Updated on: 20 MAR 2019 VMware Tools | 18 MAY 2017 | Build 5541682 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

What's New

The release notes cover the following topics:

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine.

VMware Tools support for guest operating systems in 10.1.7 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. freebsd.iso supports FreeBSD versions. solaris.iso supports Solaris versions.

Drivers and Certifications : VMXNET3 driver is updated.

: VMXNET3 driver is updated. Resolved Issues: This release of VMware Tools 10.1.7 addresses issues that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

For earlier releases of VMware Tools 10.0.0, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Before You Begin

VMware Tools ISO images for a few end of life guest operating systems are frozen. Some ISO images are not shipped with ESXi in the tools-light VIB. For more details, see the VMware Tools Documentation page. All VMware Tools ISO images are available for download from http://my.vmware.com.

VMware Tools for Windows are available for download in 32-bit and 64-bit installer executable (.exe) files. These files are provided for easier access and installation of VMware Tools in Windows guest operating systems.

Important note about upgrading to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later

For the resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines while upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later, using older versions of Horizon View Agent, refer to the knowledge base articles:

Internationalization

VMware Tools 10.1.7 is available in the following languages:

English

French

German

Spanish

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Simplified Chinese

Traditional Chinese

Compatibility

VMware Tools 10.1.7 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 and later, VMware Workstation 12.0 and VMware Fusion 8.0. See VMware Compatibility Guide for more information.

VMware Tools 10.1.7 enables support for DirectX 10.0 and OpenGL 3.3 on Windows guests when used with VMware Workstation 12.0, VMware Fusion 8.0, and releases of VMware vSphere where the virtual device supports the required feature. The VMware guest operating system OpenGL driver for Windows and Linux supports the OpenGL 3.3 core profile only. The OpenGL3.3 compatibility profile is not supported. OpenGL guest driver only supports version 3.0 for compatibility profiles.

The VMware Tools installer option to clobber Linux kernel modules that are shipped with the operating system is deprecated. In the upcoming versions of VMware Tools for Linux, the clobber option is removed from the installer.

Guest Operating System Customization Support

The Guest OS Customization Support Matrix provides details about the guest operating systems supported for customization.

Installation and Upgrades for this release

VMware Tools can be downloaded from the Product Download page.

VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages can be downloaded from http://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases/index.html. For more information on installing OSPs, see the VMware Tools Installation Guide for Operating System Specific Packages.

The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on your VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. For general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294).To set up the productLocker to point to the shared datastore, see KB 2004018.



For specific instructions to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools, see VMware Tools Documentation page.

Upgrade Information

Upgrade support for future releases of VMware Tools

Upgrade support is available for older versions of VMware Tools shipped with ESXi that have reached end of support to newer versions of VMware Tools shipped concurrently to the immediate ESXi version released at the time of end of support of the older ESXi releases.

Support for ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1 VMware Tools

Extended support - Extended support is available for VMware Tools versions shipped with ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1

Upgrade - Upgrade of VMware Tools to version 10.0.12 for the legacy guest operating systems is not supported on ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1. Virtual machines running VMware Tools 10.0.12 is supported on ESXi 5.0 and 5.1.

Upgrade Impact

The upgrade support implies that users need to follow a two-step upgrade process to upgrade VMware Tools prior to 9.4.x to versions later than 10.1.0 on non-legacy guest operating systems.

VMware Tools prior to 9.4.x must be first upgraded to VMware Tools version 10.1.0. As a second step, VMware Tools can be upgraded to a newer version later than 10.1.0. VMware Tools 9.4.x and newer can be directly upgraded to the latest available version of VMware Tools.

For mapping of VMware Tools versions that were bundled with ESXi, see http://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions.

For a simple upgrade, upgrade to VMware Tools bundled with the supported version of ESXi.



VMware Tools is backward and forward compatible with ESXi. Newer versions of VMware Tools are compatible with older ESXi versions supported and conversely. Upgrade of VMware Tools to version 10.0.12 is the last supported upgrade for the legacy guest operating systems on VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201608001, VMware ESXi 6.0, Patch Release ESXi600-201608001 and later.

Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools

VMware Tools 10.1.7 support the following driver versions on a Windows Guest Operating System.

Hardware drivers Drivers Version VMCI 9.8.6.0 VSOCK 9.8.8.0 PVSCSI 1.3.8.0 WDDM 8.15.1.50 XPDM 12.1.8.0 VMXNET3 1.7.3.2 VMXNET2 2.2.0.0 VMMOUSE 12.5.7.0 VMUSBMOUSE 12.5.7.0 VMAUDIO 5.10.0.3506 Software drivers Drivers Version VMRAWDISK.SYS 1.1.0.1 VMMEMCTL.SYS 7.4.1.1 VMHGFS.SYS 11.0.14.2 - For operating systems Windows Vista and later VSEPFLT.SYS 10.1.0.0 VNETFLT.SYS 10.1.0.0 - For Kernel-Mode Code Signing VNETWFP.SYS 10.1.0.0

Resolved Issues

Receive Side Scaling is not functional for VMXNET3 on Windows 8 and Windows 2012 Server or later

This issue is caused by an update for the VMXNET3 driver that addressed RSS features added in NDIS version 6.30 rendering the functionality unusable. It is observed in VMXNET3 driver versions from 1.6.6.0 to 1.7.3.0. The issue affects Windows guest operating systems with VMware Tools 9.4.15 and later.



This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues from Earlier Releases

To view a list of known issues applicable from earlier releases, click here.