Custom Cisco Auto Deploy 6.5 U2 Image / VM Tools 11.x Upgrade

[dorgillmstates]

Very long story short, need to upgrade VM Tools from 10.x to 11.x on 100s of auto deploy 6.5 U2 ESXi hosts (UCS Blades). The customer is NOT in a position to upgrade to 6.7 with the latest 11.x tools already embedded.

I am trying to create one of the following. Also open to any better ideas:

1 - Custom Cisco AD 6.5 U2 image with latest patches and 11.x tools embedded

2 - Custom Cisco AD 6.5 U2 image with no tools and use the /var/productlocker settings on hosts to point to 11.x tools on a shared datastore.

Thanks in advance

[cartdaniel437]

Both of your options are valid: You can create a custom ESXi 6.5 U2 image with VMware Tools 11.x manually added. Just make sure the Cisco drivers are retained properly. An easier approach is to point the /productLocker path on each host to a shared datastore that contains VMware Tools 11.x. This avoids the need to rebuild the image. For managing hundreds of hosts, the second option is usually more scalable and easier to maintain.