HI, wila,
You make a sound argument. I do seek a "bare metal" archive of the contents of my VM. I do, already, regularly shut down and archive copies of my VMware .vmdk files. Acronis represents, for me, an extra measure of security, by allowing me to create a machine-agnostic "perfect copy" of the VM's contents that will not require a functioning VMware product or .vmdk virtual disk mounting utility for access (although it will, of course, require functional Acronis or .tib archive file mounting utilities).
...so I really do want to pursue finding a way for the Acronis service to write archives to the \\vmware-host\Share Folders\my-folder-name directory that I've instructed VMware Workstation to share with its guest.
Subsequent research has led me to the conclusion that, whereas VMware Workstation offers the userid who's logged into the VM's operating system full read/write access to a shared folder on the host, it does not provide applications or services that are running under other user accounts (such as Acronis backup services) the same access. Further, because -- per threads I've found on other forums -- VMware's "shared folders" capability is not based on network SMBs, it does not appear possible to grant an account other than the logged-in user access to a host shared folder that the logged-in user can "see."
I'd love to be told that I'm wrong on this last point!