Re: [open-vm-tools-discuss] Differences between open-vm-tools and VMWare ESX Tools

[Adar D. <ad...@vm...>]

> I'm setting up an ESX box and since I'm going to have a number of
> Debian
> servers on it I'd prefer to use the open-vm-tools to the VMWare ESX
> Tools.  It's just so much easier to upgrade.
>
> However, having not used the open-vm-tools before, I'm interested to
> know what the practical differences are.  Is there any advantage to
> using the ESX version of the tools?

Fundamentally speaking there is no difference between the ESX 3.5 Tools (I presume you're using ESX 3.5) and the open-vm-tools; both represent snapshots of the same code base taken at different points in time. That said, there are a few practical differences:

1) The ESX 3.5 Tools contain a few components that haven't been open-sourced, namely the vmdesched module and the Tools auto-upgrader. The former is experimental and generally useless to 99.9% of customers, and the latter isn't useful in the open-vm-tools, so it's unlikely that you'll care about these.
2) The ESX 3.5 Tools, as far as I know, don't have a Debian package. So your installation experience will likely be less pleasant than if you used the open-vm-tools Debian package.
3) The ESX 3.5 Tools are, at this point in time, quite a bit older than the open-vm-tools. The open-vm-tools code base reflects our top-of-tree, usually off by a month at most. The ESX 3.5 Tools branched from the top-of-tree almost two years ago.
4) The ESX 3.5 Tools are supported by VMware when used in conjunction with ESX 3.5 hosts. If it's important to you to get quick support from VMware's support organization, you have no choice but to use the ESX 3.5 Tools. The level of support you'll get from the open-vm-tools is going to be "best-effort", meaning, whomever responds to e-mails like these, bug reports on Sourceforge, and bug reports in the Debian package.