In this guide you will learn how to Install Open VMware Tools on CentOS7/RHEL7. Open-vm-tools CentOS 7 install can be much easier and faster than official VMware Tools.
Open-vm-tools enables the following features:
- The ability to perform virtual machine power operations gracefully.
- Execution of VMware provided or user configured scripts in guests during various power operations.
- The ability to run programs, commands and file system operation in guests to enhance guest automation.
- Authentication for guest operations.
- Periodic collection of network, disk, and memory usage information from the guest.
- Generation of heartbeat from guests to hosts so VMware’s HA solution can determine guests’ availability.
- Clock synchronization between guests and hosts or client desktops.
- Quiescing guest file systems to allow hosts to capture file-system-consistent guest snapshots.
- Execution of pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts while quiescing guest file systems.
- The ability to customize guest operating systems immediately after powering on virtual machines.
- Enabling shared folders between host and guest file systems on VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion.
- Copying and pasting text, graphics, and files between guests and hosts or client desktops.
How to Install Open VMWare Tools on CentOS7
Time needed: 2 minutes.
Install Open VMWare Tools on CentOS7
- Install Open VMWare Tools using YUM command
# yum install -y open-vm-tools
- After installation reboot Virtual machine
# reboot
On fresh installed CentOS7/RHEL7 you can use the YUM command to install Open VM Tools.
As root run command:
# yum install -y open-vm-tools
Example output:

Start open-vm-tools
After VM Tools installation we need reboot CentOS7 Virtual Machine with reboot command:
# reboot
Open-vm-tools CentOS 7 install is done!
How to usie Open VM Tools official documentation.
See also: How To Install Open VM Tools Ubuntu 18.04