Ubiquitous Talk

I was upgrading a VI 2.0.2/3.0.2 system to VI 2.5/3.5 and found that upgrading VMware Tools was becoming a real pain. So I decided to look for a better way. I first did the usual search hoping to find a quickie but no luck. I searched the VMware forums to find that everyone was using the MSI package in a manner external to the VI system. This did not address any Linux or Unix systems so here is what I came up with to address the lack of automation.

First I installed the VMware VI perl Tool Kit on the VC.

I changed the NTFS rights to the Tool Kit directory to an dedicated admin user ID and SYSTEM only, I then populated the visdk.rc config file in the same directory with the following parms

VI_PROTOCOL=https
VI_SERVER=theVCserverFQDN
VI_SERVICEPATH=/sdk
VI_USERNAME=adminid
VI_PASSWORD=thepassword

I also added the following ENV variable to the SYSTEM Context.

I wrote a short simple Perl script to make use of the power of the VC and have it take care of the task using it’s own built capability. Frankly I just don’t see why VMware did not have a scheduled task item to handle this job in the VC.  

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# Requires a text file named VMToolsUpgradeList.txt
# containing VM names which the last of must not end with a CR
# Author: Mike La Spina
#   Date: May 24, 2008
# upgradetools.pl –host TheVC

use strict;
use warnings;
use VMware::VIRuntime;

my %opts = (
   ‘host’ => {
      type => “=s”,
      help => “Host is the VIM API service target”,
      required => 0,
   },
);

Opts::add_options(%opts);
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
my ($property_name, $property_value);
   $property_name = “config.name”;
   $property_value = ”;
Util::connect();

# get all VMs with out of date tools
my $vm_views = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => ‘VirtualMachine’,
                  filter => { ‘guest.toolsStatus’ => ‘toolsOld’ });

foreach (@$vm_views) {
      my $nameVM = $_->name;
      #print $nameVM . “n”;
      open FILE, “<“, “VMToolsUpgradeList.txt” or die $!;
      my @lines = <FILE>;
      foreach my $vmname (@lines) {
         if ($nameVM eq $vmname) {
            $_->UpgradeTools_Task();
            print “Issued VMware Tools upgrade task on ” . $nameVM . “n”;
         };
         next;
      };
   next ;
}
print “Tools Upgrade scan completedn”;
Util::disconnect();

The script requires a text file which I populated all of the VM names that I wanted to upgrade VMware Tools on. It’s noted in the script.

I created a windows task to run the perl script at 3:30AM and set it up to login in with the dedicated adminID and password.

I can now add any VM names to the VMToolsUpgradeList.txt and schedule the event to run after hours.

There are no issues with MSI deployements or Linux installs etc.

Till next time…

Tags: automated, reboot, tools, upgrade, VMware

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 12:45 AM and is filed under VMware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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