Ok, two days, two different hosts (ESXi 4.1 u2), two different administrators trying to create a virtual machine.
They provision the VM with no problems, point it to a kickstart server to load it with CentOS... and it fails at the point where PXELinux should start WGET-ing the image.
When i test the process by deploying a sister VM in the same way, we have no problems.
Blow it away, recreate it with a different name... JOY.
Recreate it with the original name... NO JOY!
Run services.sh restart on the host and now try to recreate it with the original name... WORKS LIKE A CHARM!
So what is going on here?
Its like something is getting locked and the host isn't letting the VM onto the network once control switches to PXELinux. The TFTP transfer to get PXELinux over to the new VM works fine, maybe the host doesn't like the subsequent FTP traffic when it tries to FTP the CentOS image to itself?
I know how to click the easy button and get things rolling again... but I can't seem to explain what is going on here.