VMware released new version VMware Tools 11.0 recently with great new features. When you perform an upgrade of the vSphere environments with the latest vSphere releases, VMware tools also need to be upgraded. Since VMware has decoupled VMware Tools from the actual vSphere version running, no need to wait until you upgrade your environment to the new release to benefit from the latest Tools release. Let’s take a look at VMware Tools 11.0 released new features to see the benefits of upgrading to this latest VMware Tools version.
Vmware is releasing their new vSphere version or updates which is highly matured and they are doing architectural changes to the VMware Tools portion of the vSphere infrastructure to make more useful for their customers. Nowadays VMware drivers are available through the Windows Update channels to minimize the reboots and drives are available outside of the VMware Tools package itself. VMware has made both the VMCI driver available, as well as others like the PVSCSI and VMXNET3 drivers as well.
Another important change to VMware Tools in this new release is the use of Visual Studio 2017 as the kernel space compiler , VMware has split out the monolithic AppDefense driver into 2 separate drivers. This includes the glxgi.sys and giappdef.sys drivers . Going back to the minimized reboots use case, this helps to eliminate reboots since the splitting of drivers means VMware can replace the user-mode components without the reboot.
Another new component in this release is the AppInfo component that collects information about running apps and stores these in a guest variable. This will be information that can be used for troubleshooting. It will allow vSphere administrators to gather details about systems using the new AppInfo component. The AppInfo tool queries the system every 30 minutes by default but this is customizable.
windows.iso supports Windows Vista and later.
darwin.iso
supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.linux.iso
, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.20 Release Notes.solaris.iso
, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.10 Release Notes.Important note about upgrading to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later
Resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines: While upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later, and using older versions of Horizon View Agent, refer to the knowledge base articles:
Refer Release Notes for more details
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