I had the same question and couldn't find a procedure anywhere. But I figured it out with the help of our TAM and put together the process below.
Our primary use case will be to enable our Active Directory team to update domain controllers etc on their own schedule.
To enable and initiate VMware Tools In-Guest update for Windows.
- Login to vCenter Server/Virtual Center using vSphere Client/Web Client.
- Right-click on virtual machine and click to shutdown or Power off the virtual machine.
- Right-click on virtual machine and click edit settings.
- Click the Options tab and select General under Advanced.
- Click Configuration Parameters and a new window opens.
- Click Add Row and type isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable and FALSE under Value (Ref https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2007298)
- Click OK twice to close all the windows.
- Power on and login to the guest OS
- Open a command prompt and cd "c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools"
- Run the following command (remove quotes) "VMwareToolboxCmd.exe upgrade start"
- A silent upgrade will begin followed by a reboot if required
To get help
c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools>VMwareToolboxCmd help
Usage: VMwareToolboxCmd <command> [options] [subcommand]
Type 'VMwareToolboxCmd help <command>' for help on a specific command.
Type 'VMwareToolboxCmd -v' to see the VMware Tools version.
Use '-q' option to suppress stdout output.
Most commands take a subcommand.
Available commands:
config
device
disk (not available on all operating systems)
info
logging
script
stat
timesync
upgrade (not available on all operating systems)
