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.