VMware Hardware Version vs. VMware Tools versions?

[jfoutwest]

We are running vSphere 5.5 U3 and would like to standardize on VMware Hardware Version 9 for our virtual machines. What should the version of VMware tools be? Thank you.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

The version of VMware Tools does not depend on the hardware version. I suggest using the latest for 5.5 U3.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009-2015

Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.

Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[MKguy]

We are running vSphere 5.5 U3 and would like to standardize on VMware Hardware Version 9 for our virtual machines. What should the version of VMware tools be?

Simply the latest available. There is no reason or requirement to stick with older VMware Tools versions just because you haven't upgraded to virtual HW v10, if that's what you're trying to do.

You can even use the latest 6.0 (U1) tools on VMs running on your 5.5 hosts as well, as this is fully supported by VMware:

VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes

You can download these packages from here:

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/index.html

VMware also recently started providing a common Tools downloadable version starting from 10.x, see:

VMware Front Experience: The great VMware Tools dilemma

[rcporto]

The recommendation is to run the version that match the version of your vSphere ESXi host. For 5.5 Update 3 you can found the VMware Tools version here: https://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions

9359 esx/5.5u3 9.4.15 3029944