If your virtual machines are configured with external virtual network adapters*, you’re exactly right.  The hardware-based MAC of your PC/laptop isn’t going to change, but virtual machines will get new MAC addresses (different from the physical host) for their virtual network adapters you create.

Cheers.

*  I say “external”, because most virtualization platforms have a variety of configurations for your virtual network adapters.  The most common will be external, where the virtual machines behaves as if it’s a regular system on the network.  Other network configurations may make the IP addresses of the virtual machines completely private, so they don’t appear on the network, or they may NAT through the host as an alternate configuration.  In these other scenarios, your virtual machines wouldn’t be getting a DHCP lease from your router.

From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Michael Havens
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2014 19:56
To: PLUG
Subject: DHCPed ip addresses

I got a question. When I was creating virtual machines each was assigned a unique ip address. Whenever I put a new os on a the same computer it gets the same ip address as the previous os had. Because of this I suppose I am to assume that the router keeps a record of the MAC of the networking card and of the IP address assigned to it. Is that so? What about the VM? Is the network card of the VM virtual as well and so has its own MAC?

:-)~MIKE~(-: