I haven't been able to find any information regarding when building VMWare Tools on Linux whether it builds against the currently running kernel or the latest installed kernel.
To clarify (hopefully): If I have a VM running RHEL 6 running kernel 2.6.32-358 and have installed kernel 2.6.32-431 but not rebooted to make it active, if I then build VMWare Tools which kernel will it build for?
VMware tools, as installed via the vSphere client, will build against the currently-running kernel, not the latest kernel on the server.
If using a support OS (like RHEL6), you should avoid this entirely and use the VMware Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs), as they're managed via your package manager and can be updated independently of your ESXi releases/patches.
How to detect, in the guest operating system, if the vmware tools are out of date?