We are seeing this issue randomly. About 1 machine a day. We use Cisco's Umbrella Client for secure DNS. So all VMs have their DNS set to local host IP, 127.0.0.1. Starting earlier this year we have seen machines boot up after a restart with no DNS entry at all. Just empty. To resolved the issue we manually set DNS back to our local Domain controller's IP and it will start resolving again. The Umbrella client will then check in and reset DNS back to 127.0.0.1. This is only happening to Virtual machines. Doesn't matter if it's a server or workstation. I suspect it's something going on with VMware tools. I will see an application event log event from VMUpgradeHelper right before I see events where the domain or other systems are not reachable.
Event: Restoring network configuration.
Source: VMUpgradeHelper
EventID: 258
AND
Event: Restored network configuration.
Source: VMUpgradeHelper
EventID: 271