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its a bit silly Question,

I was thinking since i have some spear HW to install ESXi free edition and allow some external users to use prebuild ubuntu 10.04 servers.

since with kernel updates etc etc the vmware tools have to be re installed i was thinking to give the server without tools. So the client wont have to be afraid to do upgrades.

what is your opinion?

Elgreco08
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1 Answers1

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VMware Tools should be installed and upgraded to be able to enable some features and to install the paravirtualization drivers that will improve the speed of the VM.

I recommend to install and upgrade them religiously especially if you overcommit your hardware (CPU or memory).

If you do not want the overhead of upgrading the VMware Tools, may be Linux containers or openvz can be a replacement.

Mircea Vutcovici
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  • +1. Use VMWare Tools. They definitely exist for a reason. – JohnThePro Apr 20 '12 at 20:37
  • Will Open VM Tools be better or worse regarding performance? I installed open-vm-tools from the Ubuntu repositories instead of installing the VMWare packages. – pkhamre Apr 23 '12 at 13:39
  • I think that Open VM Tools are not supported by VMware service. So if you have only ESXi free, then open-vm-tools might be a good alternative, if you have or are planning to have payed support from VMware, I would stick with official VMware Tools package that is coming with your ESXi server and its updates. – Mircea Vutcovici Apr 23 '12 at 13:59
  • I'm quite happy with open-vm-tools so far, after years of dealing with the recompiling of VMware Tools. See http://superuser.com/questions/270112/open-vm-tools-vs-vmware-tools for some info about the differences. – Martijn Heemels Sep 07 '12 at 12:25
  • If you do not plan to open a support case with VMware, then it is fine to use them. – Mircea Vutcovici Sep 07 '12 at 14:08