Ubuntu 18.04 Perfect Server - Updates applied, NIC no longer works

Hello team,
I recently applied updates to my server (83 pending), and while I've applied updates in the past without issue, this last round of updates have messed with my network interface. After applying updates, and restarting, I noticed my websites (apache) links were not working, cutting me off from the ISPConfig interface. I consoled into my VM, and noticed my usual ens160 interface was missing. I tried re-running "sudo netplan apply" and it came up with an issue with my netplan file. I made the corrections in the netplan file, re-ran the command, and the interface shows that it's up.

When I try to ping a public ip, I get a "Network is unreachable" error. The VM settings within my ESXI setup have not changed, I only applied the latest set of updates to Ubuntu, and restarted. Any advice you could provide me? I'm unable to export output on the machine as I have console access via VMWare ESXI, and since the network is not functional I have no access to SSH.

I'm in the process of uploading the OVA file again to build a new install of the server, I would like to see what I could do to repair the existing server. I have an active subscription to HowtoForge, is there any supported method I could use to remedy this issue? I'm willing to hire someone to look at this issue to resolve this if I can't find a solution.

 

My netplan files looked like this before the update.
network:
version: 2
renderer: networkd
ethernets:
ens160:
addresses: [54.39.167.19/32]
gateway: 54.39.167.254
nameservers:
addresses: [1.1.1.1,8.8.8.8]
routes:
via: 0.0.0.0
scope: link

I get an this error,
/etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml:13:17: Error in network definition: expected sequence
via: 0.0.0.0
^
I can only get the interface to show as up, if I remove "routes:" and everything below and rerun "sudo netplan apply". I check my "ifconfig -a" and the interface ens160 is there, but is down, and has no ip.

 

I managed to get my host back up and running.
This is my working config now. indentation and I suspect the spaces before and after the square brackets where needed.

Code:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# For more information, see netplan(5).
network:
 version: 2
 renderer: networkd
 ethernets:
        ens160:
            addresses: [ 54.39.167.18/24 ]
            gateway4: 54.39.167.254
            nameservers:
                addresses: [1.1.1.1,8.8.4.4,8.8.8.8]

Thank you for your help!