Running your setup and I've seen this problem only with VMWare Fusion running. But they have KB article (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?l

Running your setup and I've seen this problem only with VMWare Fusion running. But they have KB article (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1038864 http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?langua...) which discusses what they're doing. VMWare Fusion won't let go of memory allocated to a suspended VM, only to a VM which has been fully shut down. The rationale is that the user might unsuspend the VM so it's a performance tweak. But I never use my VMs this way, so I've resorted to shutting down my VMs and everything is back to being snappy.