ESXi online/offline only when logged into them

[STEVIL]

I have ESXi Update 4 installed. I have a 3 VM's on there, one is a 2008 64 bit server, 2003 R2 32bit and a 32bit XP client.

If I log into the 2003/2008 client either by console or RDP I get very strange network behaviour. The VM becomes unavailable on the network AND via the console within the VI Client. It seems fairly repetative, i.e. every minute or so the outage occurs, for approx another minute. If I sign out of the VM the network comes back to life again.

The 'server' is an abit ab9pro motherboard with two Intel 1000 single port NICs installed, 8GB RAM, Q6600 @ stock, 4 SATA drives of varying sizes/types.

I saw a similar issue reported on an earlier version of ESXi (with E1000 drivers) but it's since been fixed apparently.

Any advice on this?

Cheers

Steve

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Do you experience the problem between VMs? How is your networking setup (vSwitches / physical connections)?

[STEVIL]

When the VM is in this offline state I cannot get into to see if the problem exists between VM's, even through the VI client console.

Network setup is straight out of the box, one vswitch attached to one of the intel Gb NICs. I'm going to try a dual port Gbit broadcom NIC that I have out of another machinem see if that makes a difference.

[STEVIL]

I've since tried 'logmein' to remote into one of the servers. I get the same effect, I can sit with the login prompt open and not lose the connection, as soon as I log in I get a dropped connection within 30 seconds and the VM is on/offline after that until I can get back into it long enough to log out of the OS..........VERY strange

[Dave_Mishchenko]

even through the VI client console.

The remote console goes via the ESXi host so it suggests a host problem and not a VM problem. Have you checked the switch for a duplex / speed mismatch or port errors? After you have the problem, can you access the console of ESXi and press ALTF1 and ALTF12 to see if there are any errors?