Rebooting Linux guest operating systems after upgrading VMware Tools

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

While upgrading VMware Tools using vSphere Update Manager, the guest operating system gets rebooted as part of the VMware Tools upgrade process.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Resolution

Guest operating system reboot is not required after upgrading VMware Tools to 10.1.0 and later on Linux distributions with kernel version 3.3.0 and later. However, for the older guest operating systems where the VMware Linux driver have not been up streamed must be rebooted if PVSCSI, VMXNET3 or VMXNET drivers have been updated.

• All Linux distributions with kernel version lower than 2.6.32 will be rebooted if PVSCSI, VMXNET3 or VMXNET is updated.
• All Linux distributions with kernel versions higher than 2.6.32 will be rebooted if VMXNET hardware is present and the driver is updated.
• All Linux distributions with kernel versions higher than 3.3 will not be rebooted.