I have a VMWare Player (Workstation 9 )virtual machine on an Ubuntu 12.10 (13.10 Kernel) host running Ubuntu 12.04 using a bridged connection and set to replicate the physical network connection. Everything usually works properly in a variety of locations. But at one location that I often frequent, the ip address of the virtual machine changes roughly every 10 minutes -rendering the vm entirely useless as it is a postgresql server and thus needs a dedicated local ip. Not only that, but when I copied a database dump into a shared folder, the file ended up getting corrupted.
I can verify that the network caused this problem, as the actual on the vm was not corrupted. I managed to temporarily solve the problem by going into a local modem and setting a DHCP Mac Address. Everything was working and files were not getting corrupted. However, it only lasted temporarily, and another random address was assigned, breaking several running processes on my machine. Between the router/gateway, there is a redundant apple router involved in the network that is likely causing the issue -but I cannot just throw it away or deactivate it, as it is not my network
Furthermore, DHCP leases work just fine for every other machine on the network; so I believe the root issue is with vmware.
I have no clue what could possibly cause something like this to occur, as IP address assignment is one of those things that normally "just works". I am thinking about just switching to VitualBox, as I have used it in the past and never had a problem (except with properly running Windows 8. However,I have never actually seen any article suggesting VirtualVox over WMWare, as the latter supposedly performs better and has more intuitive shared folder support. Obviously though, any benefit from a shared folder is negated if it just shares corrupt garbage.