
Using Linux as a guest OS in a VMware vSphere environment it’s, of course, well supported and more distributions are officially supported in vSphere 5 making more easy deploy Linux VM or Linux based virtual appliances.
For the remote management a good option it’s usually use the SSH protocol, for the initial installation (or other special cases) you will need to use vSphere Console.
Using the client from a Linux box could be difficult but with the new vSphere Web Client not so much, for more information see the KB 1006095 (Availability of vSphere Client for Linux systems) or see also Access VM Consoles From Linux.
Then there are a couple of notes if you need a GUI or a text console.