Network/pings lost intermittently for various VMs/Windows PCs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Random (Windows 10) PCs/VMs lose pings from host and recover after a while without any changes to underlying network on host or vCenter.
• From the windows PC, you're able to reach the VM network gateway and other VMs in that network but not the host.

Cause

Performing packet captures on the associated uplinks and VM switch port on the host show that ICMP echo request packets are delivered to the VM's vNIC / guest OS, but no ICMP reply packets are seen coming from the VM's vNIC / guest OS. This confirms that VM is not responding.

 

 

Resolution

Check further with your network team or guest OS support to investigate any issues with the guest OS.

Also, check this KB Packet capture on ESXi using the pktcap-uw tool for performing packet captures.