A few months back VMware has released VMware tools version 10.3.0, but there was a bug causing PSOD for Windows OS and VMware has informed their customers about this issue. Note that this 10.3.0 release was affecting only vSphere 6.5 customers. Today VMware has released VMware tools 10.3.2 and made the 10.3.0 version deprecated. (The 10.3.0 isn't available for download any longer).
Newly this release includes the VMware AppDefense, a security management, and monitoring solution. AppDefense agent can be installed on the guest virtual machine using the VMware Tools installer. Virtual machines with VMware Tools installed are monitored and managed whenever they are started up on an ESXi host that has the solution installed. However, VMware Tools cannot install the AppDefense component automatically. The component must be installed manually.
As usual, there is a number of ways you can update your infrastructure VMs with VMware tools. One of them is to get the VIB which you can import via your vSphere Update Manager (VUM) and do a scheduled VM tools upgrade.
Each new release of VMware tools is an improvement of functionality or a problem which occurred in the previous release.
Quote from VMware:
VMware Tools 10.3.0 is deprecated due to a VMXNET3 driver related issue. For more information, see KB 57796. Install VMware Tools 10.3.2, or VMware Tools 10.2.5 or an earlier version of VMware Tools.
Illustration photo.
From the release notes:
VMware Tools 10.3.2 supports the following guest operating systems:
windows.iso supports Windows Vista and later.
VMware Tools 10.3.0 depends on and ships Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable version 14.0. While preparing the system for VMware Tools 10.3.0 installation, Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable is installed on the system as a prerequisite.
Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 10.3.0 is not supported for Windows versions that do not meet the prerequisites and customers should continue to use VMware Tools 10.2.x or older until they can patch or update Windows OS to meet the prerequisites for VMware Tools 10.3.0.
Windows OS level prerequisites
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows 8.1
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows 8
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
- Windows 7 SP1
- Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
- Windows Vista SP2
- Windows Server 2012 R2 with Microsoft update KB2919355
- Windows 8.1 with Microsoft update KB2919355
linux.iso supports Linux guest operating systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 and later, Ubuntu 10.04 and later. It also supports other distributions with glibc versions 2.5 and later.
darwin.iso supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.
solaris.iso supports Solaris versions.
Integration of VMware AppDefense with VMware Tools: VMware Tools installation includes the VMware AppDefense, a security management, and monitoring solution. This data center security solution is based on application control, detection, and response.
Changes in the OpenGL driver: OpenGL driver has been updated for bug fixes and performance improvementsVertex buffer object (VBO) optimization
Display list drawing optimization.
VMware Tools lifecycle using driver update from Windows Update server: This integration will allow you to update the PVSCSI driver during a Windows update. This feature supports PVSCSI for Windows Server 2016 only.
Shared folders: FUSE-based Shared Folders client which is used as a replacement for the kernel mode client supports Linux distributions with kernel version 3.10 and later.
VMware Tools user space compiler upgrade: Compiler for VMware Tools 10.3.0 for Windows has been upgraded to Microsoft Visual Studio 2015.
Download VMware tools here.
Release notes are here.
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Not PSOD but BSOD
No. It’s PSOD, check this KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/57796
I’m using update manager (on windows) and I have noticed that it still hasnt been downloading what is considered the most current version of VMware tools, any ideas?
Do I have to manually download the latest 10.3.2 (and versions after this) offline VIB bundles and import them into VUM inorder to be able to deploy across my VMs, each time a new VM Tools package is now released? Why isnt VUM pulling down the latest VM Tools when it checks for new updates? Am i missing something obvious?
DD