Backups of a VMware virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 fail with error 0xe00084f8 - The network connection to the Backup Exec Remote Agent has been lost

Problem

Backups of a VMware virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 fail with "0xe00084f8 - The network connection to the Backup Exec Remote Agent has been lost"

Error Message

0xe00084f8 - The network connection to the Backup Exec Remote Agent has been lost. Check for network errors.

Cause

This is a known issue with certain versions of VMware ESXi when copying large amounts of data over the network.  The issue is discussed in the following VMware Knowledge Base article:

Possible data corruption after a Windows 2012 virtual machine network transfer (2058692):
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2058692

Solution

The virtual machine's network adapter should be changed from the Intel e1000e to a VMXNET3 network adapter.  The VMXNET3 virtual NIC does not experience the same data corruption issue.

Applies To

ESXi 5.0 or ESXi 5.1 host
Virtual machine running Windows 2012 or Windows 8 is specified to use an emulated Intel e1000e NIC
Backups are done using the Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows