Host-Only networking is a feature of VirtualBox which allows multiple virtual machines to communicate with each other through a network via the host machine. The network created by host-only networking is private to the VMs involved and the host machine. The outside world cannot join this network.
Vagrant allows users to assign a static IP to a VM, which is then setup using host-only networking.
Since setting up host-only networking requires configuring the OS to use the new interface, this is a system-specific behavior. Try to use host only networking with your machine. Vagrant will raise a proper error if things don't appear to be working.
If you'd like another OS supported, you can add it yourself using a custom guest or you can get in touch with a Vagrant developer and assist us in adding it to the core.
Assigning an IP to a virtual machine using Vagrant is simple enough, using a single configuration directive within the Vagrantfile:
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vm.network :hostonly, "192.168.50.4"
end
The above will setup the VM with that specific IP. It is up to the user to make sure that no static IPs will collide with other virtual machines.
The host-only network must not collide with any other active networks. If it does, then the routing tables on your computer may not properly route the network traffic to the correct subnet. Vagrant will attempt to detect when this may happen, but this situation should still be actively avoided.
By default, Vagrant uses a netmask of 255.255.255.0. This means that as long as the first three parts of the IP are equivalent, VMs will join the same network. So if two VMs are created with IPs 10.11.12.13 and 10.11.12.14, they will be networked together. However, if a VM is created with an IP of 10.11.20.21, it will be on a separate network and will not be able to communicate with the other VMs.
A custom netmask can also be used, although a netmask of 255.255.255.0 should be sufficient in most cases. An example of using a custom netmask is shown below:
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vm.network :hostonly, "10.11.12.13", :netmask => "255.255.0.0"
end