(This issue has also been seen on CentOS 5.4 i686/i386)<br />
Installing VirtualBox or VMPlayer of CentOS 6.5 x86_64 (older and up to date releases) exhibit random behavior where the 'guest' operating system will stop communicating on the network. The network 'virtual' adapter is set to bridge mode and I have seen reports of this same issue happening when using NAT as well.<br />
First case on 5.4 - VirtualBox was set up to host SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 with all of its relevant patches loaded. After about 3-5 months of being installed and working without issue, without any updates to anything in CentOS or the hosted SCO operating system, the network would randomly stop communicating. When viewing the hosted 'console' screen the guest operating system shows its normal login screen. Where the 'headless' options of running the VM are not used, it is possible to login to the hosted operating system which has not shutdown or stopped, network access to anything beyond the hosted operating system does not work - the guest operating systems are not 'crashing' or shutting down - uptimes reflect their actual time running.<br />
This same behavior has occurred currently on two separate sites where CentOS 6.5 x86_64 has been installed with not updates or changes. One site is running a hosted SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 on VirtualBox and the other site is running a hosted RedHat 7.3 hosted operating system with VMPlayer.<br />
Both of the current sites run for some months, perhaps 6 months, but then the guest operating systems eventually become unreachable on the network with no logged errors in /var/log/messages or other /var/log files. The VM hosting software shows no issues logged either.<br />
ssh, telnet, ftp etc to and from the hosted operating system do not work - so this is a network stack issue.<br />
crons to get the hosted OS to stop and start its network 'appear' to run normally but there is not access to anything on the network regardless.<br />
The only solution is to stop and start the VM.<br />
This has been reported to VirtualBox and the version in question was upgraded to the very latest, but did not fix the issue.<br />
The current live server now stops communicating daily.<br />
Again there have been no changes to either the server or hosted operating system software since the installation in February 2014.
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