As an addition, perhaps useful - perhap not, to scott2877's answer the following:
1. If Bridged
If the solution is as suggested, I usually use Fixed addresses for Bridged VMs. That makes them "seeing each other" to work without any hassle and the resolution doesn't change over the time. This happens on the OS level of each VM (or if router allows, to make ip's never-change for the Mac of each computer in the router).
Fixed ip-addresses need to be outside the range DHCP of the router (usually something like .100-.200 or .128-.200).
2. How many VMs?
From you wording, I thought that you were talking about 2 VMs in all. If so, the following:
Not enough resources is only two-fold question: enough memory to host them and having a correct disk architecture. CPU doesn't really matter - unless your actual application requires CPU-performance, VMware doesn't.
Use NAT networking. Since VMs can be copies, DNS might be confused. If so, use hosts-file (in Windows) to by-pass DNS and tell the ip-host-name relationship. This needs to be done for both VMs and maintained, if config changes for some reason. Use "ping hostname" to confirm if this is needed at all (reboot after a change, because ping might work but other things not without a reboot). This works well and I use this kind of config "all the time".
With memory: On a laptop, it's not self-evident that more memory can be inserted, on a workstation, probably it can for 2 computers. Not talking about this more, because this is about specific purchase options.
With disks: If you ran two VMs from the same HDD and decided that the performance is bad, well, it always is from bad to worse. What you can do is this:
- ran it from a single SSD. The chances are that 2 VMs work better from a single SSD than 1 VM from HDD
- in a workstation, you can do whatever you want with disks
- on a laptop, it is more than likely that there is an affordable solution as well
- use USB-3 interface of the laptop (usb-2 is really bad for this). It is likely that you have USB-3, if not, you are stuck or need to use the workstation. Also e-sata interface can be used, if there is one - it is also fast.
- you can use regular SSDs or NVMe's and buy a case separately. They will work fine and are not expensive. If you select the latter, please observe that there are two incompatible brances of NVMe's (ssd and m.2). The latter has much more expensive casings (like 60 euros while the first one is 15 euros). SSDs themselves work well with inexpensive casings
- obviously, you can buy ready-to-run external SSD-disks, but personally, I have not wanted to pay any premium for them. "At best", the external casings are just aluminium covers without any screws.
- running 2-3 VMs from the same external USB-3 interface, using regular SSD disk, works well on a laptop, which has enough memory (never even try with a configuration where VMs take more memory than is free on Host, that can freeze up the system). It depends on the VMs how little memory can be allocated, but you can test then individually first and use Task Manager / System Manager to monitor actual memory consumption
I hope this helps in your question or perhaps is useful for further projects.
