Sometimes when a VMware virtual machine is moved or copied to another host the virtual interface will just disappear. The solution is to delete “persistent-net.rules” in the virtual machine. In a Debian the file has the name of :
# rm /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules
On Ubuntu the file name changes to :
# rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
In either case remove the file and reboot the virtual machine. The secret is to look for “persistent-net.rules” and delete it. Source Linuxquestions.org
vmware — Oct 20, 2008