vmtoolsd.exe is using a lot of threads

[Twerf]

Hi All,

We're using VMware tools a few years now on our Windows 2012R2 environment.

But the last months we get complains from some of our remote desktop users that our servers are slow, memory is full, and users can't sign out/in.

After investigating this issue, we see that VMtoolsd.exe is using a lot of memory.

And it takes a lot of time to kill the process.

We discovered in the Resource monitor that the process is using a lot of threads (sometimes 80.000). After killing the process the threads are slowly counting down to zero . After that the server is responding normal.

On internet I can't find anyone who has this issue.

We have a lot of servers. This issue is only on a few of them.

We're using ESXi 5.0 and VMtools 8.6.11 build-1310128

Does anyone know what is going on?

[Bleeder · Accepted solution]

Wow, it looks like you're using the tools that came with ESXi 5.0 Update 3 from October 2013.  There have been several patches for ESXi 5.0 since Update 3.  The most recent patch for ESXi 5.0 has newer tools (8.6.15 build-2495133).

See here: http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.0latest/index.html

[Twerf]

Thanks for the answer.

In the next few days we will update our environment.

I let you know if the issues are gone.

[Twerf]

We don't have the problem anymore.

Looks like the update was the solution.

I couldn't find anything about it in de changelogs of the vmtools.

Thanks!