thanks that is the way i had it previously but the unifi seems to be forcing me to give the 192.168.200 network it is routing a vlan number also (i chose 200). I will give it a shot with configuring the laptop for that subnet. So just for clarity the management network that is setup by esxi is NOT the network that the vcsa shows it is connected to -- will try to get a screenshot.
when i tried to remove the vlan 200 it wouldn't allow it. I'm probably totally wrong but if that laptop is connected to that lan segment 192.168.200 then it is tagging all that traffic from laptop with 200 and so if the VM network that the vcsa is connected to doesn't have VLAN 200 (like management network does) then they cannot communicate ... even if the laptop has a static ip set of say 192.168.200.44?