Accepted Solutions
1.Before the upgrade take snapshot of the virtual machine.
2. as you said vmware tools is OK.we can proceed further.. if not first we need to update vmware tools.
3.As best practise shutdown VM.
4.Same process as you did for windows VM.
5.right click the virtual machine and select upgrade hardware.
refer the below kb for how to upgrade the hardware, its same as you did for windows, here in linux\unix you need not to reboot the machine.
Award points for the helpful and correct answer by clicking the below tab 
1.Before the upgrade take snapshot of the virtual machine.
2. as you said vmware tools is OK.we can proceed further.. if not first we need to update vmware tools.
3.As best practise shutdown VM.
4.Same process as you did for windows VM.
5.right click the virtual machine and select upgrade hardware.
refer the below kb for how to upgrade the hardware, its same as you did for windows, here in linux\unix you need not to reboot the machine.
Award points for the helpful and correct answer by clicking the below tab