Hey All!
This post from Rick Vanover made me think about VMtools and what can be done with them. He doesn't delve as deep as is needed, but I posted his link for reference.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/introduction-to-virtualization-manage-drivers-with-vmware-tools/
First question anyone that is working with VMware Virtualization should know is why do you need them.
C
This post from Rick Vanover made me think about VMtools and what can be done with them. He doesn't delve as deep as is needed, but I posted his link for reference.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/introduction-to-virtualization-manage-drivers-with-vmware-tools/
First question anyone that is working with VMware Virtualization should know is why do you need them.
- Drivers! - This provides drivers for the underlying Operating System (OS) to communicate with the Virtual Hardware (primarily it provides drivers for the Paravirtualized SCSI adapter and VMXNET3 10GigE NIC). With every version of ESXi and vCenter comes with an upgraded VMtools and most cases newer drivers. The common point most people say is if the system is working, why change it? With the upgrade, the tools push out that little bit more performance and fix some things that may have contained a bug in the past. As the tools get better, eventually they will be updated without a reboot of the Guest OS.
- Console Screen integration - This is one of my pet peeves that without the VMtools, you have to press Ctrl-Alt to get out of the console screen of the VM. It locks the mouse and keyboard into the window and keeps you from performing movement in and out of the console. It also provides better mouse movement when in the console window.
- Interface for start-up or shutdown scripts - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006671
- Running Scripts within the Guest - http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vsphere_powercli51r1_technote.pdf
- Time Synchronization between Guest and Host - http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vmtools.install.doc%2FGUID-C0D8326A-B6E7-4E61-8470-6C173FDDF656.html
- Ballooning of the Memory - This one is also pretty cool as it allows the vmHost during times of memory contention, to create a "balloon" process that consumes RAM within the vmGuest and reallocate it back to pool for another vmGuest to utilize.
- Additional Perfmon counters - It allows greater visibility for the performance monger to take vmGuests / vmHosts performance into account.
C
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