NetManOne wrote: As a new user of WS9 ,I would appreciate hearing of best
practice before I just dive in.
The best practice and advice is to start by RT*M! 
Have a look at: Using VMware Workstation (pdf)
Walk through all of the menus and dialog boxes so as to see what commands are available and whatever you don't readily understand then lookup it up in the Help file or manual. An important chapter is 5 "Configuring Network Connections"! 
Also I agree with André on two partitions vs. three and without knowing everything you're going to install OS and Application wise I can't comment on the actual size for the OS partition however my base install was 50 GB and is now at 70 GB and I'd want my OS partition to be at least 200 GB on a 1TB Drive. YMMV