vSphere Client reports the status of VMware Tools as Unmanaged or Guest Managed

Products

VMware vCenter Server VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

vSphere Client reports the status of VMware Tools as Unmanaged or Guest Managed.

Note:

For vSphere 6.0 and later versions and VMware Tools 10.0 and later versions, vSphere Client reports the status of VMware Tools as Guest Managed.
For earlier versions, vSphere Client reports the status of VMware Tools as Unmanaged

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded

Resolution

The Unmanaged or Guest Managed status for VMware Tools indicates that the Operating System specific Package (OSP) Tools are being used. This means that VMware Tools is not being managed by the VI/vSphere Client to keep them up-to-date. OSP Tools enables managing VMware Tools from within the guest operating system in the same way as other standard software/application. This message will also appear when open-vm-tools package is installed. See the note at the end of this section.

For more information, see the Unmanaged VMware Tools section in the VMware Tools Installation Guide For Operating System Specific Packages.

Note: As of Linux kernel version 3.9 or later, VMware supports the open-vm-tools package where it is included in a Linux distribution or its official repositories. For more information, especially about supported Linux distributions, see VMware support for Open VM Tools (2073803).

Additional Information

You can identify which version (if any) of VMware Tools is installed using the virtual machine's vmware.log file. For more information on the location of the vmware.log log files, see Locating virtual machine log files on an ESXi/ESX host (1007805).

Here are some examples of vmware.log extracts with with VMware Tools installed, No Tools installed and Linux open-vm-tools installed:

VMware Tools installed

2016-03-02T09:47:07.657Z| vcpu-0| I120: ToolsSetVersionWork did nothing; new tools version (10240) matches old Tools version
2016-03-02T09:47:07.882Z| vmx| I120: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'ok', 'current', install possible
2016-03-02T09:47:07.882Z| vmx| I120: TOOLS can be autoupgraded.

No Tools installed

Linux open-vm-tools installed

2016-03-02T09:51:16.907Z| vcpu-0| I120: DDB: "toolsVersion" = "2147483647" (was "0")
2016-03-02T09:51:16.923Z| vcpu-0| I120: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'unmanaged', 'unmanaged', install possible

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Locating virtual machine log files on an ESXi/ESX host
VMware support for Open VM Tools
vSphere Client が VMware Tools のステータスを [管理されていない] として報告する