While we cannot say that this one or the other is better, there are some significant differences which we’ll be talking about today so you get better understanding.

VMware Tools are, as you know, VMware proprietary implementation of tools which does provide the same (or better) implementation of functions you need for your VMs. OVT are also responsible for clock synchronization between guest and host, as well as quiescing of guest file systems which is needed for filesystem consistent guest snapshots. With OVT you’ll be able to perform graceful shutdown, authentication for guest OS operations, generation of heartbeat from guest to host (so VMware High Availability can determine if the guest OS is up and running or not). It has kernel modules for enhancing the performance of VMs running Linux or another VMware supported Unix like guest OS. The same as VMware tools, OVT is suite of virtualization utilities which improves the performance, functionality, administration and management of virtual machines (VMs) running within VMware vSphere environment.

Open-VM tools (OVT) is an open source implementation of VMware tools. But for Linux VMs? What are the differences between VMware Tools and Open-VM tools (OVT)? StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) OEMįor Windows VMs the choice is simple.

Ubuntu vmware tools