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.