Hi, so I have a little Proxmox box with two VMs: VM1 and VM2 which is a clone of VM1. I change the mac of VM2 to avoid conflict and I reset the machine ID of VM1. I then have a seperate pfSense machine machine that that acts as router, firewall and DHCP server. Proxmox is on the 192.168.20.1/24 domain. In the DHCP server, Proxmox get IP 192.168.20.8 explicitly assigned. All good to this point. I’ve set VMs on pfSense to get the 192.168.20.9X addresses assigned. VM1 gets 192.168.20.91 assigned, while VM2 should be getting 192.168.20.92.
But this is what actually happens:
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VM1 gets 192.168.20.106 assigned, despite telling pfSense to assign it 192.168.20.91. This happens even with VM2 shutdown. The DHCP Lease table is showing 91 up and running and does not list 106. Yet, the ARP table shows 106 assigned and no 91 assigned. This is even with me deleting the 106 entry from the ARP table several times and rebooting both the VM and the Proxmox server.
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The VM is definately getting 106 assigned as I can log into it with 106 IP but 91 doesn’t respond (no route to host).
Is this something to do with the bridge configuration on Proxmox? Iv’e added a screenshot of what I see. It doesn’t seem to be that complicated to setup a bridge?
I can’t get my head around this so tips are welcome.

EDIT: I’ve just run ‘sudo ip’ on the VM and i see the ens18 interface with the MAC I assigned to it and the 106 IP assigned to this interface. There are then seven of ‘vethXXX’ interfaces. Not sure what these are. There are also four ‘brXXXX’ interfaces, one ‘loXXXX’ interface and one ‘docker0’ interface, the latter probably used by the docker subsystem running on the VM. I imagine the ‘brXXXX’ interfaces are the docker containers themselves (I think I have four running). But what are the ‘vethXXXX’ interfaces? Sounds like its something to do with “virtual interface”. Why so many and what is creating these?


Having additional virtual network interfaces on VMs is completely normal, ens18 does indeed sound like the right one you should be looking at.
Seconding the other commenter who mentioned the possibility of a second DHCP server.
Is your Proxmox host wired via ethernet to the pfsense? Or are there WiFi APs in the mix anywhere