Best way to set static IP for a guest vm on a laptop, although the laptop is often on different networks

Question

A Win 2008 Server runs (guest) in VMWare Player, on Win 7 laptop (host) The guest has installed software, Oracle, that demands the same IP address each time I start the guest. At home it works fine with reserving an IP address 192.168.1.128 for the guest in DD-Wrt based on MAC. On the road, or using Sprint\Verizon\T-Mobile wireless connection, different story. I even set up a vpn, thinking I could get the guest vm its 192.168.1.128 via pptp, but was unsuccessful. How do I set a static ip for the guest so that it always get the same ip, regardless of whether I connect the host to different networks??

• I have an understanding of bridged, nat and host-only in vmware
• I am using VMWare Player 3.1.4 and I have vmnetcfg.exe

• I am configuring the guest via its vmx

  ethernet1.present = "TRUE"
  ethernet1.addressType = "generated"
  ethernet1.connectionType = "bridged"
  ethernet1.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
  ethernet1.startConnected = "TRUE"
  ethernet1.generatedAddress = "00:0c:ee:ee:ee:ee"
  

Answer 1

If you want the guest to always have the same apparent address internally, you'll want to use NAT and set the guests address statically. Using bridged networking, your VM appears as an independent machine on whatever network you are connecting to at the time.