it is always recommended to reboot the VM after installing vmtools. While installing VMTools it bounces the network connections but everything should be fine after making connection to that VM again. it sounds strange that VM even stopped pinging until you had to reboot it; did you check event logs of that machine? Probably disabling and enabling the network adaptor should have fixed it instead of rebooting that VM (if you really dont want to reboot it).

Jitendra Kumar

MCSE 2003, VCP, CCNA, ITIL Foundation

[ncentech]

Thank you I have a few more VMs to update the tools on and I will try your suggestion. At this point I am more curious than anything, but I will do the VMWare tools upgrade when I'm ready to do a reboot. Tahnks for all of your help and quick replies.