This short post is about VMware Tools on VM guests running in a vSphere 5.x cluster/hosts.

This PowerCli one-liner creates a list of VM guests where the VMware Tools CDROM/ISO is mounted:

(Get-VM | Get-View | Where {$_.Runtime.ToolsInstallerMounted}) | % {$_.Name}

Unmount the VMware Tools installer CDROM on all VM guests. This is useful to run before you try to put at ESXi host in maintenance mode because VM guests thatare installing VMware Tools will not migrate because the VMware Tools is not on a shared storage. You will get the error message “The virtual machine is installing VMware Tools and cannot initiate a migration operation”.

(Get-VM | Get-View | Where {$_.Runtime.ToolsInstallerMounted}) | % {Dismount-Tools

This last one finds all VM guests running Windows as guest OS and upgrades VMware Tools without a reboot at the end

Get-VM | Where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" -and $_.Guest.OSFullName -match "Win*"} | % {Update-Tools -VM $_ -NoReboot}