VMWare is a community-supported platform for CoreOS Container Linux, but the OVA deployment method has not worked well for me. Among other reasons, a big one is that the free version of ESXi, without vSphere/vCenter, does not persist the guestinfo variables. Additionally, even when I got that sorted out, the cloud-init/cloud-config method that sets static IPs based on the guestinfo wasn't working well for me and had problems such as not releasing the DHCP address it got before the systemd network unit was created.
In any case, it just wasn't working for me. What did work was using the VMDK image that CoreOS publishes, and using Ignition to set the IP information. By creating the VMX file manually and registering it with ESXi, the Ignition info can be passed in through guestinfo and everything appears to work as expected.
This is basically just a rough prototype. No error checking, won't work (and might do damage) if the requested VM name already exists. Would be nice to have more flexibility with different Ignition templates. Etc. etc. etc. Use at your own risk.
I'm using VMWare ESXi 6.5, and the VMX template I created is for the latest-and-greatest config and virtual hardware versions. If you have a VMWare version older than 6.5, this may not work.
First, the CoreOS VMDK needs to exist on your ESXi server. Download the current stable version and place an uncompressed copy in your ESXi datastore.
Edit the deploy.sh file. Set the appropriate values under the "Per-VM
configuration" section and the "ESXi Host Configuration" section. The
VMDATASTORE variable is where the directory for the new VM will be created.
Point COREOS_IMAGE to wherever that VMDK you downloaded lives.
Once you've set all of the variable to your satisfaction, run deploy.sh. You
probably want to have SSH key authentication set up to your ESXi server, and
load your key into your agent. Otherwise you're going to have to type your
password five times in a row.
As long as I don't make any mistakes, this seems to work for me. This will probably blow up your ESXi server and leave a crater in the floor of your datacenter. Don't say I didn't warn you.