Just say NO !
ok - for some really really low transaction thing that you're not too concerned about for reliability (hey, doesn't this sound like a test system) - then what the hey - go for it (but don't write me if it all goes belly up !). I'm saying that starts off as "hey its only a spreadsheet for tracking a few items" turns into a monster-erp system - so if you give the users/finance people an inch, it'll become a freeway.
Performance isn't linear based on machine CPU's being carved up etc etc - in fact, the CPU Utilization is actually very good on a VMWare server - I have tested VMWare virtual machines, and they run within 90% of the host machine - so there is actually very little loss when it comes to CPU Utilization.
I'm referring to everything else. Remember, hard drives and network cards under VMWare are "virtual" - that really means Software based, not hardware based, and there are several FACTORS difference between how a software-emulated NIC performs against a PCI-connected Front Side Bus.
The easiest comparison is imagine how fast a computers front side bus operates - what, about 400MHz ? 600MHz ? A software-based bus operates in the 40-60MHz range as a comparison due to the number of instructions and the layers it has to deal with (I might be under/overestimating, but I'm trying to simply explain how this works).
Accessing a hardware drive therefore takes 9ms, and under a "Virtual" drive, expect something more like 90ms. Sounds fine and dandy - who can measure 90ms - but its all LATENCY, and when you start queuing up 1,000 requests to the drive (which is NOTHING) instead of taking 9 seconds of drive seek-time, it takes 90 seconds !
As for the customer connection article - I've never seen an article that makes that claim - but I'm very open to hearing if such an article exists - so please, please find it. I think JDE shoots themselves in the freaking foot 90% of the time by claiming "support" for this and that - we're all still waiting for SQL 2005 to be supported, and its almost freaking 2007 !
If VMWare is being supported - I promise I'll write a whitepaper that will help people set up VMWare servers for performance. But I'd have to see an article from JDE claiming they actually support it before I put my time into such an article. (Thats' me saying I'll eat my hat if you can produce an article !!!!!)