While reworking our demo servers I ran into an old issue with Openfiler regarding static IP config. At first boot of the Openfiler VM it had networking and received an IP address via DHCP. It was not possible however to change this to a static IP. In the Openfiler forums I found this topic from 2008 which describes the issue and the resolution: https://forums.openfiler.com/viewtopic.php?id=2575.
In short: remove the NIC from the VM and add a new one. Also note that the virtual hardware version is 4 so you might want to upgrade that as well if you are using vSphere. The VM will now see the NIC when you boot it again and it is possible to change the IP address.
Documenting a virtualization project 