As of v1.1.0, RancherOS automatically detects that it is running on VMware ESXi, and automatically adds the open-vm-tools service to be downloaded and started, and uses guestinfo keys to set the cloud-init data.

As of v1.5.0, RancherOS releases anything required for VMware, which includes initrd, a standard ISO for VMware, a vmdk image, and a specific ISO to be used with Docker Machine. The open-vm-tools is built in to RancherOS, there is no need to download it.

Description Download URL
Booting from ISO https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/vmware/rancheros.iso
For docker-machine https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/vmware/rancheros-autoformat.iso
VMDK https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/vmware/rancheros.vmdk
Initrd https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/vmware/initrd

VMware Guest Info

VARIABLE TYPE
hostname hostname
interface.<n>.name string
interface.<n>.mac MAC address (is used to match the ethernet device’s MAC address, not to set it)
interface.<n>.dhcp {“yes”, “no”}
interface.<n>.role {“public”, “private”}
interface.<n>.ip.<m>.address CIDR IP address
interface.<n>.route.<l>.gateway IP address
interface.<n>.route.<l>.destination CIDR IP address (not available yet)
dns.server.<x> IP address
dns.domain.<y> DNS search domain
cloud-init.config.data string
cloud-init.data.encoding {“”, “base64”, “gzip+base64”}
cloud-init.config.url URL

Note: “n”, “m”, “l”, “x” and “y” are 0-indexed, incrementing integers. The identifier for an interface (<n>) is used in the generation of the default interface name in the form eth<n>.