Open Virtual Machine Tools

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with this module
   • What this module affects
   • What this module requires
   • Beginning with this module
4. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
   • OS Support
   • Notes
   • Issues
7. Changelog
8. References
9. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Overview

This Puppet module manages the installation and configuration of the Open Virtual Machine Tools for VMware. VMware recommends using open-vm-tools redistributed by operating system vendors.

Module Description

open-vm-tools is the open source implementation of VMware Tools and consists of a suite of virtualization utilities that improves the functionality, administration, and management of virtual machines within a VMware environment. The primary purpose for open-vm-tools is to enable operating system vendors and/or communities and virtual appliance vendors to bundle VMware Tools into their product releases.

The benefits of bundling open-vm-tools are:

• End users get the best out-of-box experience to efficiently deploy virtual machines on VMware virtual infrastructure.
• Eliminates the need to separately install VMware Tools when open-vm-tools is bundled with the operating system because open-vm-tools is a fully-supported open source implementation of VMware Tools.
• Reduces operational expenses and virtual machine downtime because updates to open-vm-tools packages are provided with operating system maintenance updates and patches. This eliminates separate maintenance cycles for VMware Tools updates.
• No compatibility matrix check is required for open-vm-tools. Adhering to the VMware Compatibility Matrix for the guest OS release is sufficient.
• open-vm-tools bundled with the operating system provides a compact footprint optimized for each OS release.

Setup

What this module affects

• Installs the main package open-vm-tools.
• Optionally installs the desktop package open-vm-tools-desktop.
• Starts the vmtoolsd daemon.

Requirements

You need to be running a virtual machine on the VMware platform and on an operating system that ships the Open Virtual Machine Tools for this module to do anything.

Beginning with this module

It is safe for all nodes to use this declaration. Any non-VMware or unsupported system will skip installation of the tools.

include openvmtools

To include the desktop software, set the following parameter:

class { 'openvmtools':
  with_desktop => true,
}

Usage

There is only one class and most usage will simply include the openvmtools class.

Reference

Classes

Public Classes

• openvmtools: Installs the Open Virtual Machine Tools.

Class: openvmtools

Parameters

The following parameters are available in the ::openvmtools class:

ensure

Ensure if present or absent. Default: present

autoupgrade

Upgrade package automatically, if there is a newer version. Default: false

desktop_package_conflicts

Boolean that determines whether the desktop conflicts includes and conflicts with the base package. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: auto-set, platform specific

desktop_package_name

Name of the desktop package. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: auto-set, platform specific

manage_epel

Boolean that determines if puppet-epel is required for packages. This should only needed for RedHat (EL) 6. Default: auto-set, platform specific

package_name

Name of the package. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: auto-set, platform specific

service_enable

Start service at boot. Default: true

service_ensure

Ensure if service is running or stopped. Default: running

service_hasstatus

Name of openvmtools service. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: auto-set, platform specific

service_name

Name of openvmtools service. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: auto-set, platform specific

service_pattern

Pattern to look for in the process table to determine if the daemon is running. Only set this if your platform is not supported or you know what you are doing. Default: vmtoolsd

supported

Boolean that overrides the resulte of the supported OS check Default: undef

uninstall_vmware_tools

Boolean that determines whether the conflicting VMWare Tools package should be uninstalled, if present. Default: false

with_desktop

Whether or not to install the desktop/GUI support. Default: false

Limitations

OS Support

open-vm-tools is available with these operating systems:

• CentOS 7 and later releases
• Debian 11 and later releases
• Fedora 38 and later releases
• FreeBSD 10 and later releases
• Oracle Linux 7 and later releases
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 and later releases
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and later releases
• Ubuntu 20.04 and later LTS releases
• openSUSE 11.x and later releases
• Rocky 8 and later releases
• AlmaLinux 8 and later releases

Notes

• No other VM tools (ie Operating System Specific Packages) will be supported. Use voxpupuli/vmwaretools instead.

Issues

• None

Changelog

see CHANGELOG.md

References

see REFERENCE.md

Development

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for information on how to contribute.

Copyright (C) 2017 Vox Pupuli voxpupuli@groups.io

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

voxpupuli/puppet-openvmtools on GitHub

voxpupuli/openvmtools on Puppet Forge