on the new vmware ESX if you right click on guest OS virtual maching then select install vmware tools this mounts the cd then type in the following commands:
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
mkdir -p /media/cdrom && mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
cp /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp/ && cd /tmp/ && tar xvf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz && cd vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl