VM Guests (Windows) - unable to ping and RD into VM

[VMASON]

After VM guest runs for a period of time, network traffic slows dramatically on VM. Send and receive count out of sync. VM remains up by we are unable to ping from external source and unable to access it using Remote Desktop. A reboot does cure it. Anyone have any suggestions to resolve this issue rather than rebooting.

[Rob_Bohmann1]

Ok the crowd wants to help you but we need some more info....

How long after a reboot does it take for the symptoms to reappear?

What version of windows are you running and what version of ESX?

Do you have vmtools installed? If so are they up-to-date (what version)?

Is it just this one particular vm or does it happen to others? Are they running on the same ESX host or different ones?

Can you vmotion this vm to another host and does it remain off the network or does connectivity come back?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Look for a large number or very large snapshots using snapalert (vmprofessional.com) or snaphunter (xtravirt.com) as this can lead to network issues.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/

Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[VMASON]

Thanks for your help.

How long after a reboot does it take for the symptoms to reappear? a few days

What version of windows are you running and what version of ESX? W2K3 EE 3.0.1 & 3.0.2

Do you have vmtools installed? If so are they up-to-date (what version)? Yes, not sure version

Is it just this one particular vm or does it happen to others? Are they running on the same ESX host or different ones? others, seen on two different host

Can you vmotion this vm to another host and does it remain off the network or does connectivity come back? have not tried vmotion

[Rob_Bohmann1]

There are patches available in 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 that fix vm network connectivity problems, some are dependent on what type of nics you are using. We've seen this a few times on 3.0.1.

I would check to see what patches are applied on the host to see if you have them applied.

Also check to see that in the vm properties that you are using a "flexible" network adapter type and not vlance. The later can indicate a machine migrated from ESX 2.x that does not have the virtual hardware upgrade completed, and so you may not be able to update vmtools to the latest version after you apply the patches. The VM needs to be in a powered off state to upgrade the virtual hardware.

Here are a link to the patches