I use Fedora 15 and VMware 8.0. In VMware, I have a Windows XP virtual machine.
When I play sound in my VMware virtual Windows XP machine, I can't hear it. So in Fedora, I verified the PulseAudio settings in Volume Control » Sound Setting » Applications. I also installed the VMware client tools in the virtual machine.
If the Windows XP VM is powered off, there is nothing in Volume Control » Sound Setting » Applications, but if XP is powered on, the ALSA plug-in [vmx-vcpu-0] appears there.
So I think that all should be set up fine, but I still can't hear the sound.