Updated on: 19 SEPT 2019

VMware Tools | 19 SEP 2019 | Build 14549434

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

What's New

  • Better integration with Microsoft Update Service. Updated drivers (pvscsi, vmxnet3 and vmci) will be made available through the same service for Windows Server 2016 and later when the driver publication process completes. 
  • Upgraded compiler for VMware Tools drivers to Microsoft Visual Studio 2017.
  • VMware Tools is notarized for MacOS 10.14.5 starting with VMware Tools 11.0.0 release.
  • Added support for additional driver for AppDefense. This enables AppDefense guest module to be upgraded without reboot, thus keeping system protection intact. For more details, see Integration of VMware AppDefense with VMware Tools.
  • Added appInfo to publish information about running applications inside the guest. For more details, see VMware Tools Services.
  • Added capability for guest admin to control automatic upgrade and adding or removing features. For more details, see Configuring Automatic Upgrade and Installation or Removal of a Component.
  • Added support for GDI Hardware Acceleration to the WDDM 1.1 driver.
  • Provided sample tool.conf for ease of administration. For details, see Configuration File Location.
  • Resolved Issues: There are some issues that are resolved in this release of VMware Tools which are documented in the Resolved Issues section of this release notes.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

  • For earlier releases of VMware Tools, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Before You Begin

  • VMware Tools 11.0.0 supports the following guest operating systems:
    • windows.iso supports Windows Vista and later. 
      • VMware Tools 11.0.0 depends on and ships Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019. While preparing the system for VMware Tools 11.0.0 installation, Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019 is installed on the system as a prerequisite. Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 11.0.0 is not supported for Windows versions that do not meet the prerequisites and customers should continue to use VMware Tools 10.2.x or older until they can patch or update Windows OS to meet the prerequisites for VMware Tools 11.0.0. Refer to Microsoft's update KB2977003 for latest supported Visual C++ downloads.
      • Windows OS level prerequisites
        • Windows Server 2019
        • Windows Server 2016
        • Windows 10
        • Windows Server 2012 R2 with Microsoft update KB2919355
        • Windows 8.1 with Microsoft update  KB2919355
        • Windows Server 2012 
        • Windows 8
        • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
        • Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
        • Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
        • Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2)
    • darwin.iso supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.
    • For details on linux.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.20 Release Notes.
    • For details on solaris.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.10 Release Notes.
  • VMware Tools ISO images are frozen for some end of life guest operating systems. Some ISO images are not included with ESXi in the tools-light VIB. For more details, see the VMware Tools Documentation page. All VMware Tools ISO images are available for download from http://my.vmware.com.
  • VMware Tools for Windows: 32-bit and 64-bit installer executable (.exe) files are available for download. These files are provided for easier access and installation of VMware Tools in Windows guest operating systems.

Important note about upgrading to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later

Resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines: While upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later, and using older versions of Horizon View Agent, refer to the knowledge base articles:

Internationalization

VMware Tools 11.0.0 is available in the following languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Simplified Chinese
  • Traditional Chinese

Product Support Notice

  • The Windows pre-Vista iso image for VMWare Tools is no longer packaged with ESXi. The Windows pre-Vista iso image is available for download by users who require it. For download information, see the Product Download page.

End of Feature Support Notice

  • The next release of VMTools will no longer be installable on Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2.
  • Balloon driver has been removed from MacOS VMware Tools 11.0.0.
  • VMware Tools 11.0.0 release freezes support for Solaris guests.
  • The tar tools (linux.iso) and OSPs shipped with VMware Tools 10.3.5 release will continue to be supported. However, releases after VMware Tools 10.3.5 will only include critical and security fixes and no new feature support in these types of VMware Tools (tar tools and OSP's). It is recommended that customers use open-vm-tools for those operating systems that support open-vm-tools. For more information on different types of VMware Tools, see https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/02/understanding-the-three-types-of-vm-tools.html

Compatibility Notes

  • Starting with VMware Tools version 10.2.0, Perl script-based VMware Tools installation for FreeBSD has been discontinued. FreeBSD systems are supported only through the open-vm-tools packages directly available from FreeBSD package repositories. FreeBSD packages for open-vm-tools 10.1.0 and later are available from FreeBSD package repositories.

