One year ago, VMware has started the bifurcation of VMware Tools for Legacy and Current Guests using of two separate delivery vehicles:
- VMware Tools 10.1 is available for OEM-supported guest OSs only
- VMware Tools 10.0.12 was for the guests OS that have fallen out of support by their respective vendors are offered “frozen”.
VMware Tools 10.2 branch is the new evolution of 10.1 versions, and now it’s arrived at version 10.2.5! This version is only for supported OSes, VMware Tools ISO images are frozen for some end of life guest operating systems.
VMware Tools 10.2.5 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 and later, VMware Workstation 14.0 and VMware Fusion 10.0.
There are some news and improvements in this new release:
- VMware Tools 10.2.5 supports the following guest operating systems:
windows.iso
supports Windows Vista and later.linux.iso
supports Linux guest operating systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 and later, Ubuntu 10.04 and later. It also supports other distributions with glibc versions 2.5 and later.darwin.iso
supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.solaris.iso
supports Solaris versions.
- NSX driver changes: VMware Tools 10.2.5 supports vnetWFP driver from Windows 7 and later.
- Quiesced snapshots: Ability to exclude specific file systems from quiesced snapshots on Linux guest operating systems. This configuration can be set in the tools configuration file. For more details, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.
- Disable display mode setting: A configuration option is introduced to disable normal display mode setting functionality using VMware Tools. For more details, see KB 53572.
- Changes in the VMXNET3 driver:
- Receive Side Scaling (RSS): Receive Side Scaling is enabled by default.
- Receive Throttle: The default value of the receive throttle is set to 30.
Note: On upgrading VMware Tools, the driver-related changes do not affect the existing configuration of the adapters. The changes are reflected on a fresh install of VMware Tools or when new adapters are added. To add it on existing adapters, the user must use the script or interface. For more details, see KB 2008925.
VMware Tools 10.2.5 is available in the following languages:
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
See also: VMware Tools 10.2.5 Release Notes