Each ESXi host embeds a specific Tools version. To get a newer Tools without upgrading ESXi:

sudo tar -xzf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp/ cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/ sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d

To install VMware Tools on a VM, follow these steps:

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities and drivers installed inside the guest operating system of a VM. Without it, a VM runs on generic, fallback drivers that offer poor video resolution, sluggish network performance, incorrect time synchronization, and no ability to perform graceful shutdowns or quiesced snapshots.

If you maintain a shared product locker on a datastore: