Vmware has pulled "latest" from their site. about puppet-vmwaretools

[salderma]

I have filed case with VMWare Support asking about the issue and VMWare's plans and/or reasoning for the change. I will try and keep you posted with any updates provided.

[salderma]

VMWare says they're looking into it. The support rep also indicated that the latest link was only present for informational purposes and not recommended to be used for deployment, referring to page 20 of http://packages.vmware.com/tools/docs/manuals/osp-esxi-51-install-guide.pdf

Sounds like they want to force us into knowing what version of ESX is running behind the VM.

[razorsedge]

@salderma
Did they offer a way to determine the version of ESX upon which the guest is running?

[salderma]

They did not. Here is the more formal response...

The /latest repository was regularly manually updated on the repository site. As a result between updates the tools images were frequently not the latest.

It was decided to decommission the link to ensure that customers were not relying on the packages when in fact they may (rarely) be incorrect.

There is no prospect that the link will be re established.

ESX specific 'latest' folders still exist of course and can be used.

I understand your frustration however that a module designed around this link, and which has heretofore worked for you, is now defunct.

However even though you work with Linux predominantly the option is open to you to install VMware Update Manager and use this to upgrade the tools on all your VMs.

I guess my go-forward will be to use our ENC to define $vmwaretools::tools_version, but unfortunately that does not address the default you have in the module or how to define a good default.

I will write back, given their suggestion of using VMWare Update Manager. This is not a suitable course for our environment due to least privilege rbac. I will add your question to my response. I would assume even that idea results in a chicken/egg problem w/o first having tools installed.

[salderma]

It would appear that they have reinstated the link.

In response to asking about how to determine the ESX version, the tech responding to my ticket said two things - use Windows Power Shell and VMWare PowerCLI. Secondly he said VMWare doesn't support Puppet.

[razorsedge]

Yaaaaaay for link restoration!

Its too bad VMWare doesn't support Puppet. :-)

[iforte]

ESX reports vmware tools as being out of date after pushing this module. Any idea how to get it up to latest release? Thanks!