Unable to set static IP addresses on guests using non-bridged NICs

[ToddDTaft]

I've got Fusion 13.5 Pro on a laptop, and I'm trying to prototype a process that will configure and install several client guest machines.

As part of the process, it will be important the the different VM guests can reliably talk to each other, and these machines need node-to-node IP communication.

The problem is that I can't see any was using Fusion 13.5 on Ventura or newer to reserve "specified" IP addresses for a specific guest NIC if I use either sharing/natting or private networks.

So, how do I configure the system so that it can reserve IP addresses (as well as other aspects of the DHCP protocol, such as specifying default routes, lease times, etc.)???

This question seems to be a popular one; however none of the answers that I have found have been up to date to work.

Current OS is 13.6.1 but considering major version upgrade soon.

[Technogeezer]

There's not a facility in the Fusion GUI to do reserve DHCP addresses for specific VMs.

I've done this in the past, but it involved manually editing the dhcpd.conf for the NAT networking segment found in /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet8 (for the default NAT network, other vmnet directories are for either the default host-only or custom host-only networks). If I remember correctly, the VMware dhcpd is based on an older version of ISC dhcpd so using its settings to recognize hosts on a particular MAC address should work.

Note that if the user reconfigures the networking, the dhcpd.conf files get overwritten, and the changes will need to be manually applied again.. 

[ToddDTaft]

That is similar to the method mentioned in an old VMWare KB article (1026510); however that article does not indicate the solution is valid for VMWare Fusion 12 or later.  There are a variety of postings on this site and others mentioning the problem, including at least one with a response by a VMWare employee indicating that VMWare was required by Apple to discontinue use of the independent virtual DHCP server in macOS 11 (Big Sur) and later.  Unfortunately, I never saw an officially endorsed procedure for newer combinations of VMWare and macOS.  The unofficial suggestions that I saw from a few years ago (when Big Sur was new) refer to changing files that I don't have on my system, so I suspect that Apple changed something (again) after Big Sur.

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

The  use of VMware's  DHCP server was discontinued briefly for Big Sur so yes, those files did not exist. And since they used Apple's implementation inobody could figure out a way to modify it to hard-wire addresses.

VMware did re-introduce use of their own DHCP server in Fusion 12 (not sure which release, but I know it was present in 12.2.x) when it discovered it was running on Monterey and later. 

I just tried this in Fusion 13.5 running on Sonoma for a VM that was configured for NAT networking. I changed the vmnet8/dhcpd.conf below the "DO NOT MODIFY" section to hard wire the IP address for the MAC address of the VM and added the following  (my NAT segment is 172.26.101.0/24) :

host myhost {
        hardware ethernet xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;xx;
        fixed-address 172.16.101.xx;
}

My VM picked up the hard-wired address, and not one from the DHCP range.

[ToddDTaft]

That seems to work.  The one caveat is that it seems like you may need to quit and restart Fusion.

It would be nice if there were a way to set this through the regular UI.