when applying a sql server cumulative update or service pack on a virtual machine - what could be a safe way of stopping VMWaretools? While applying cumulative updates to sql server 2016 SP1, there are a bunch of services and applications that need to be stopped for the update to go on.

Among those is the very core of the virtual machine, the VMware Tools core service.

Is it safe to stop all the instances of this application in order to go on with the updates?

What could be a safe way of doing it?
None of the services in your screenshot have anything to do with VMWare.

The one you highlighted is Wmiprvse.exe which is basically WMI


  WMI resides in a shared service host with several other services. To avoid stopping all the services when a provider fails, providers are loaded into a separate host process named "Wmiprvse.exe". 


The other ones are 


SSISTELEMETRY is basically the customer improvement service
Windows Agent Service is probably something for NetIQ.
PBIEgwService is an on-prem Power BI gateway.


In any case, just update the box and reboot it afterwards (I'm assuming you have a maintenance window for the update anyway), I'm fairly sure you can stop those 4 services during the update.