Slightly off-topic: VMware Tools Auto-Upgrades

[mkretzer]

Hello,

in the past few months we got more and more backup failures of VMs that require VMware tools running. After checking what went wrong we found that VMware tools auto-upgrade was on and tools tried to auto-upgrade at Windows Update installation.
This worked for years without issues. Since Tools 13.1 it leads to 4-5 % of machines coming up with defective tools where the installation seems to be interrupted in the middle of the installation.

Broadcom support now mentions that the auto-update setting should no longer be used, especially when also windows updates are being done at the same time.

Is this something new? Do any of you have this issue as well?

Markus

[david.domask]

Hi Markus,

Will let others chime in with their experience but I'm not aware of any such recommendation about not using the auto-update; the logic was to avoid having one update interrupt the others?

[mkretzer]

Yes, they send us this:
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external ... ber=454256

On the bottom of the Article:
"Best Practices: To prevent recurrence, decouple Windows Update cycles from VMware Tools upgrades. Perform system reboots to complete VMware Tools upgrades before applying Windows Update cycles, as overlapping reboots can interrupt installation processes."

... which basically means it is impossible to have automatic windows updates on and VMware Tools auto-upgrade on at the same time.