ZWave device node dead after very short time

Recently I bought a Aeotec Z stick Gen5 and a GE 12722 switch to bring myself up to speed with Zwave binding and setups.

This is literally the only two things in this particular z wave network in my house. I do have a 2gig control panel with its own z wave network, mainly including smart locks, but I am assuming they are 2 independent networks and shouldn’t interfere with each other yet with such a small number of nodes.

I have a server running ESXI 6.5, and I am running openhab 2.1 on a ubuntu 16 server VM. I have the usb passthrough for Aeotec Z stick to this VM, and the serial controller seems to be recognized fine.

When I installed the GE 12722 switch and paired it successfully with Z stick, it showed up in paperUI and HABmin. But after a short time of inactivity (I mean literally minutes), if I try to toggle the switch, I get “Node is DEAD” and “Timeout sending messages” in the debug log.

Here is the debug log starting with a reboot of the VM till when the switch is dead (NODE 2).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2iaayR1fnPkU2NmVldSUW1xcm8

Has anyone had a similar experience before? I suspect there might be some stupid settings on the Zstick that I missed, or something related to ESXI. Please advise

It looks like your system stops receiving messages from the dongle.There’s a known issue running under ESXI (I think) - something to do with USB drivers or something so I’d suggest a search for this might help -:

Thanks Chris! Yup, that was the issue. I reverted back to legacy USB driver and so far so good.

Hope this post helps other people with the exact same setup and issues.