Guest Operating System Customization Support

The Guest OS Customization Support Matrix provides details about the guest operating systems supported for customization.

Interoperability Matrix

The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware Products. 

Installation and Upgrades for this release

VMware Tools can be downloaded from the Product Download page.

The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on your VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. For general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294).To set up productLocker to point to the shared datastore, see KB 2004018.

For specific instructions to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools

VMware Tools 11.0.0 supports the following driver versions on a Windows Guest Operating System.

Drivers VMware Tools 11.0.0
Hardware Drivers
vmci

9.8.16.0
vsock

9.8.16.0
pvscsi

1.3.15.0
wddm

8.16.07.0000
xpdm

12.1.8.0
vmxnet3

1.8.16.0
vmxnet2

2.2.0.0
vmmouse

12.5.10.0
vmusbmouse

12.5.10.0
vmaudio

5.10.0.3506
efifw 1.0.0.0
Software Drivers
vmrawdsk.sys

1.1.5.0
vmmemctl.sys

7.5.4.0
vmhgfs.sys

11.0.40.0
vsepflt.sys

11.0.0.0
vnetflt.sys

11.0.0.0 (For Kernel-Mode Code Signing, Windows Vista and Windows 2008 only)
vnetWFP.sys 

11.0.0.0 
glgxi.sys

2.2.0.0
giappdef

2.2.0.0
Security DLL
vmwsu.dll

2.0.0.0

Resolved Issues

  • VMware Tools service crashes intermittently when NSX Guest Introspection drivers are installed.  

    The user mode component in VMware Tools (vsepumc.dll) crashes intermittently on Windows VM when the NSX Guest Introspection drivers are installed, leading to crash in VMware Tools. This happens typically when a remote session is disconnected or a guest VM shuts down. 

    This behavior is observed in VMware Tools 10.3.5 and later versions.

    For more details on this issue, see KB 70543.  

    This issue is fixed in this release. 

Known Issues

  • Shadow copy partition (Ghost volume) is created in Windows Device Manager after taking a Quiesce Snapshot.

    After a quiesce snapshot is taken on a GPT disk, a Microsoft shadow copy partition is created.

    Workaround:

    The shadow copy partition can be deleted by using the below configuration in VMware tools.conf file:

    [vmbackup]
    deleteShadowCopyPartition=true

  • Suspend Guest of Linux VM using any version of open-vm-tools may fail with some versions of SELinux.

    A "Suspend Guest" operation on a Linux guest running any version of open-vm-tools and with SELinux enabled may stall and ultimately fail.

    The failure may appear as:
      - a "Failed to suspend the virtual machine" message display.
      - nothing happened and the "Suspend Guest" button is reactivated. IPv4 connections may be closed.
      - a delayed suspend happens but the IPv4 addresses are lost when the VM is resumed.

    Even an apparent "stall" which exceeds 30 seconds is an indication of the problem.

    For more details, see KB 74722.

    Workaround:

    Update the selinux-policy and selinux-policy-targeted packages to the latest version available from the Linux vendor.  If package updates are not available or if the issue persists, then consider the following workaround:

    Create an exemption for the vmtools/NetworkManager denied access by using the audit2allow command to generate a local loadable SELinux policy module as outlined in KB 74722.

  • AppDefense driver glxgi logs an error in the event viewer.

    AppDefense driver glxgi logs an error in the event viewer similar to the following:

    "The glxgi service failed to start due to the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning."

    The events are observed when Guest Integrity is disabled.

    Workaround:

    These events do not impact the system and are safe to ignore.

  • Event Viewer driver warnings generated by VMware Tools boot start drivers glxgi, pvscsi, vsepflt, and vsock. 

