[Edit 2017-05-04] The below is still valid for JunOS SPACE 15.2 or older. From JunOS SPACE 16.1 on, you can use “Open VM Tools” instead.
JunOS SPACE, Juniper’s management platform for JunOS devices (switches, routers, firewalls) does not come with gcc or kernel-headers. Installing VMWare Tools from a mounted ISO via vmware-install.pl is not all that successful. Happily, VMWare still provides RPM versions of those tools. SPACE 15.2 is built on CentOS 5, which in turn is a RHEL 5 clone.
Be sure to use the VMWare Tools package that matches the version of CentOS your SPACE is running.
1) Start by downloading the RPMs for VMWare Tools on RHEL 5. You’ll want the following (or their current equivalent):
vmware-tools-core-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-esx-nox-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-foundation-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-guestlib-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-libraries-nox-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-autoUpgrade-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-deployPkg-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-grabbitmqProxy-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-guestInfo-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-hgfsServer-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-powerOps-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-timeSync-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-vix-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-plugins-vmbackup-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-services-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
vmware-tools-vgauth-10.0.6-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
That list might change with newer versions of the tools and of RHEL, of course. When in doubt, grab just the vmware-tools-esx-nox package, try to install it, and take a note of all the dependent packages it wants, then download those too.
2) scp the lot to SPACE, say to /var/tmp. While WinSCP is unhappy with the shell the admin user runs on, command-line scp does not care and will work. Choose any version you like: The one that comes with Putty, the one that comes with Cygwin, an Ubuntu one on Windows 10, or any other. And if you’re running OSX or Linux, you can feel extra-smug because you have scp as part of your base OS.
3) Install those RPMs. Now, you could install the GPG key they are signed with, but if you trust that you got them from VMWare, in an unaltered form, then just:
yum install --nogpgcheck vmware-tools*rpm
If there are dependency errors, download the missing packages as well and try again.
5) Satisfy yourself that vmtoolsd is running:
service vmware-tools-services status
vSphere should now be reporting that SPACE is running “VMtools 3rd party/independent”. And that’s all there is to it.
The kmod portion of the tools won’t install, by the way – but then it’s not needed.
Thorsten on (mostly) Tech 
Thanks for this guide. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for me with the current tools. (9.4.6.1) They have upstart as an dependency. Did you not run into that problem?
Had the same issue with upstart. the command “rpm -qa | grep el” showed el5, so basicly tried installing EL6 packages on an EL5 system. If your Space is also EL5 try downloading and installing the tools from: http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/latest/rhel5/x86_64/index.html, works for me.
Thanks for this guide. I have Space version 14.1R2.9 and these instructions worked for me. I had to use the EL5 tools linked in the comment above from Riley due to the upstart dependency as well. I did not appear to run into the problem with initctl noted in step 3. After completing step 3, VMWare reported the status as “Running, version:2147483647 (3rd-party/Independent)”. I rebooted the node/fabric and VMWare tools appears to have started correctly as the status is again “Running”. Because of this I did not complete any steps after 3.
Thank you again for taking the time to write this up.