Best way for host NIC configuration? (Linux host)

I'm running the latest version of Server on CentOS Linux 4.3 x86_64. I've installed extra NICs to have a total of three. Up until today, I couldn't get VMware to cooperate with the other NICs for any interface other than vmnet0. But, alas, I got it working today.

I discovered that all of the ethernet devices on the host MUST be assigned some sort of IP address AND be running (with ifup eth1, etc). I have eth1 and eth2 configured statically with IPs of 0.0.0.0 and 0.0.0.1 respectively. I tried to comment out everything except DEVICE, BOOTPROTO, ONBOOT, and TYPE but it wouldn't work. I also tried making the IP addresses 127.0.0.1. I was under the impression that they didn't have to be activated by the host at all for the guests to use them.

Here's kind of a layout of my configuration and guests...

eth0 -> vmnet0

eth1 -> vmnet2

eth2 -> vmnet3

I'm running two guests: FC5 using vmnet2 and OpenBSD using vmnet3.

Here are my ifcfg-ethX files (I'm masking my IP addresses since they're not NAT'd)...

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0

BOOTPROTO=none

HWADDR=00:13:46:71:F7:DA

ONBOOT=yes

TYPE=Ethernet

DHCP_HOSTNAME=serenity.XX.XX.XX.com

IPADDR=xx.xx.xx.140

BROADCAST=xx.xx.xx.191

NETMASK=255.255.255.192

NETWORK=xx.xx.xx.128

USERCTL=no

PEERDNS=yes

GATEWAY=xx.xx.xx.129

IPV6INIT=no

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

DEVICE=eth1

HWADDR=00:13:46:72:01:3E

BOOTPROTO=none

ONBOOT=no

TYPE=Ethernet

#IPADDR=xx.xx.xx.158  (Note: I discovered it works by assigning them real IP addresses)

IPADDR=0.0.0.0

BROADCAST=xx.xx.xx.255

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

NETWORK=xx.xx.xx.0

USERCTL=no

PEERDNS=yes

GATEWAY=xx.xx.xx.1

IPV6INIT=no

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2

DEVICE=eth2

HWADDR=00:13:D3:0D:A9:2D

BOOTPROTO=none

ONBOOT=no

TYPE=Ethernet

#IPADDR=xx.xx.xx.159

IPADDR=0.0.0.1

BROADCAST=xx.xx.xx.255

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

NETWORK=xx.xx.xx.0

USERCTL=no

PEERDNS=yes

GATEWAY=xx.xx.xx.1

IPV6INIT=no

What's the optimal way of setting up my host NICS?[/b] Something tells me this isn't the best way to do it.

Thanks!

-Alan