It is possible in VMWare Fusion to ensure that a VM will always be assigned the same IP address - this is more convenient than making the VM use static IP via config of the Linux box it uses. The simplest way to achieve this is as follows (all performed on the Mac host, not the Linux guests)
sudo vim /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf
At the bottom of the file, after the following line:-
####### VMNET DHCP Configuration. End of "DO NOT MODIFY SECTION" #######
Before changing the configuration file it is recommended to put the vmnet service into config mode so that the file is not overwritten by Fusion itself. To do so run