Microsoft’s Convenience Update breaks VMware VMXNet3 vNICs

Microsoft recently pushed out a “Convenience Update“, a sort of rollup of rollups for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 machines. This “Convenience Update” however comes with an incompatibility issue with VMware virtual machines that are using VMXNet3 network adapters, which causes the network to become unresponsive.

VMware is suggesting to delay applying the Microsoft “Convenience Update” to any virtual machine that uses the VMXNet3 network adapter type. VMware is also working on finding the root cause and possible fixes and will update as they become available.

There is a bit of good news, the “Convenience Update” is marked as optional in Windows Update and is not being released through WSUS. So you won’t shouldn’t have to worry about virtual machines downloading and installing the rollup on their own.

View the VMware post here.