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Monitoring of VMware Tools Status - Can it be done?

Hello everyone! I am hoping this is a relatively simple answer but Im not sure it will be as Ive done some searching and come up empty handed. So, here we go:

We have Windows Service Monitor components monitoring the VMware Tools service on our VMs. If the service goes to any other state than "Running", the service is restarted. That is working fine, however, we are running in to another issue.

When you log in to vSphere, you might see that a server has a VMware Tools status of "toolsNotRunning" or "toolsNotInstalled" on a VM, but when you log in to Windows, you will see that VMware Tools is installed and when you go in to Services, you will see the VMware Tools service listed as "Running". If you try to stop the service, you get an error that reads, "1053 The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion", then you can start the service again, refresh the VM page in the vSphere Web Client, and it will show "Running" as it should.

We definitely have an issue with VMware Tools on these VMs and I am working on trying to get that resolved. In the meantime, however, I am a little concerned that some of our VMs that are protected by Site Recovery Manager may run in to issues in a DR event (knock on wood), so thats why Im coming here for a work around.

Does anyone know if SAM can monitor the actual status of VMware Tools as reported to vSphere, Virtualization Manager, etc? I am basically thinking that anything with a status other than "toolsOK" should try to restart the VMware Tools service. Im just kind of lost on how to get SAM to "see" these statuses.

Thanks in advance!

  • If you have VMAN integrated with SAM, you should be able to use key on the tools status of anything other than Not Running.  This is found under Virtual Machine category.

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  • Thank you for the reply mprobus! Where are you seeing those listed? Is that under a SAM template and youre trying to add a component monitor or somewhere else?

  • I found the info by using a custom table in a report / resource.  However, based upon your initial question, it sounds like you are wanting an alert so you can initiate a restart.  If you do a search in the canned alerts for SAM, there is one called VMs with Bad Tools.  This would be a good starting point for you.  The trigger condition can be seen below.  If this isn't what you are looking for, let me know.

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  • Hey... I wanted to thank you for your input. I havent had as much of a chance to dig in to this, lately, but I think youve got me on the right track, now. I am working with an alert exactly like you described, just with a few more trigger conditions. Still working out the service restart, etc, but this is definitely looking promising. Thanks again!