I have done this for a few years and I am really happy with it. The portability to migrate to new host hardware is awesome. I periodically export VM images and back them up to the cloud using cloud sync software on the host machine (it takes a long time to upload, but gives me a viable backup). On my dual monitor setup, I typically run full screen on one monitor.

same here. When I was looking for a new laptop support for 32GB RAM was a key (no mac for me). I have 4 vms, windows with dev rig, linux with django/postgres, linux with oracle and osx. For vitalization I run VMWare Workstation patched with unlocker. The only pain comes from osx, no 3d acceleration and since upgrade to ElCaptain, there is no way to disable vsync, so it is ugly. The missing 3d support can be very annoying - you can not use "debug view hierarchy" in xcode. Saving VMs to external disk for backup. Snapshoting before any risky update/patch/whatever.