Assign fixed IP address via DHCP by DNS lookup

Hopefully, you can control the hardware MAC addresses of your virtual ethernet interfaces.

In that case, I had a similar problem, and ISC bind was equally uncooperating with my configuration efforts. The best solution, which I am still using for years reliably, is to edit the leases file so that desired IP addresses get assigned to corresponding hardware MAC.

First, you just start the clients to populate the leases file. Then stop the clients and bind, then edit the leases file.