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tore-
Asked: 2010-03-12 07:58:58 +0800 CST

Difference between VMWare tools?

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I'm currently writing a module for puppet which installs VMWare tools to virtual nodes.

I want to do this via yum and and yum-repo. VMWare have their own repo (http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/3.5latest/rhel5/x86_64/index.html) which I thought I could use, rather than creating my own. But then I noticed that their repo files is alot different than the rpm file used when installing VMWare Tools on the node, via the "Install/upgrade VMWare Tools" in vSphere.

Does anyone know what the real difference is? Does anyone have any preferences?

virtualization vmware-esx

1 Answers

  1. I prefer the, as VMware refers to them, Tools OS-Specific Packaging for the following reasons:

    • They work with whatever kernel version you are running (you don't have to run vmware-config-tools.pl after updating the kernel)
    • Not having to run vmware-config-tools.pl at all (and taking down the network interface)
    • With them in a yum repository (I actually have them in my own repo, as not all of my systems have Internet access), they are more easily upgradeable.

    Here's the VMware Communites site for them.

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