vmware-cmd.pl is a command (perl script) to do all kinds of things with virtual machines from the ESX command line. You can use it to register and unregister virtual machines, stop, start and resume them and much more.

I wanted to use vmware-cmd to register a few virtual machines but it threw an error about not finding required perl modules. The solution to that was that I needed to run vmware-config.pl. That command will do the necessary stuff to get vmware-cmd.pl to work properly.

By the way, to register a virtual machine, it seems that you have to use the path to the vmx file using the UUID and not the label. Something like vmware-cmd -s register /vmfs/volumes/uuid/folder/filename.vmx. More information about that can be found in Mike Laverick's guide and also in the knowledge base. After registering the virtual machine, it will show up in VirtualCenter as well.

Usually, when I need to copy a file from a Windows box to ESX, I use WinSCP. WinSCP is free and does the job well. However, CPU usage is very high when doing the transfer.

An alternative to WinSCP is Bitvise Tunnelier. It provides a secure shell and file transfer. CPU usage during tranfers is also better and transfer speeds are better as well.

Take a look at both but my preferred choice at the moment is Tunnelier.