I recently was inquired on the best practices and approach to manage VMware tools in a large infrastructure, the below blog is intended to provide a simple step-by-step guide to perform this through VMware Update Manager.

1-Click on Update Manager Tab => Baselines & Groups Tab

2-Create a Baseline Group (see screenshot below)

3-Choose “VMware Tools to match host” radio button & Complete Wizard.

4-You would only see the VMware tools BaseLine group in the Virtual Machines & Templates Inventory View.(See Screenshot below)

5-Attach the Baseline Group to the any object in the hierarchy(For example “Datacenter”)

6-Click on “Scan”

7-Click on “Remediate”

The task can be performed immediately or scheduled for a later window

You can optionally(recommended) snapshot the Virtual Machine and retain for a number of days/hours

* Ensure you choose to commit the snapshot to avoid performance issues

Click here for More Information

While this process can also be performed using powercli, I find this process is much simpler and straightforward.