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.

SVGA driver
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
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.