VMware Tools enhances the performance and improves the management of virtual machines. It does this by loading optimized drivers for virtual hardware and installing utilities to access virtual machine configurations and metrics. VMware Tools is not required, but for optimal virtual machine performance, it should be installed on all virtual machines in the environment.

The status of VMware Tools is displayed on the virtual machine's Summary page, as shown in the following screenshot:

The drivers for the optimized paravirtual hardware, such as the VMXNET3 adapter and the PVSCSI adapter, are included in VMware Tools, and VMware Tools must be installed before the hardware is available for use within the guest. VMware Tools should be installed and kept up to date for every guest operating system.