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

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

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 6.x
• VMware vCenter Server 7.x
• VMware vCenter Server 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x 
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Resolution

The 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 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.

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 (broadcom.com)

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 host (broadcom.com)

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

VMware Tools installed
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: ToolsSetVersionWork did nothing; new tools version (10240) matches old Tools version
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vmx| I120: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'ok', 'current', install possible
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vmx| I120: TOOLS can be autoupgraded.

No Tools installed
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: DDB: "toolsVersion" = "0" (was "10240")
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'noTools', 'noTools', install possible
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: Tools: Tools heartbeat timeout.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vmx| I120: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
 

Linux open-vm-tools installed
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: DDB: "toolsVersion" = "2147483647" (was "0")
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-0| I120: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'unmanaged', 'unmanaged', install possible

Locating virtual machine log files on an ESXi host (broadcom.com)
VMware support for open-vm-tools (broadcom.com)