I tested that on a simple manually created virtual machine with RHEL6.4 and 2 virtual NICs - result was the same. I even have GUI on that machine, open settings for network, put 2 IPs that I can use for eth0 and eth1 and connect them both. eth0 pings, eth1 not. eth1 pings only from the same machine. Why would physical NICs be used in case of two virtual machines pinging each other on the same ESXi? Well, if it could be a physical NIC issue, what should I check in configuration of those?
Or if we start from the beginning - I have a clean server. I installed ESXi on it. Created a virtual machine with 2 NICs and installed RHEL 6.4 on it from an .iso file. I go to network settings, configure x.x.x.175 and x.x.x.176 for eth0 and eth1 interfaces, 255.255.255.0 as netmask and x.x.x.1 as gateway. Connect both interfaces. What else do I need to configure about ESXi so both IP addresses would become pingable? I might be missing something stupid, so sorry if that's the case 