For those that do not know vmware presents most of their nics as removeable/USB devices PCNET(Vlance),Intel e1000 and vmxnet,vmxnet2,vmxnet3 this is to allow the feature of "hot add" which is a great way off adding hardware to a VM without powering the machine off.
Today whilst playing around it was highlighted to me that some "adventurous" VM View users that had USB enabled used that oppurtunity to disable the network card. Forcing the intervention of the admin from the cloud to re-add the vnic
Heres a couple of ways around it:
1) Use the configuration options to add "devices.hotplug" = "false" like this:
*Also does not affect cpu/mem hotplug
2) Edit the *.vmx file and add:
devices.hotplug = "false"
3) Hide the "safelty remove hardware option" like this:
4) Use the "NoDisplayClass" to customize the driver *yuck!
Hope that helps someone out there!
Source:http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1012225&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=64244650&stateId=0%200%2067543541
*NB:Using VMXnet3 does not disable hot plug as indicated in the KB
