Accessing and Updating VMware Tools in your VMware Cloud

One of the first things you do when building a VM in a VMware Cloud environment is install the VMware Tools. This ensures your VM has all the appropriate drivers and functions to operate in the best capacity in your environment. The standard process for this in most VMware environments is to right-click on your VM, select Guest OS and Install VMware Tools.

However, VMware has removed the MacOS Tools image from the current versions of ESXi that are deployed, so this will usually generate an error in your environment. To address this issue, MacStadium will typically provide an ISO repository to your environment that you may use to install the latest Tools. These are the steps to use this repo.

Login to your VMware Cloud environment and check that the ISO datastore is present.If it is not, open a MacStadium Support ticket and request it be added to your environment. If we are unable to add it for any reason, we will provide the VMTools ISO in another available datastore in your environment and notify you of it's location.
Once the ISO datastore is available, or you know the location of the ISO, right-click on your VM and go to Edit Settings.
Expand the CD/DVD Drive dropdown and select "Datastore ISO Image".
You will be presented with a file navigation window. Navigate to the Vmware Tools folder and select the latest version. Note that you can typically run the latest Vmware Tools on any version of ESXi but you can visit vmware.com to verify the versions.
Select the Darwin.iso file and be sure to check the "Connected" box on the CD/DVD drive.
Login to your VM and you should see a disc attached. Open it and go through the standard install process.
Once the installation is complete it may require a reboot. Log back into the VM and Eject the ISO.
Go back to your VM in the Web Client and back into Edit Settings.
Set the CD/DVD Drive back to Client Device.

Now your VM should be updated to the latest VMware Tools. You will typically want to do this with a template VM and then clone that template for any future VMs to minimize the number of times you need to perform these steps. If you are performing a full environment upgrade, you may need to perform the VM hardware upgrade next.