Unable to ping virtual machine after VMware HCX network switchover

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

After performing a network switchover, virtual machines residing on an extended network are unreachable via ping.

When investigating the source HCX Network Extension (NE) appliance via SSH, the vmnic adapter tied to the extended VLAN (e.g., vmnic_2) is missing from the ifconfig output. The destination NE appliance lists all adapters correctly. Manual attempts to bring the missing interface UP or restarting the source NE appliance do not restore the adapter.

The following log entries may be observed in the HCX logs:

<134>1 2026-07-02T02:06:50+00:00 [HCX-NE-HOSTNAME] cgw 1543 - - [Info-configer] : Config ArpFilter success
<134>1 2026-07-02T02:06:50+00:00 [HCX-NE-HOSTNAME] cgw 1543 - - [Info-configer] : intfUsed: map[serv:false tapbr2:true tapbr3:true tapbr4:true tapbr5:true tapbr7:true vNic_0:false vNic_1:false vNic_2:true vNic_3:true vNic_4:true vNic_5:true vNic_6:false vNic_7:true vNic_8:false vNic_9:false]

Environment

HCX

Cause

The vmnic interface on the source HCX NE appliance fails to initialize within the appliance's OS network stack, preventing connectivity across the extended network.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must redeploy the affected source HCX Network Extension (NE) appliance to provision a fresh OS environment and correctly re-initialize the network interfaces.

1. Log in to the VMware HCX Manager UI.
2. Navigate to Interconnect > Service Mesh.
3. Locate the Service Mesh containing the affected source NE appliance.
4. Select the option to Redeploy the specific NE appliance.
5. Once the redeployment completes, you can log in to the newly deployed appliance via SSH and run ifconfig to verify that all required vmnic adapters are successfully listed. Ping connectivity to the virtual machines should now be restored.