So. We bought a dell something, 2months ago. Dual Xeon nehalem, 72gb memory 6tb diskspace etc.

For test env vmware.

Bought it with preinstalled esx 3.5.

Now then, everything is generally peachy, BUT; we get these totally weird random networking problems, only with windows 2008 R2 rc X64.

Both standard edition full, and standard edition core exhibit the same behavior.

The behavior pops up quite randomly, in conjunction with Vmachine booting.

What happens, is quite tricky to diagnose, but the symptoms are as follows:

• machine loses domain connectivity (as there are no DC's within the VMWare server)

• all IP connectivity to outside world is lost (default gateway at x.x.x.1 is lost too)

• ping, nslookup etc, all return: http://localhost IP address x.x.x.100:destination host unreachable.

Except that local VMWare vmachines in the same subnet, work like a charm. Since I don't have a dns server there cant really try nslookup but pings etc. network, file share, all work fine as long as the target is within the same ESX server.

• external hosts lose the route to there, it's like totally swallowed, the default gateway has no idea where to send the packets etc.

However same esx server hosts several windows 2003 r2 sp2 x64 and x86 virtual machines, and they just keep on rocking, regardless of reboots etc. Not a hickup in sight.

Current tally is: 8 windows 2008, 7 windows 2003, of the 8 win2008 i have had 4 exhibit this weird network stuff. And the 2003 servers keep on rockin....

Any advice would be much appreciated. AFAIK, the dell carries esx server 3.5 build 153875.

I will probably have our local vmware consultancy pop in and upgrade to U4. Which I gather that isnt yet.

note: I am not ye vmware expert. Windows yes, linux yes, networking yes, vmware not really.