BL890c i2 running 11.31 and HPVM 4.20 with 8 VMs, loses network connectivity and then crashes

I thought I solved this problem by upgrading the patch level to Sep 2015. and upgrading the firmware but no.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. The following appears on the console and in syslog:

Jan  2 20:20:19 molhpi24 vmunix: iexgbe4/1689, Microcode assert 00000100 00000020 00000040 00000080 00000100
Jan  2 20:20:19 molhpi24 vmunix: iexgbe4/1701, Microcode assert 0x100
Jan  2 20:22:56 molhpi24 vmunix: Dead gateway detection can't ping the last remaining default gateway at 0xa082001 .See ndd -h ip_ire_gw_probe for more info
Jan  2 20:23:16 molhpi24 xntpd[2545]: synchronisation lost
Jan  2 20:37:56 molhpi24 vmunix: Dead gateway detection can't ping the last remaining default gateway at 0xa082001 .See ndd -h ip_ire_gw_probe for more info^M
Jan  2 20:38:16 molhpi24  above message repeats 5 times
Jan  2 20:38:16 molhpi24  above message repeats 7 times

This has probably happened a dozen times in the past couyple of years.  Of course when the VM host loses network connectivity, so do the VMs.  I've tried everything I could think of but within maybe 15 minutes of me trying to shutdown the VMs, the blade server crashes.  And sometimes, it leaves a mess.

Thanks for reading this.  Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Steve