Nat - Kinda like a home router, all your vms share your pcs ip
Host Only - More like a switch, no internet access unless you use another vm as a router using bridged or Nat
I'd reconfigure ur vms to use nat networking, they can use static ips, the only time you need bridged is if you want them accessible outside of that vms. In the bridged case static will never work as networks change and will most likely not work.Open the virtual network editor to see the ranges they use if you don't know, just click on edit then virtual network editor
In my case I disable workstations dhcp and have my own dhcp and dns for my lab.
Hi,
The explanation from Sjesse is probably already helpful, if not then have a look at the doc (it's pretty good in explaining how the networking works)
Configuring Network Connections
What I should have mentioned in my original reply is that if you use bridged that the network configuration depends on the network you are connected to.
This means that the network segment your host's network is in depends on the network you are connecting to. Chances are quite big that the segment does not match your static IP's of the VMs and as such you won't even be able to connect to those VM's. The way to work around that is by using NAT.
The NAT network that VMware configures is the same everytime you boot your host, so you can indeed setup a bunch of static VM's that use the DNS and gateway addresses of that NAT network to connect to the outside network. If you have a need to connect from the host to one of the VMs in the NAT network then you can use network forwarding rules to do so.
It's all described in the doc, but if you need more help then just let us know.
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Wil
First click edit on workstation and click on virtual network editor, then click on the change setting button at the bottom, this lets you see all the networks you have.
VMnet0 is your bridged adapter, unless you change it. To make sure its always using wireless change it from automatic to your wireless adapter, I've seen it use the wired connection even though it wasn't in use.
VMnet1 is your host only network, dhcp will provide addresses in that subnet range, mine is 192.168.231.0. If you high light it it gives you options at the bottom. The first option connects a virtual adpater to you host, this is used to communicate on that network directly, in most cases you want this but not always. You also have the option to use a local dhcp, which you are seeing work, if you click that button you can change the standard things you would expect..
VMnet8 is your nat adapter, its the same as a host only one, except you get nat settings
The important part here is this is where the gateway is defined, which is a .2 address by default. You can also do other things like port forwarding, where you forward a port on your host machine into the vm.
So what you want to do on your local machine to use static ips, but always have internet access in diferent locations is set your vms to use NAT
Then locally set a local address that uses the subnet range of your NAT subnet(these are random), and use the gateway in your nat settings. This means the static ips in your vms will be different the the dhcp address your getting whereever you are.