Device drivers improve sound, graphics, networking, and storage performance. If you perform a custom VMware Tools installation or reinstallation, you can choose which drivers to install.

The set of drivers that are installed when you install VMware Tools depends on the guest operating system and the VMware product. For detailed information about the features or functionality that these drivers enable, including configuration requirements, best practices, and performance, see the documentation for your VMware product. The following device drivers can be included with VMware Tools.

Download VMware Tools. VMware Tools is a set of services and modules that enable several features in VMware products for better management of, and seamless user interactions with, guests operating systems. This is a placeholder and collaboration point to add a VMware workstation driver for Docker Machine. This driver reuses part of the code from the fusion driver bundled with Docker Machine (as both have the same executable) and includes additional code from Packer VMware driver to detect the location of the files on Windows systems.

SVGA driver

Nvidia Vmware Drivers

This virtual driver enables 32-bit displays, high display resolution, and faster graphics performance. When you install VMware Tools, a virtual SVGA driver replaces the default VGA driver, which allows for only 640 X 480 resolution and 16-color graphics.

On Windows guest operating systems whose operating system is Windows Vista or later, the VMware SVGA 3D (Microsoft - WDDM) driver is installed. This driver provides the same base functionality as the SVGA driver, and it adds Windows Aero support.

Paravirtual SCSI driver

When you create a virtual machine, if you specify that you want the virtual machine to use a BusLogic adapter, the guest operating system uses the SCSI driver that VMware Tools provides. A VMware Paravirtual SCSI driver is included for use with Paravirtual SCSI devices. This driver for VMware Paravirtual SCSI adapters enhances the performance of some virtualized applications. Drivers for other storage adapters are either bundled with the operating system, or they are available from third-party vendors.

For example, Windows Server 2008 defaults to LSI Logic SAS, which provides the best performance for that operating system. In this case, the LSI Logic SAS driver provided by the operating system is used.

VMware supplies a special SCSI driver for virtual machines that are configured to use the BusLogic virtual SCSI adapter. Virtual machines do not need this driver if they do not need to access any SCSI devices or if they are configured to use the LSI Logic virtual SCSI adapter.

The driver is included as part of the VMware Tools package or comes bundled with VMware ESX/ ESXi. It is available on the host as a floppy image at /vmimages/floppies/vmscsi.flp. The driver can be used in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows 2000.

VMXNet NIC drivers

The VMXNET and VMXNET3 networking drivers improve network performance. The set of drivers that are used depends on how you configure device settings for the virtual machine. Search the VMware Knowledge Base for information on which guest operating systems support these drivers.

When you install VMware Tools, a VMXNET NIC driver replaces the default vlance driver.

Mouse driver

The virtual mouse driver improves mouse performance. This driver is required if you use third-party tools such as Microsoft Terminal Services.

Audio driver

Vmware Others Driver Update

This sound driver is required for 64-bit Windows XP, 32-bit Windows Server 2003, 64-bit Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Vista guest operating systems.

Guest Introspection Driver

The two Guest Introspection drivers are the File Introspection driver and the Network Introspection driver. You can install the two drivers separately. When you install VMware Tools, by default, the Guest Introspection drivers are not installed.

• File Introspection Driver: The File Introspection driver uses the hypervisor to perform antivirus scans without a bulky agent. This strategy avoids resource bottlenecks and optimizes memory use.
• Network Introspection Driver: The Network Introspection driver supports NSX for vSphere Activity Monitoring.

Memory control driver

This driver is required for memory ballooning and is recommended if you use VMware vSphere. Excluding this driver hinders the memory management capabilities of the virtual machine in a vSphere deployment.

Modules and drivers that support making automatic backups of virtual machines

If the guest operating system is Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or other newer Windows operating systems, a Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) module is installed. For other, earlier Windows operating systems, the Filesystem Sync driver is installed. These modules allow external third-party back up software that is integrated with vSphere to create application-consistent snapshots. During the snapshot process, certain processes are paused and virtual machine disks are quiesced. The modules also support quiescing snapshot on Linux OS

VMCI and VMCI Sockets drivers

The Virtual Machine Communication Interface driver supports fast and efficient communication between virtual machines and the hosts they run on. Developers can write client-server applications to the VMCI Sock (vsock) interface to make use of the VMCI virtual device.

VMware drivers for Linux

The drivers for Linux are automatically installed during your operating system installation, eliminating the need to separately install drivers after OS installation. VMware actively maintains the source code for VMware Paravirtual drivers, VMXNET, VMXNET3 and kernel modules, and any Linux distributions creating new OS releases automatically include the latest VMware drivers.

