Summary
The Deep Security Manager (DSM) has several communication errors with the DSVA. A packet capture shows intermittent resets in TCP streams, and the ifconfig command shows many RX packets are dropped.
As a result of these issues, errors such as the following may appear:
- Activation Failed (Protocol Error with vCenter)
- Activation Failed (Protocol Error)
- Virtual Appliance Offline
- Anti-Malware Engine Offline
- Interfaces out of sync
Details
There is a discussion about packet drops in VMware Community: vDS - Dropped Egress packets.
The vSphere Distributed Switch of ESX 5.1 has a network health check feature that causes RX packet drops on Ubuntu-based machines.
To resolve the vDS communication issues, turn off the health check feature. For the procedure on disabling health check, refer to this VMware KB article: Enabling vSphere Distributed Switch health check in the vSphere Web Client.
