Well I am running this stand-alone so its not in a vApp so I need to set network settings manually. I managed to get the IP set on the appliance but I am not sure how to get the gateway and DNS settings on there. It is a Linux appliance so I can't see what you can't manually set the IP and I don't know why VMware didn't build a configuration interface into the appliance.
So if the only answer is you can't manually set the IP then I guess my question was answered.