Do not delete or replace existing inbox drivers for Linux that are distributed by your OS vendors. Deleting or replacing these drivers might cause conflict with future updates to the drivers. Contact your OS vendor or OS community for availability of specific updates to drivers.

See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073804 for information about availability, maintenance, and support policy for inbox drivers for Linux.

VMHGFS driver

If you use Workstation or Fusion, you can install the Shared Folders component. With Shared Folders, you can easily share files among virtual machines and the host computer. The VMHGFS driver is a file system redirector that allows file system redirection from the guest operating system to the host file system. This driver is the client component of the Shared Folders feature and provides an easy to use alternative to NFS and CIFS file sharing that does not rely on the network. For Linux distributions with kernel version 3.10 and later, a new FUSE based Shared Folders client is used as a replacement for the kernel mode client.

Appdefense

VMware Tools installation include the VMware AppDefense, a security management and monitoring solution. AppDefense agent can be installed on the guest virtual machine using the VMware Tools installer. However, VMware Tools cannot install the AppDefense component automatically. You need to install the component manually.

Consistency is essential for creating reliable and high performing platforms but is difficult to obtain, especially at scale. vLCM solves this complexity by enforcing consistency across ESXi hosts in a cluster using a declarative model. By simply configuring the desired image, vLCM ensures the desired ESXi version and firmware and driver bundles are consistent across the cluster. When there is drift, the administrator is notified and can perform non-disruptive remediation.

This post outlines the process for using vLCM to upgrade hypervisor drivers, and firmware using vSphere Lifecycle Manager.

Upgrade an Existing Cluster

vSphere 7 Update 1 is now available so it’s time to upgrade my cluster using vLCM. In this environment, the HPE vSAN Cluster is already using a vLCM desired image consisting of vSphere 7 and supporting vendor components and firmware.

Note: The environment used in this post and the demo video consists of HPE DL360s. vLCM is supported on Dell, HPE, and Lenovo servers.

Upgrading to vSphere 7 Update 1 consists of the following steps:

Step 1: Obtain and import the latest firmware baseline in HPE iLo Amplifier. For details on installing and configuring the HPE iLo Amplifier pack and managing firmware bundles be sure to read the HPE Hardware Support Manager plug-in for VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager.

Step 2: From the HPE HSM plug-in in vCenter, click Settings and then add the firmware bundle (VMware ESXi 7.0 U1 Upgrade Pack).

Step 3: Edit the vLCM desired image

• 1. For ESXi select vSphere 7 Update 1
  2. For the Vendor add-on, select the appropriate driver bundle (in the demo below I selected the HPE Customization for HPE servers 701 (vSphere 7 U1)
  3. For Firmware and drivers, select the appropriate firmware bundle (in the demo below I selected HPE’s VMware ESXi 7.0 U1 Upgrade Pack)
  4. Click Save

After modifying the desired image, it makes sense that your hosts will no longer be compliant and will need remediation.

Step 4: Administrators can either remediate individual hosts by right-clicking on the respective hosts or simply click Remediate All to upgrade all hosts in the cluster. By clicking Remediate All, vLCM will nondisruptively perform the following actions:

1. 1. Migrate workload to other servers in the cluster
   2. Put the host in maintenance mode
   3. Upgrade the hypervisor and install new drivers
   4. Restart the host
   5. Flash the firmware
   6. Restart
   7. Validate the upgrade
   8. Exit maintenance mode

Vmware Graphics Drivers

Choosing vLCM for New Clusters

Vmware Video Driver Windows 10

When creating a new cluster you’ll notice an option to “Manage all hosts in the cluster with a single image.” Checking this box indicates you wish to use a vLCM desired image to manage all hosts in your cluster. If this is not checked, cluster updates can be performed using vSphere Update Manager (VUM).

The video below demonstrates the process of using vLCM’s desired image to nondisruptively upgrade hypervisor, drivers, and firmware on all hosts in a vSAN cluster.

Vmware Others Driver Download

Summary

Vmware Driver Download

Historically, infrastructure lifecycle management has been a complex process requiring hours of planning and separate outages to perform hypervisor, drivers, and firmware upgrades. Additionally, ensuring all servers remain constant over time adds to the complexity. As of vSphere 7, administrators have a unified full server stack upgrade and management solution, vSphere Lifecycle Manager. For customers interested in using vLCM, be sure to check the vSAN compatibility guide to see a full list of vLCM capable ready nodes.