Just an update.
I backed up the config, ensured I had screen shots of particular network settings and the liscence key, just to know which mac address I was to use to get it on the network in order to restore a config. I had the VMWare iso freshly burned and verified to disk. Migrated VM's, maintenance mode, rebooted it. Guess what? It came back fine. It did think some VM's were on it that I migrated away, so I canceld the original reconnect operation, removed it from vcenter and then re-added it. I just had to bind my dv switch uplinks, which was easy. Then I was able to update it to the latest patch level, reboot again and everything is working without an issue.
Not sure what caused it, but it was benign.