How can I connect via SSH (Putty) to my VMWare machine (Ubuntu)?

Is the package openssh-server installed on your Ubuntu VM? You'll need that package if you want to connect to it by SSH.

You can make sure by opening a terminal (through VMWare's console, I guess) on Ubuntu and running:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

How to do it? Here are the complete steps. Just follow these steps:

1. In the terminal use command: sudo apt-get install openssh-server

2. Switch to bridged networking mode, make that change in the Virtual Machine Control Panel (Edit > Virtual Machine Settings)

3. reboot the VM

4. Run "ifconfig" command in terminal & get "inet addr" of "eth0"

That's all ! Now use this IP to connect via ssh (I use Putty in my Windows 8)

If the network is configured properly - either with port-forwarding or as "bridged" and SSH is still not working (from the question text that seems to be the case), then it's either that ssh is not installed or not running. For example, ssh is not running by default on Kali although it's already installed. You'll have to run it yourself.

To start the ssh service:

service ssh start

Check if the SSH is allowed or not allowed in your firewall settings, if you use Linux with a GUI it might be like this:

Click on system -> Administration -> security level and firewall

Click on firewall option tab, enable it, apply and save.

Here you can allow telnet and https as well. Thanks