This post will detail how to upgrade VMware tools on virtual machines without having to reboot by using PowerCLI. Personally I have found this quite useful when having to upgrade VMware tools on production servers that require 24×7 up time. I have tried this update method on Windows Server 2008/R2 and RHEL 5/6 with success.
First you need to connect to your vCenter server via PowerCLI and choose one of the two methods of deployment detail below.
Upgrade VMware tools on a singular virtual machine:
Get-VM “yourvm” | Update-Tools –NoReboot
Upgrade VMware tools on all virtual machines:
Get-VM | Update-Tools –NoReboot
Thanks for reading and remember to lookout for my other posts on PowerCLI.