I experienced this problem running a minecraft server on in a VM. The server would stay up until shortly after joining it in game. After <5min i'd lose connection. The virtual console would freeze, with no new messages on either linux or java consoles. VMWare resource monitoring indicated that the system had stopped completely. Following others example, I changed the nic type from from vmxnet3 to E1000e. This also solved the issue for me. I'm a linux novice but can follow instructions well. If there's any more info I can provide, let me know.
Host: Image profile ESXi-6.5.0-20170104001-standard (VMware, Inc.) vSphere HA state Not configured Manufacturer Dell Inc. Model PowerEdge R510 CPU 8 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz Memory 63.99 GB Virtual flash 0 B used, 0 B capacity Guest: Ubuntu Server 17.04 CPU 2 vCPUs Memory 4 GB Hard disk 16 GB VMWare Tools installed and running
