How to use the latest VMware Tools with older vSphere versions

With vSphere 5.0 VMware made an important change regarding the compatibility and supportability of the VMware Tools: The Tools that come with vSphere 5.0 (and newer releases) can also be used with earlier vSphere releases (down to vSphere 4.0). For e.g. the latest VMware Tools of ESXi 5.1 the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix shows the following:

VMware Tools of ESXi 5.1 interoperability

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[Release] vSphere 5.0 Update 2 and ESXi 5.1 Build 914609

VMware has released Update 2 for vCenter 5.0 (both the Windows version and the Linux appliance) and ESXi 5.0:
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2012: A year of blogging and tooling

It's this time of the year again ... time to look back on what you have achieved this year ... the time of annual reviews, and here is mine.
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Finally...: HP Online Firmware Updates for ESXi

If you have VMware ESXi running on an HP ProLiant server then you had to take it down for updating the firmware of its hardware components and boot it with the Service Pack for ProLiant Boot CD ... until now!

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How to clone ESXi 5

I recently received an e-mail with the following question: How do I copy an ESXi installation from a USB key drive on to the internal hard disk of my computer? Normally you would answer like this: You don't do it. You backup the ESXi configuration (e.g. with the vicfg-backup tool), install a fresh copy of ESXi on your hard disk and then restore the saved ESXi configuration.
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A Daemon's VIB - Part 3 (Building a software package for VMware ESXi)

Part 3: Packaging, SecPolicy and VisorFS

This is the third and last part of the "Daemon's VIB" series about building a software package for ESXi, using the example of the ProFTPD Offline Bundle that I recently released. In the first part I explained how to get (or create yourself) suitable binaries for ESXi, in the second part we cared about the Daemon's configuration, firewall settings and automatic startup. In this last part we will
   a) build and install the actual software package
   b) deal with the VMkernel access security policies and
   c) make the service configurable to adapt to your own needs.

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A Daemon's VIB - Part 2 (Building a software package for VMware ESXi)

Part 2: Service configuration and startup

This is the second part of the "Daemon's VIB" series about building a software package for ESXi, using the example of the ProFTPD Offline Bundle that I recently released. In the first part I explained how to get (or create yourself) suitable binaries for ESXi. In this part I will focus on what is necessary
   a) to make the service start up automatically on system boot and
   b) to make it fully manageable via the vSphere Client.
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