Virtual Desktop Network Interface Looses Connection

[etieseler]

Hello All,

First I'll start off with some environmental information.

I am running View 4.6 on ESXi4.1U3 with Windows 7 32 bit desktops.

I've had it happen several times where a few of the virtual desktops have their network connection dropped. First I get complaints that a user cannot log into their desktop and what I find is when I go into 'Edit Settings' for the VM, under the network adaptor, the 'Connected' check box is not checked. 'Connect on Startup' is checked however.

I have not found a pattern to this yet, it doesn't seem to be related to vMotion or rebooting or anything (However it could be, I just have not tracked the cause down yet). It does seem to happen to certain VM's, there have been 2 that its happened to, and this morning, the one I use did it for the first time.

All I do is 'Edit Settings' and check the box next to 'Connected' and it connects, gets an IP, and the user can log in now.

I am trying to boil it down to a certain action that causes this to happen, but its seemingly random when it happens, and its usually in the morning when everyone gets in the office. As far as I can tell there was no shutdown or reboot on the VM durring the night. I cannot tell if the user Logged out, or just locked their desktop over night.

Has anyone run accross anything like this, and did you find a fix for it?

I'd love to hear others experiences in this arena.

-Ed

[JCL225]

I know that you've already partially ruled out vmotion errors, however the few times I've come across this issue it was directly related to that.

Specifically when the vm migrated to a host that does not have access to (or is improperly configured for) the particular vswitch or distributed switch settings that your vm is configured for.

I would double check all hosts in the cluster to make sure their networking is configured properly.

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On second though, if that were true then you should also be having provisioning errors for your pools. But anyway it is a place to start.

[etieseler]

JCL,

Thanks for the reply. Differences in network configuration was my first thought and I double checked all the settings and they are the same among all the Hosts. The network has the same exact name, the VLAN ID is the same, the speed and duplex is the same across all hosts, all interfaces are connected.  However, there is one difference, but I don't think it applies. I have started deploying vShield, and on one of the Hosts where the vShield Manager is installed, it created a vShield network and vSwitch. This does not exist on the remaining hosts.

I don't think it applies as none of the VM's are connected to this network at all.

However, to verify that this is, or isn't, causing this problem, I am going to vMotion the VM I use to and from this host a few times while logged in and logged off, just to see if this happens to my VM.

I'll post an update once this is done.

-Ed

[etieseler]

No luck getting this to duplicate with any vMotions. This finally happened to my View Connection Manager server. I checked its events history and it was migrated about 4 hours before the network was disconnected. I know this because suddenly people could not log in, and just 30 minutes before staff, including myself, were logging into virtual desktops with no issue. So I have all but rulled out vMotion as the culprit.

Has anyone else experienced this? I may end up having to open a support case with VMware on this.

Hope to hear from others.

-Ed