All,
I figured out the issue. After enabling 'Source' Port Mirroring in my Hyper-V VM - I was able to ping the VM and access the tools page.
In case anybody is looking for basic instructions:
1) Download fresh ESXI 6.0 ISO
2) Download ESXi-Customizer (http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html)
3) Download Tulip VIB for Hyper-V NICs (see attached)
4) Create 1st Gen Hyper-V VM (Decent amount of RAM, 2vCPUs, 10GB VHD, **Legacy Network Adapter** ) (2nd Generation VM = Frozen Install for me)
5) Configure the 'Legacy Network Adapter' with 'Mac Spoofing' enabled and Port Mirroring set to 'Source'
6) Use the customizer to rebuild the ISO with the attached VIB
7) Mount newly created ISO to DVD in VM
8) Install ESXI 6.0
9) Enjoy testing
If you are in an environment with no monitor / peripherals - you will need to boot with ' ignoreHeadless=TRUE' appended to the command line (SHIFT+O). If you get stuck at 'Relocating Modules' - this should fix that.
To make this permanent after install execute:
esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE ignoreHeadless
I'd love to hear if anybody else has similar use cases or issues while setting this up.
Thanks