While it is certainly possible to virtualize any DB in VMware it is often not recomended. The primary reason is that any server that has consistently high CPU or Disk IO, like that of many production Databases, is not a good virtualization candidate. It is not so much that the DB will not perform well; rather, x86 virtualization primary benefit is taking underutilized systems and placing them in an environment that better leverages the idle CPU, IO, etc... providing better ROI for expensive equipment.
Systems that have high resource utilization often leverage the complement of physical resources provided in standalone (or clustered) systems. Some consideration needs to be payed to the virtualization overhead as well. In most systems you can expect between 4 and 8 percent overhead and if your DB needs all available resources that can create a performance issue.
Many have virtualized DB's but they are often only used in batch processes and don't have constant resource requirements. However, as the scheduling algorithms improve and hardware (CPU) manufacturers offload the overhead from the hypervisor it wont be long until all x86 systems are running in virtualized environments.
The best advice is to test your DB and observe the performance. Just be sure to understand the impact it may have on the other guest systems in the same environment.
C. D. Rippe
