The recommended fix in the KB did not work for me.
I tracked this to bad error checking in vami_set_hostname. The boot problem could be fixed with a one-liner in /opt/vmware/etc/init.d/vaos, but other programs call vami_set_hostname too, so I decided to neuter it. I don't like programs that change my config files anyway....
Read the code below, understand what it does, cut-and-pasted into vCMA root console.
##
# Set your host name and fully qualified domain name manually
# in vi :w write the current file, :n move to next file. :q to quit
vi /etc/hosts /etc/hostname /etc/sysconfig/network
##
# Save a copy if the original file
cp /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname.baq
##
# Make the bad script behave
sed -i '/FQDN=\$HOSTNAME/i HOSTNAME=\`hostname\`' /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname
sed -i s/^grep\ -v/#grep\ -v/ /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname
sed -i s/^echo\ \"127/#echo\ \"127/ /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname
sed -i s/^echo\ \"\$FQDN/#echo\ \"\$FQDN/ /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname
##
# Verify the changes made by sed
diff /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_hostname.baq
This solved my problems.