Post vMotion , the VM's may become unreachable on the network

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• After vMotion completes successfully, VM may experience network disconnect on destination ESXi.
  
  
• In /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore-uuid>/<VMname>/vmware.log, you may see similar entries 
  
  

  2026-06-03T00:46:48.623Z In(05) vcpu-0 - VMXNET3 user: failed to activate 'Ethernet0', status: 0xbad0001
  2026-06-03T00:46:48.667Z In(05) vmx - SVMotionFixParentPaths: No snapshot paths need to be fixed
  2026-06-03T00:46:48.667Z In(05) vmx - MigrateSetStateFinished: type=2 new state=MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_FINISHED

   

• In ESXi host /var/vcap/sys/log/nsx-node-agent/nsx-node-agent.stdout.log, below errors may be reported
  
  

  2026-06-03T00:48:11.508 kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (vmxnet3): transmit queue 4 timed out
  2026-06-03T00:48:11.508 kernel: WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 0 at net/sched/sch_generic.c:477 dev_watchdog+0x277/0x280

   

• In /var/log/vmkernel.log, similar entries are observed
  
  

  2026-06-03T00:46:48.618Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu52:24908#####)Successfully attached filter nic-#####-eth0-vmware-sfw.2 to slowpath
  2026-06-03T00:46:48.623Z In(182) vmkernel:cpu52:24908#####)Vmxnet3: 12036: Invalid gen bit for rq: 4, World_Handle: 0x453a2#####
  2026-06-03T00:46:48.626Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu52:24908#####)VMotion: 6709: 157847##### D: Received all changed pages.
  

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 U3f

Cause

When restoring the vMotion checkpoint data, there is a unexpected data in rx queue state which will lead vmxnet3 device to enter to stopped state.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware  ESXi version 8.0 U3g (P06) available at Broadcom downloads.

If you are having difficulty finding and downloading software, review the Download Broadcom products and software KB.

Additional Information

Post migration, the VMs may become unreachable on the network.


In the below release notes, we can search for - "PR 3480453: Virtual machine vNIC fails to activate after a vSphere vMotion operation":

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3g Release Notes