VMware Tools GuestInfo reports empty NicInfo array

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• From the host vSphere API, VM GuestInfo.net is empty NicInfo array while GuestInfo.ipAddress exists
• From the vCenter Server UI, the VM summary tab does not show a VM IP address
• When reviewing the VMware Tools log (vmsvc.log) inside the virtual machine, you may observe one of the following messages indicating that the maximum supported number of virtual network interfaces (NICs) has been reached:
  • [message] [vmsvc] GuestInfoAddNicEntry: NIC limit (64) reached, skipping overflow.
  • [message] [vmsvc] GuestInfoGather: NIC limit (16) reached.

Environment

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

• This issue occurs when VMware Tools (version 10.2.0 and later) detects an excessive number of network interface entries within the guest operating system.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, configure VMware Tools to ignore specific network interfaces by adding the exclude-nics parameter in the tools.conf configuration file.

• Example configuration:
  [guestinfo]
  primary-nics=eth0
  exclude-nics=docker*,???????????????

Note: The above example configuration excludes interfaces that have the prefix docker in their name or have 15 character long names (This is the typical length for container interface names created by Docker). For specific guest environments, these patterns need to be adjusted to match the appropriate interface names, to exclude only the intended set of interfaces from guestInfo. exclude-nics accepts multiple patterns and an interface gets excluded from guestInfo reporting if the interface name matches with any one of the patterns.

Additional Information

• For information on vmsvc logging and setting the VMware Tools config file, see Enabling debug logging for VMware Tools within a guest operating system.
• For more information and examples of usage of the exclude-nics VMware Tools configuration option, see the Configuring Network Interface Information section in the VMware Tools 11.2.0 Documentation.