    When you have a secure boot VM with Microsoft Hyper-V and virtualization-based security enabled with Device Guard and Code Integrity policy set to enforced, then drivers, glxgi, pvscsi, vsepflt, and vsock might generate the event log warnings similar to the following.

    Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-CodeIntegrity/Operational
    Source:        Microsoft-Windows-CodeIntegrity

    Operational Log:

    Warnings 

    Event ID:      3083    
    Level:         Warning

    Description:
    Code Integrity determined kernel module system32\DRIVERS\vsock.sys that did not meet the WHQL requirements is loaded into the system.
    Check with the publisher to see if a WHQL compliant kernel module is available. 

    Workaround:

    These warnings are safe to ignore. The drivers load and operate in the normal manner.

  • VMware Tools package fails to complete the installation.

    While installing VMware Tools by running the setup command, a dialog box appears which displays a progress bar. This dialog box displays the progress of the installation of the VC 2017 redistributable package which is used by VMware Tools. The VC 2017 redistributable package installation does not complete, preventing the launch of the general VMware Tools installation dialog box.

    The VMware Tools installation logs can be found in the temporary folder in the path similar to the following:

     %temp%\vminst.log and %temp%\vmmsi.log

    The issue is observed with Windows Vista Service Pack 2 operating system which has Microsoft Document Explorer 2008 package installed when VMware Tools installs the Microsoft VC 2017 redistributable package.

    Workaround:

    To install VMware Tools, 

    1. Uninstall the Microsoft Document Explorer 2008 package from the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 operating system. 
    2. Install or upgrade VMware Tools by running the setup again.
  • Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 10.3.0 might take longer and Windows OS might need a restart.

    Installation process might appear to be in progress and displays a message similar to the following:
    ​ "Preparing 'VMware Tools' for installation..."

    During this process, the user might be prompted to restart the operating system. 

    Workaround:

    For more information, see KB 55798.

  • Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu.

    Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu 16.04.4 32-bit virtual machine installed using easy install. Also, failure of copy and paste functionality is observed in the same system.

    Note: This issue is applicable for VMware Tools running on Workstation and Fusion.

    Workaround:

    • Add the modprobe.blacklist=vmwgfx linux kernel boot option.
    • To gain access to larger resolutions, remove svga.guestBackedPrimaryAware = "TRUE" option from the VMX file.
  • Shared Folders mount is unavailable on Linux VM.

    If the Shared Folders feature is enabled on a Linux VM while it is powered off, shared folders mount is not available on restart.

    Note: This issue is applicable for VMware Tools running on Workstation and Fusion.

    Workaround:

    If the VM is powered on, disable and enable the Shared Folders feature from the interface.
    For resolving the issue permanently, edit /etc/fstab and add an entry to mount the Shared Folders automatically on boot.
    For example, add the line:
    vmhgfs-fuse   /mnt/hgfs    fuse    defaults,allow_other    0    0

  • VMware Tools kernel module signature verification failure warning messages appear for Solaris 11.4.

    The Solaris Verified Boot default policy is set to "warning" in the Solaris 11.4 release. When an unsigned module is loaded, a warning message appears as below:

    "solaris-11.4 krtld: Warning: Signature verification of module /kernel/drv/amd64/vmmemctl failed"

    Workaround:

    VMware does not provide signed kernel modules for Solaris in VMware Tools releases. As each VMware Tools kernel module is loaded, a warning message appears on the console or in the system log (/var/log/messages).
    In "warning" mode, the module is, however, loaded into the kernel.

  • Implemented DLL loading security improvements, suggested by Peleg Hadar of Safebreach.

    With the security improvements, VMware Tools processes will load DLLs from VMware Tools installation folders and system folders only, it will not search any DLL from system or user %PATH% environment variable paths, nor process's current working directory.

    No products other than VMware Tools are affected, however, to deploy this fix customers running Windows Vista, Windows 7 and/or Windows Server 2008 must install Microsoft KB2533623 prior to upgrading VMware Tools. Refer to KB 55798.

    Workaround:

    None

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