Unexpected "ethsw0" Interface Causes Cyclic Reboots of Guest OS in vCenter

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Unexpected Ethernet interface named ethsw0 appears at the application level on Guest OS
• The interface is not visible using standard OS-level networking commands (ip link show, ip a) or within /etc/sysconfig/network/
• It is exclusively visible when executing the tipc link list command on the Guest OS and within application-level logs.

Environment

• VMware Telco Cloud Platform (TCP) 5.0.1
• vCenter Server 7.x
• ESXi 7.x 
• VMware Cloud Director (vCD) 10.3 

Cause

The issue does not originate from the VMware infrastructure layer. The unexpected ethsw0 interface is generated at the application level, driven by the vendor-provided OVF file or the internal application network configuration running within the Guest OS.

Resolution

Resolution requires changes to the OVF template or application configuration. Reach out to Application Vendor for the required changes.

Additional Information

Follow below workaround steps:

• Redeploy the affected application VMs onto a different isolated VLAN (different from the original VLAN XXX).
• Access the Guest OS and verify the absence of the ethsw0 interface using the tipc link list command. 
• Once confirmed that the unexpected interface is no longer present, proceed with the TCP 5.0.1 upgrade.

Note: Environment uses a standard vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) deployment. NSX-T is not involved in this topology.