VMware Vcloud Director - Deploying of VM within vApp renames the vmxnet3 ethernet adapter to #2 and lost connection. (FIXED)

I just ran into a very interesting problem today within vCloud Director when a vApp is deployed from catalog a VM will loose its network connection.  Even when Guest OS customization is disabled.


We have a vApp with multiple VMs, all Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
The vApp was saved into catalog with "make identical copy"
After creating the vApp from catalog template all the VM's come up correctly accept the one installed with Exchange.

Debugging the problem:

It seems the network was lost and then gets recreated but is set to DHCP so no network connections possible.

• Tried to fix by disabling the "guest OS customization" before powering on the vApp.
• Recreated the network card on the particular VM but with no luck.

Quick fix:

Shutdown the VM
Delete the Virtual network adapter.
Power on the VM
Use device manager to remove all network interfaces with name "VMXNET".
    ( For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles 241257 and 2550978.)
Shutdown the VM
Edit VM properties through Vcloud director interface and under the hardware tab add a new virtual network adapter.
Power on VM with force customization.


Resolution:

The solution to our problem was to install the hotfix from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2550978

Direct download of the file is available here:

http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%207/Windows%20Server2008%20R2%20SP1/sp2/F

After install the hotfix and then saving the vApp to catalog we were able to deploy the vApp without any further problems.

Links:

Found the following KB article on VMware:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1020078>