So after getting quite frustrated with what was happening, being unable to find documentation, and finding that a reinstall wasn’t helping much, I pulled out a developers true friend, and started poking around with the runtime services console.

After playing around with the runtime services, I was able to work out that the default install of Vignette  was setting up a cluster, containing the single server.  The combination of suspending and restarting my vmware virtual machine was leading to the Weblogic server to not be started correctly, resulting in the “No backend servers available” error when trying to visit the AppConsole. 

This problem was resolved by following two simple steps:

• being patient after a restart, allowing the system to do all its checks, (waiting about 5 minutes worked for me) and then
• simply starting the server using the runtime services console. clusters->[cluster name]-> control -> start/stop -> startup.

So if you end up in a situation where you are seeing “No backend servers available” with Vignette and WebLogic, don’t despair, it can be resolved by simply starting the servers in your cluster (even if it’s a cluster of 1) after patiently waiting (about 5 minutes) for the server to get into a stable state.

Thankfully google knows this too now.