What is happening to my DHCP setting in my Windows environment?

[rayhuang0924]

Hello,

I am using Player to create 3 Windows server VMs in a private network:

Router server (Domain joined gateway): "bridged" net and "host only" net to connect the private network to the Internet.

Server1 (Domain controller): "host only" with static IP 10.10.1.1. I also installed and configured the DHCP role

Server2 (stand alone not joining the domain): "host only" with dynamic IP

When Server2 is powered on to discover DHCP server, I noticed there's another DHCP server (192.168.4.254) competing with Server1 to offer IP address. I assume the 2nd DHCP server is VMware-related and I never configured it and don't know how to configure it. Eventually Server2 accepted the IP offered by the 2nd DHCP server and couldn't connect to the rest of the network. No matter how many times I reboot servers, restart DHCP on server1, execute ipconfig /release; ipconfig /renew the result is the same.

Please see the attachment. Anyone knows what's happening? Interestingly, even though Server2 acquired the IP offered by the 2nd DHCP, on Server1 it still shows a dynamic IP has been leased to Server2. Please see the 2nd attachment.

By the way, if I change Server2 from "host only" to "bridged", immediately it acquires a dynamic IP from my home network (which makes sense).

Thank you very much.

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

Simple explanation:

The default settings of VMNet1 (host-only) and VMNet8 (NAT) has a built-in DHCP service. You can disable it using the Virtual Network Editor (VNE) app. As you wrote on the VMware Workstation Player board, I assume that is what you have. VNE comes with Workstation Pro (not Player). You should be able to get the Virtual Network Editor by installing a 30-day trial of Workstation Pro. After the trial expires, you can still run VMs with VMware Player (it is installed along with the Workstation Pro UI) and still have a running copy VNE.