Is there a particular reason you need to preserve the contents of /etc/vmware?
When you do the fresh build, you'll enter the host name, IP addressing, language, time zone and VLAN info anyway.
If you're rebuilding the disk array, the local VMFS partition will be destroyed, but any ones off your SAN/iSCSI will be automatically picked up anyway.
Unless you've loaded anything too customised on there, about the only things you'd need to reconfigure would be NTP and your networking. It's probably quicker and easier to redo them then worry about a restore.
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