Re:ESXi and Virtual Center (Score 1)

Actually you can connect to ESXi with a browser and then download the Virtual Infrastructure Client to your Windows PC and use that to manage ESXi.

VMWare Converter is also free and can be used to migrate existing virtual machines to ESXi also.

I set my ESXi server up two days ago and I am very happy with it so far :)

Here's the hardware that I used for my server:

ASRock ALIVENF6G-VSTA AM2 NVidia 6100 Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (x2)
PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II Controller Card
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
SeaSonic S12 II SS-330GB ATX12V 330W Power Supply
Intel 1000 Pro MT NIC

It might have been possible to get ESXi working without the Promise SATA card but for me it was just not worth the effort, as the card was $60 before shipping and tax.

You might want to choose a different motherboard - i got this one as it was micro ATX and would fit in a small case - the downside is that with the SATA card there is only room for one NIC (VMWare recommend at least 2 to keep the managament and VM traffic seperate). But what the heck the board was $50 when i got it :D