I received an old Linksys SRW2048 gigabit switch and have used a straight-through serial cable and the console port to reset the flash config back to defaults so that it is configurable for our network. I then upgraded it to the newest firmware (1.22d).
Currently I have 4 devices connected to it: a physical Windows server, physical Windows desktop, VMware ESXi 5.5 host with 2 Windows guests, and a printer.
The physical server, desktop and printer that are connected to the SRW2048 all have fully functioning networking.
I've found that the VMware Host (and guests) lose all networking. If I connect the VMware host back to the temporary gigabit switch I was using, all networking for it and its guests resumes.
Where do I start troubleshooting the VMware-switch setup? I haven't made any changes to the switch's default configuration except the static IP for managing it.