In VMware windows server comes back up with no network connection after a reboot. When you restart the server, you receive 169.254.x.x IP. This is a very common issue if you have cisco switches and VMware in place. The issue is caused when the Cisco switch has gratuitous ARPs enabled or the ArpProxySvc replied to all ARP requests incorrectly.
To work around this issue, we need to turn off gratuitous ARP in the guest operation system.
Note: We will modify the windows registry.
- Open the registry editor
- Click Start > Run, type Regedit, and click OK
- Locate this registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
- Create a new DWORD value
- Right-click and select DWORD (32-bit) Value
- Type ArpRetryCount
- Right-click the ArpRetryCount registry entry and click Modify
- In the value box, enter 0 and click OK
- Exit the registry editor and restart the operating system
As mentioned in this VMware article, you can alternatively disable gratuitous ARP on the physical cisco switch. To do so you just need to run the following command
| no ip gratuitous-arps |