Datastore Naming Rules – VMware Technology Network VMTN
Posted by jpluimers on 2023/12/29
I was looking for VMware ESXi Datastore Naming Rules, and this was the only really relevant post I could find:
[Wayback/Archive] Datastore Naming Rules – VMware Technology Network VMTN
I’m trying to get a definitive answer on what the rules are for naming Datastores? I can’t seem to find any information on what is allow and what is not allowed as names for datastores.
So far, I found this document
Which says
[ ] /are not allowable characters, with a max of 42 charactersThen I found this document
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/visdk400pubs/ReferenceGuide/vim.Datastore.html
Which says
\and%aren’t allowable (although I can create a datastore with%just fine..)As for Maximum length, I’ve seen stuff around the forums saying 128, 42, 31, and 255 character lengths.
Is there any document that maps out the datastore naming rules? Specifically for vSphere 5.1 (VMFS-5 and VMFS-3). Also, are the naming rules different for NFS shares?
There seems to be no documentation other than the above posts which I have amended below with their archived parts:
- [Wayback/Archive] Renaming a datastore within vCenter Server succeeds, but the contents in the datastore browser view is blank (2012890)
This issue occurs if there are square brackets (
[]) or forward slash (/) in the datastore name. These characters are not supported in the datastore name. - [Wayback/Archive] https://web.archive.org/web/20151027172019/https://www.vmware.com/sup…
You may use the following characters in a path, but not in a datastore name: slash (/), backslash (\), and percent (%).
I found the above post via [Wayback/Archive] valid esxi datastore naming convention – Google Search.
It did however get me this nice discussion on how to structure your datastore names: [Wayback/Archive] Best Practice – Datastore naming conventions – VMware Technology Network VMTN
Via [Wayback/Archive] esxi valid datastore characters – Google Search, I found [Wayback/Archive] Updated Character Limits for vSphere Objects which indicates that with vSphere 7 the Datastore name length has been increased to 80 characters.
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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