According to VMware, best practice is to have vm-tools installed on appliances that companies offer for sale. Best Practices for Building Virtual Appliances http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/Best_Practices_Building_Virtual_Appliances.pdf ------ Additionally, there are some best practices that relate to the portability and performance of your virtual appliance. The most critical of these is that your virtual appliance should be build using SCSI virtual disks. It is also important that your virtual appliance includes VMware Tools. VMware Tools provides optimized drivers for VMware virtual hardware and management tools that can monitor and manage the virtual appliance with VMware VirtualCenter.
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