Installing VMware Tools on Centos 6.x is quite simple, here is a short reminder on how to do it. The examples below are for the base version of ESXi 5.1 and 5.5. If you have 5.1 Update 1, change the repository accordingly. You can also use the “latest” repository. You can browse the VMware tools repository with the following URL: http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/index.html
CentOS 6.x 64-bit
vSphere ESXi 5.1
yum -y install http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.1/repos/vmware-tools-repo-RHEL6-9.0.0-2.x86_64.rpm
vSphere ESXi 5.5
yum -y install http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.5/repos/vmware-tools-repo-RHEL6-9.4.0-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
Install VMware-Tools
yum -y install vmware-tools-esx-nox
CentOS 6.x 32-bit
vSphere ESXi 5.1
yum -y install http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.1/repos/vmware-tools-repo-RHEL6-9.0.0-2.i686.rpm
vSphere ESXi 5.5
yum -y install http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.5/repos/vmware-tools-repo-RHEL6-9.4.0-1.el6.i686.rpm
Install VMware-Tools
yum -y install vmware-tools-esx-nox
Note: The URL contains the ESX version (in example 5.1, 5.5 etc.).
Excluding VMware tools
If you ever need to update a CentOS or RHEL server and exclude VMware tools from the update list, just use the following simple command:
yum -x 'vmware-tools*' -x 'kmod-vmware-tools*' update
Update:
Centos 7.x and RHEL 7.x guide can be found here.
I am using a standalone ESXi box and running few vms. In my windows vm , in the summary page, IP address shows up but in my centos 6 vm it does not show up. vmware tools is running on windows vm and I installed it in centos 6. but even then IP address is not showing up in summary page. Any idea ?
Could it have to do with this? http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013371
Also, does ESXi show Vmware Tools as “Running 3rd Party” in the summary tab of the CentOS VM?
I wonder in general what advantage we have using VMware tools on lets say CentOS 6.6 x86_64 with paravirtual SCSI controller and VMXNET3 NIC. Drivers for those are already in Linux kernel / modules. Especially if you have your datastore located somewhere on NAS. You do not need those for vMotion, I do not care about ability shutdown host using right-click menu in vCenter and power management not an issue too – thats suppose to run on full power all the time :) Bringing perl and few services with 200 Mb memory usage for what? I did small load test without / with VMware tools installed on small CentOS install – cannot see difference. May be I am missing something here. What is _real_ advantage of having VMWare tools running on CentOS 6.x / SL / RHEL / SUSE.
TIA.
Forgot to answer this before. In a case that you don’t need the drivers bundled with VMware tools, nor the functionality of shutdown/restart guest OS then the use of VMware tools is minimal. A guest OS will function properly without VMware tools, but personally I don’t leave one without as the power actions do come in handy. You do get some insight into the guest OS with VMware tools, like the assigned IP-addresses and you can use VMware tools as a sign of guest OS health (as you can tell if the tools are running or not, and in a crashed OS tools won’t run).
You can also use VMware tools if running scripts (for example Power CLI) to build more complex VM workflows, in example start-up that waits for tools to be running.
In a Windows OS you would get increased graphics performance as well as the ability to move mouse in and out of the console, but obviously that isn’t a problem with Linux in a shell environment.
Those are just a few examples, but if you don’t care about any of that then it will be fine to run a VM without them.
Additionally I do not use any fancy backup things like “Veeam” to backup running VM on the fly. I prefer archive logs for Oracle shipped to different storage and off line copy of configuration files for DNS server for example.