I don't know if kdump will work. The last time I tried kexec in VMware, it bombed and locked VM. I think it is likely that kdump and / or kexec may work with the correct settings, but I have not played with it much.
I'm not sure what you are trying to do, but VMware provides the ability to connect gdb to a Linux guest from the host machine. Or at least it happened, I haven’t tried for a long time, but it worked when I debugged the kernel module.
I just looked into the VMware knowledge base and did not find any new information. This is an old post from which I got my information. In addition, the VMware forum for this type of debugging. I really did not pay attention to what the current status is.