Can I add VMWare Player VM to ESXi 5.5u2 inventory?

[GetzVM]

I have actually gone ahead and added copied the whole folder containing all the files (VMDK, VMX etc) of a Workstation8 VM to my ESXi5.5u2 datastore and successfully added to inventory. The VM boots with just one warning about not being able to connect to its CDROM but after that the VM seems to work fine. However, I just tried to take the first snapshot which failed and the VM abruptly powered off with a warning that snapshot consolidation is required, which also failed when I tried to do so.

Could this be an issue with using a VMX configured for Workstation in ESXi or should I be looking elsewhere for this bug?

Cheers.

[Camero]

It is recommended to use the vCenter Converter[VMware vCenter Converter: P2V Virtual Machine Converter | United States] when you export VMs from the hosted Virtualization products [workstation, Fusion, Player] to native virtualization platform i.e ESX.

Retry the export using vCenter Converter.

[GetzVM]

I will need to take the time to look into Converter as I've not spent anytime with this in the past. In the meantime I tried adding just the VMDK disk to a new virtual machine created in ESXi, while the VM functions well it will still fail when attempting a snapshot?...This leaves only the VMDK itself as the cause of the problem. What would the Converter do to the VMDK of Workstation8 VM that would avoid this kind of snapshot issue?....

[GetzVM]

Edit: I have just recapped and realized that the snapshot issue is NOT affecting the the virtual machine with a NEW .vmx configuration file. The test VM I was initially testing in ESXi turns out to have used the Workstation8 .vmx file.

So far it seems all functionality works in ESXi 5.5u2 for the new virtual machine using a Workstation8 VMDK provided a new VMX file is created for ESXi.

Cheers.

[Camero]

Good to see that you worked around the problem that you encountered.

But again as stated in my earlier comment VMware Converter is your best bet when dealing with converting a VM from one product type to other, as there are small details which may mess up the VM's properties and may result in undesired configuration and VM performance.