[Bug 1220950] Re: [MIR] open-vm-tools

[John Savanyo]

Regarding the question: what would the tools get us in a cloud image,
here is some more details for you:

Open-VM-Tools is a suite of open source virtualization utilities that
improves the functionality, administration and management of virtual
machines on VMware hypervisors.

Benefits of bundling Open-VM-Tools with the guest operating system:

-  When Open-VM-Tools is bundled with the operating system, 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 the operating system maintenance updates and patches. This eliminates separate maintenance cycles for VMware Tools updates.
-   No compatibility matrix checking required for Open-VM-Tools. Adhering to vSphere compatibility matrix for the guest OS release is sufficient.
-   Open-VM-Tools bundled with the operating system provides a compact foot-print optimized for each OS release. 

Open-VM-Tools consist of the following three packages:

open-vm-tools package

This package contains the core Open-VM-Tools user-space programs and
libraries, including vmtoolsd, that provide the following features:

-  Synchronization of the guest OS clock with the virtualization platform
-  Enables the virtual infrastructure to perform graceful power operations (shut down) and file system quiescing of the virtual machine
-  Provides a heartbeat from guest to the virtualization infrastructure to support vSphere High Availability (HA)
-  Publishes information about the guest OS to the virtualization platform, including resource utilization and networking information
-  Provides a secure and authenticated mechanism to perform various operations within the guest OS from the virtualization infrastructure
-  Accepts additional plug-ins that can extend or customize Open-VM-Tools functionality 

open-vm-tools-desktop package

This optional package extends Open-VM-Tools with additional user-space programs and libraries to improve interactive functionality of virtual machines when hosted on VMware's Workstation or Fusion products. The following features are enabled by this package:
-  Enables text copy and paste operation between host and guest (either direction)
-  Enables drag and drop operation between host and guest (either direction)
-  Enables guest screen resizing 

open-vm-tools-devel package

This optional package extends Open-VM-Tools with additional user-space libraries for developers and contains:
-  Libraries for developing vmtoolsd plug-ins
-  Documentation for the libraries

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1220950

Title:
  [MIR] open-vm-tools

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