Short Story: I was able to load the vm into Workstation 5.5.5, fix the problems and bring it up in VMWare Server 2.0. Read on if you want a tiny bit more detail, there's not much to it.
In many cases I have encountered, sometimes you can't convert a ESX vm straight to VMWare Server 2.0. Some post-conversion modification is necessary. A number of VMWare forum threads elude to this fact, but I have found no further information on what it specifically entails. The OS's I have had the most problems with are CentOS and OpenBSD. The test image that I initially did when I was reviewing the possibility of this migration was a Win2k3 Standard image, and I was able to convert and run it with no problems.
In the specific conversion I attempted, the conversion process of the CentOS vm appeared successful. What I mean by this is that a vmx and vmdk file were generated. However, when I was going through the wizard, I encountered the following "Warning: Cannot configure the source image.". The vmdk file size seemed reasonable and the vmx file seemed like it was missing a few lines. I transferred these files from the win2k3 VMCS server, where I ran the VMWare Converter 3.0.3 software, to their new home, a win2k3 server with VMWare Server 2.0. I "Added a Virtual Machine to Inventory" in the VMWare Server 2.0 interface and the vm was reported to have been registered Successfully, but the vm showed up as "Unknown" in the inventory list, the controls to start the vm were greyed out, and no errors appeared to be logged or displayed anywhere.
Frustrating.
So, I tried bringing the vm up on another system that had VMWare Workstation 5.5.5 on it. An error was thrown, stating that the ide reference was incorrect and it thoughtfully suggested a change, which I made and worked. Then I was able to bring the image up and successfully reconfigured it for the new network environment it would call home. I shut the image down, copied it back the target host with VMWare Server 2.0 and successfully registered and ran the image. One last thing I needed to do was answer a question from the VMWare Server 2.0 before startup would occur. It was hidden on a pop-down on the Console tab, and wanted to know whether I had "moved it" or "copied it".
Tips:
Be sure to delete any snapshots the vm had, otherwise there may be problems later. Though, I have converted images successfully ignoring this step. The other bit that might be useful to know is that I was not able to successfully migrate any vm to VMWare Server 2.0 when selecting VMWare Workstation 6.x as the destination image format using VMWare Converter 3.0.3.
Another solution would be to avoid all these gui tools and export the VMDK with vmkfstools, then transfer the vmdk and create a new VM pointing to the VMDK. :)
