Afaik you're right, the shutdown can not be done from the MSI parameters.
But you can control the complete process from a PowerCLI script, and then you can shutdown the VM when the update is finished.
- Mount the VMware Tools installation files with the Mount-Tools cmdlet
- Run the upgrade through the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet
- Shutdown the VM with the Shutdown-VMGuest cmdlet
You will have to think the reboot after the upgrade of the tools.
If you let the reboot happen, the View agent service will run. That is perhaps something you want to avoid.
There are several ways to accomplish that:
- Before rebooting, set the startup type of the service to disabled
- Disconnect the VM from the network. You can still reboot and shutdown the VM and you can even execute scripts/commands inside the VM's OS with the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet