I was new to ESX, having only used Server/Player before. So I wasn’t quite sure how to import existing virtual machines into ESXi, and when I googled it, everyone seemed to be saying I had to use Converter to convert the vm and use the ESXi server as the target.
That does work, but as it turns out, I don’t think it’s necessary. I turned on ssh on the server and just copied the existing Server/Player VM into the datastore area. Then in the infrastructure client, I simply browsed the datastore and added the .vmx file that way. It seems to be working, although I did have to remove and re-add the network adapters.
Garbagerie's Blog 