Actually hope you do not mind me jumping in, but there is some relevance to this.
If you are running ESXi 6.7, can you try rebooting the server (Vmware) a few times. Also, try moving the SME vm to another disk.
There is a reason for asking this. I have this really odd issue in that every time I reboot my test server, I have to run config on the sme to set the network cards again? Really odd. I don have 4 netcards in here, but the SME is only using two. No rush to try it, but if you can would be helpful to know it is not me going mad!
Paul.