In using VMWare’s Fusion (and before that Parallels), I have been using a Boot Camp partition but only because I had initially set up a Boot Camp partition. I think I kept it because I thought to myself if there was some compatibility issues, I could just boot into Boot Camp and run the s/w that didn’t work but I never did it because everything just worked (for me at least though I have heard of other stuff not working).
Anyway, a Boot Camp partition is something that needs to have a separate backup strategy where a virtual partition for VMWare’s Fusion (or Parallels) will get backed up by Time Machine or SuperDuper! which are my backup solutions of choice. The virtual partition just seems simpler.
I will have to try this and verify it over time and see that I can get this to work and even restore if necessary. If anyone has comments on this setup, let me know.