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VMware tools on RHEL/CentOS: the easy way

VMware pre-compiles the VMware tools for selected OS kernels. The stock RHEL kernels are included, but not the intermediate updates. If you can live with that, you can simply add the VMware tools YUM repository:
# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
# wget http://bert.debruijn.be/linux-stuff/vmwaretools.repo
and download the VMware RPM signing key
# cd /etc/pki/rpm-gpg
# wget http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub

Then install the tools packages:
# yum install vmware-tools-nox
or
# yum install vmware-tools

vCenter will report the tools version as "Unmanaged" rather than "OK", but you have heartbeat (so HA and alarms can detect guest OS crashes), balloon driver, etc.
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