ESXi vSphere - strange console issue

Support
1

I cloned a RHEL8.5 VM in a VMWare environment, and named it al8.

Before powering up the new VM, I disconnect the VNIC, power it up, and change its identity and IP etc, power-off, re-connect VNIC then power up again - I then run the alma-deploy script to migrate it from RedHat to AlmaLinux, script runs with out errors.

All seems to work fine, but the VMWare console is unresponsive when first coming up. I get the login prompt, but any input is completely ignored, after 30 seconds or so it starts to work, I login, but within seconds, the VMWare web console disconnects me.

At this point I can ssh in without issue.

After a certain amount of time, maybe 5mins, I try again and it all works fine, and seems stable, but after a reboot, the cycle starts over.

I have clone like this successfully many times with CentOS6/7/8 and RedHat 5/7/8 for years without a glitch, and have never seen this behavior before, and the RedHat VM it was cloned from doesn’t exhibit this.

There is some text output on the console

vm-console-weird2
vm-console-weird21009×126 7.7 KB

Not sure if anyone else has seen this, and what could be causing it.

vSphere Client version 7.0.2.00400

Guest OS: Other 4.x or later Linux (64-bit)
Compatibility: ESXi 6.5 and later (VM version 13)
VMware Tools: Running, version:11333 (Guest Managed)

2

You indicate that you cloned the VM and then attempted to reID the machine.
What method did you use? Please be specific.

During your transfiguration process, you may have, no guarantee, missed something and might have an IP conflict.

3

Power off RHEL8 VM
Clone RHEL8 VM, this creates a new VM which I named alma8
On new VM, I DISABLE the VNIC
Boot new VM
Use console (as there is no networking as the VNIC has been disabled)
hostnamectl set-hostname alma8
vi /etc/hosts change hostname and IP
vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcg-ens192 - change to new IP and add new UUID using uuidgen
Reboot.

I have done this hundreds of times, never had an issue.

It’s a minor annoyance more than anything, as after a few minutes it works fine.
Just curious, as when I clone a RHEL7/8 or CentOS7 it doesn’t exhibits this.

Environment is Dell EMC PowerFlex.

4

So, our VMware environment was recently upgraded to vSphere 7 update 2, so it may have something to do with that - this particular update seems to have caused issues at other organizations (major issues if you used SDcards).

I’ll mark it as solved.