Vmware Fusion already includes a basic preboot execution environment (pxe) firmware. It is however possible to load other pxe firmwares into Fusion just like flashing ROMs into real network adapters. Two examples of pxe compliant boot loaders are gpxe and ipxe. Ipxe seems to be based on gpxe but they have generally similar features sets. These features include DNS, HTTP, iSCSI chainloading and more. To access these extra features we need to get hold of the ROM files which can be downloaded from here (right click and choose save as):

gpxe e1000 | md5 = 281f4b835773983ce2ba78c3cfaf1d04 ipxe e1000 | md5 = f91d11735dab09bdac7d60ad9ad11504 ipxe e1000e | md5 = ec24813b8fbd0d3898b80d0e00e779b7 ipxe vlance | md5 = 4b5070a8abd05388951724fc5f3c090c ipxe vmxnet3 | md5 = 8e8e71f284f43a6641c0eb49ae30aa06

The gpxe was from here. The ipxe ROMs were compiled from here on Ubuntu. I strongly suggest you go to the source links to get or create the files yourselves. I have included them here for my own purposes, but anyone is welcome to use them, at their own risk. Once you have chosen the correct ROM file add it to your virtual machine folder. You need to edit the .vmx file of the virtual machine you are interested in. Choose from the paragraphs below, one which matches the ROM file you are using. Note the first line of each paragraph will already exist in the vmx file, so you will need to replace it. If you do not, you will get a message telling you ‘Variable ethernet0.virtualDev is already defined’ or perhaps ‘Dictionary problem’. If you have multiple network adapters then the ethernet0 part may change. Just adjust it for the correct adapter i.e. ethernet1 or ethernet2 etc.

Add this paragraph for the e1000 Intel Driver and the gpxe bootloader:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
bios.bootOrder = "ethernet0"
e1000bios.filename = "gpxe-1.0.1+-8086100f.rom"
ethernet0.opromsize = "71168"

Add this paragraph for the e1000 Intel Driver and the ipxe bootloader:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
bios.bootOrder = "ethernet0"
e1000bios.filename = "8086100f.mrom"
ethernet0.opromsize = "69120"

Add this paragraph for the e1000e Intel Driver and the ipxe bootloader, note this is works only with virtual hardware 8:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e"
bios.bootOrder = "ethernet0"  
e1000ebios.filename = "808610d3.mrom"
ethernet0.opromsize = "70656"

Add this paragraph for an emulated AMD 79C970 PCnet32 Driver and the ipxe bootloader:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vlance"
bios.bootOrder = "ethernet0"
nbios.filename = "10222000.rom"
ethernet0.opromsize = "62464"

Add this paragraph for a VMware paravirtualized NIC Driver and the ipxe bootloader:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
bios.bootOrder = "ethernet0"
nx3bios.filename = "15ad07b0.rom"
ethernet0.opromsize = "63488"

For anyone interested the ethernet0.opromsize parameter is actually the file size of the ROM file in bytes. If this value is wrong you can sometimes get the following error:

BIOS gpxe-1.0.1+-8086100f.rom has unexpected file size 0x11600

For some reason this does not seem to affect the vmxnet3 or e1000e adapters but you should try to keep the values correct.