AppInfo plugin in VMware Tools 11 enables the collection of the running application processes within a Guest OS and publishes that information to VM guestInfo Property called as guestinfo.appinfo. For each application running inside the guest, the name and version information is captured and published by the plugin. The appInfo plugin collects the information in every 30 minutes by default.
The AppInfo plugin is enabled by default with VMware Tools 11 and is supported on both Windows and Linux Guest OS’s.
However, ESXi version 7.0 Update 1 is required to use this feature.
The data collected by appInfo plugin can be retrieved as follows:
Linux:
vmtoolsd –cmd “info-get guestinfo.appInfo”
vmware-rpctool “info-get guestinfo.appInfo”
Windows:
rpctool.exe “info-get guestinfo.appInfo”
As you can see in above screenshot, the result is a “raw” data and though useful for automation tools but it may still be too low level to some users. And you might need to format the output in order to make sense out of this data.
The appInfo plugin can be enabled or disabled at VM and Host levels.
Disabling the appinfo feature at host Level:
esxcli vm appinfo set –enabled false
Disabling the appInfo plugin at VM level:
Guest admin can disable the appInfo plugin as follows:
Linux:
vmware-toolbox-cmd config set appInfo disabled true OR
vmware-toolbox-cmd config set appinfo poll-interval 0
Windows:
VMwareToolboxCmd.exe config set appInfo disabled true OR
VMwareToolboxCmd.exe config set appInfo poll-interval 0