This post, VCP-DCV on vSphere 8.x Objective 1.12 – Identify use cases for VMware Tools is part of our VCP8-DCV Study Page that helps passing a VCP-DCV Certification exam from VMware. It helps with learning towards VMware certification exam (2V0-21. 23) and became VCP-DCV. Our study page, VCP8-DCV is only an additional help. You should still study via practicing in the lab, VMware documentation set for vSphere 8.x and other publications.
From the documentation:
VMware Tools is a set of services and modules that enable several features in VMware products for better management of guests operating systems and seamless user interactions with them.
VMware Tools has the ability to:
- Pass messages from the host operating system to the guest operating system.
- Customize guest operating systems as a part of the vCenter Server and other VMware products.
- Run scripts that help automate guest operating system operations. The scripts run when the power state of the virtual machine changes.
- Synchronize the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host operating system
VMware tools can run services that helps with VM workloads. Helps with performance, security etc. Here are few examples of services that can be (or are ) installed by default when you install your VMware Tools package inside of your Virtual Machine (VM).
Appdefense – (not installed by default) VMware Tools installation include the VMware AppDefense, a security management and monitoring solution. AppDefense agent can be installed on the guest virtual machine using the VMware Tools installer.
SVGA Driver – This virtual driver enables 32-bit displays, high display resolution, and faster graphics performance. When you install VMware Tools, a virtual SVGA driver replaces the default VGA driver, which allows for only 640 X 480 resolution and 16-color graphics.
VMCI Driver – The Virtual Machine Communication Interface driver supports fast and efficient communication between virtual machines and the hosts they run on. Developers can write client-server applications to the VMCI Sock (vsock) interface to make use of the VMCI virtual device.
VMXNet NIC Driver – The VMXNET and VMXNET3 networking drivers improve network performance.
Paravirtual SCSI Driver – A VMware Paravirtual SCSI driver is included for use with Paravirtual SCSI devices. This driver for VMware Paravirtual SCSI adapters enhances the performance of some virtualized applications. Drivers for other storage adapters are either bundled with the operating system, or they are available from third-party vendors.
Mouse Driver – The virtual mouse driver improves mouse performance. This driver is required if you use third-party tools such as Microsoft Terminal Services.
Modules and drivers that support making automatic backups of virtual machines – If the guest operating system is Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or other newer Windows operating systems, a Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) module is installed. For other, earlier Windows operating systems, the Filesystem Sync driver is installed. These modules allow external third-party back up software that is integrated with vSphere to create application-consistent snapshots.
What are the differences between VMware Tools and Open-VM tools?
Open-VM tools (OVT) is an open source implementation of VMware tools. The same as VMware tools, OVT is suite of virtualization utilities which improves the performance, functionality, administration and management of virtual machines (VMs) running within VMware vSphere environment.
It has kernel modules for enhancing the performance of VMs running Linux or another VMware supported Unix like guest OS.
With OVT you’ll be able to perform graceful shutdown, authentication for guest OS operations, generation of heartbeat from guest to host (so VMware High Availability can determine if the guest OS is up and running or not).
OVT are also responsible for clock synchronization between guest and host, as well as quiescing of guest file systems which is needed for filesystem consistent guest snapshots.
The benefits of Open-VM Tools
Installed out of the box – The primary benefit of OVT is the fact, that Linux distros have in most cases incorporated those packages within the installation ISO so when you create a new Linux VM within your environment and you’re using this installation ISO, most likely the OVT will be installed out-of-the-box.
It is the software and OS vendors, as well as communities, who does bundle the open-VM tools into their product releases.
Easier patching – the patching process of the Linux distro using open-VM tools is usually handled by the Linux distro itself and not your vCenter server. It’s perhaps easier to let the Linux VM patch itself (including OVT) instead of letting this job done via vCenter update manger (VUM).
Small footprint – the OVT package is small package included with the guest OS. It is optimized for each particular distro, not a single Linux package like VMware tools for Linux.
Compatibility matrix not needed – The compatibility matrix check is VMware online tool which shall be used to verify that the guest OS release version is sufficient for your version of tools.
In case OVT isn’t installed, you have to use the OS package management system to install it. In general, Ubuntu, Debian and other OSes from this family use apt to install Debian (*.deb) packages.
Redhat, Fedora and CentOS use dnf or yum to install RPM (*.rpm) packages. And lastly, SuSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) and OpenSuSE use zypper to install RPM (*.rpm) packages.
Hopefully this chapter will help you to study towards VMware VCP-DCV Certification based on vSphere 8.x. Find other chapters on the main page of the guide – VCP8-DCV Study Guide Page.
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