I originally brought this up back in October with my Tip for virtualization Citrix servers invovling user profiles post.  I’m bringing it up again because this week VMware updated their knowledgebase document 1317 Windows Guest Cannot Update hgfs.dat and it’s missing a piece of key information that administrators need to be aware of.  I’m not going to rehash the whole hgfs registry value again.  You can read the details about that in my October post linked above.  The workarounds for hgfs issues caused by VMware Tools do work, however, what’s not mentioned is that a re-installation or upgrade of VMware Tools will re-install the hgfs value back in the registry thus introducing problems again.  With the amount of ESX/ESXi version upgrades coming from VMware lately, which in turn cause VMware Tools upgrades, this scenario is not going to be uncommon for anyone who is virtualizing Terminal Services or Citrix.  Add to that, VMware even recently released an interim VMware Tools upgrade patch subsequent to ESX 3.5.0 Update 3 (ESXe350-200811401-T-BG).

It should be noted that the hgfs registry value is associated with VMware shared folders technology (not used with ESX/ESXi) and only gets installed during a Complete installation type.  A Typical installation type will not install the hgfs registry value.  I perform Complete installation types of VMware Tools because I make use of the VMware Descheduled Time Accounting Service.  My virtualized Citrix servers have been impacted by this twice:  The first time when I orginally rolled out the virtualized Citrix servers.  The second time a few months later I discovered hgfs was installed again after a VMware Tools upgrade.  I’ve asked VMware to update hgfs related KB articles with the piece about the VMware Tools upgrades.  As I pointed out in my October article, one of the nasty side effects of the hgfs value on Terminal Services VMs is the constant growing of the user profile folders under \Documents and Settings\.  Left undiscovered for a while and it becomes a pretty big mess and the speed at which ugliness infiltrates \Documents and Settings\ is compounded by the number of Terminal Services users logging on to the server throughout the day every day.

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