virtualbox.org

Let me apologize for the long post, but the situation is a little complicated. Basically, I'm trying to learn various server admin tasks with Virtual Box running on a Windows 10 host and a Windows Server 2012 (eval) guest. The idea is to set up a virtual network with Windows Server 2012 and then set up one or two client systems in VMs. In order to do this, I've been trying to use a "NAT Network". I decided against the "Internal Network" option because I want to be able to get updates and access the Internet from within the guest OS's. I created a "NAT Network" by running this command: Now if I read the instructions correctly, DHCP should not be enabled on that network, however it is. Despite this, I tried to assign a static IP address to the Win 2012 guest, and got a nasty surprise. In spite of turning off the DHCP client and specifying 192.168.1.2 as the static IP, it nonetheless picked up a 169.254.x.x address (per the ipconfig command.) However, I could ping the gateway of 192.168.15.1, and could even ping external IP addresses (e.g., 4.2.2.1.) In spite of being able to ping external addresses, I could not get DNS to resolve. NSLOOKUP reported DNS connection failures against multiple public DNS servers, and no addresses would resolve until I re-enabled DHCP in the guest OS.
Can anyone explain this behavior? Why is DHCP working on the NAT network when I didn't specify it? Why am I getting an autoconfig IP address in Win 2012 when I'm specifying a static address? This last might be some kind of Microsoft bug, but I get no relevant results when I google for it.

Never mind, manually disabling the VirtualBox DHCP server like so: fixed the issue. Apparently the default (i.e., DHCP is no longer inactive) has changed since the instructions were written. I still find it odd though that Win2012 couldn't operate with a static IP and the VBox DHCP server active.