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VMware Tools functions provided by DataPower VE

Question & Answer


Question

What VMware Tools functions are provided with DataPower Virtual Edition?

Cause

The VMware Tools version installed with DataPower Virtual Edition will show "Running (Current)", however not all VMware Tools functions are available.

Answer

DataPower Virtual Editions include by design a subset of the VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) within its firmware. The DataPower VE firmware includes a custom operating system (DPOS) and as such, some of the OSPs are not included because they are inconsistent with the DataPower security model or require specific OS support that is not included in DPOS.

User functions provided by VMware Tools running in DataPower VE

Soft Power operations (*):
  • restart
  • shutdown

(*) Among all user functions such as shutdown guest, restart guest, pause, and so on, only soft restart and soft shutdown are provided by the VMware Tools installation. The rest of operations are provided by the VMware product directly, for example, hard shutdown, reset, pause (suspend), power on/power off, and snapshot.

Internal functions provided by VMware Tools running in DataPower VE
 
  • Paravirtual disk and network drivers which improve disk and network performance
  • VMware service vmtoolsd which handles the communication between guest and host operating system.
  • Plug-ins that accompany the VMware Tools daemon are mainly:
      • vmware-tools-plugins-vix (guest management operations feature for the vSphere Web Services SDK and the VMware VIX API.)
      • vmware-tools-pluginspowerOps (soft power operations feature, allows clean power off and provides hooks to execute scripts when the virtual machine powers on, powers off, suspends, and resumes)
      • vmware-tools-pluginsguestInfo (collects guest configuration and state information, such as IP address from the guest to be displayed by the hypervisor)
The DataPower VE firmware does not support VMware user processes.


Version of VMware Tools included in DataPower VE

Typically, DataPower VE firmware includes the latest VMware OSPs at major release boundaries. See the DataPower Virtual Edition Release Notes for the supported versions of VMware.

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Document Information

Modified date:
21 April 2021

UID

swg21667802