Intermittent ping loss between vCenter Server and the ESXi host, accompanied by duplicate (DUP!) ICMP replies from the ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• vCenter Server is intermittently losing connection to the ESXi host
• When the ESXi host is pinged from the vCenter, it responds with duplicate IP addresses
  root@VCSA [ ~ ]# ping <ESXi IP Address>
PING #.#.#.# (#.#.#.#) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from #.#.#.#: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=58.1 ms
64 bytes from #.#.#.#: icmp_seq=1 ttl=123 time=75.3 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from #.#.#.#: icmp_seq=2 ttl=123 time=40.6 ms
64 bytes from #.#.#.#: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=57.1 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from #.#.#.#: icmp_seq=3 ttl=123 time=40.0 ms
  
  
• The response times for the primary and duplicate packets differ, indicating potential differing network paths between the responses.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi
VMware vCenter Server

 

Cause

The VC/ESXi gateway was configured to route through the wrong device

Resolution

Needs to update the gateway on the physical device from an edge security device to a directly connected core switch to fix the reported issue.