I was recently working with a customer who had a very detailed naming scheme for objects. The naming scheme was so detailed that some objects would have exceeded the maximum number of characters permitted by VMware vSphere. I couldn’t find a VMware KB article that listed the maximum character lengths for objects so I have provided them below in the interim.
For testing I connected to a vSphere 6.7 vCenter Server and attempted to create objects with the character string below which includes 81-characters
Asdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjka
| Object | Limit |
| Datacenter | 80 characters |
| Cluster | 80 characters |
| Folder | 80 characters |
| Virtual Machine | 80 characters |
| Resource Pool | 80 characters |
| Distributed Switch | 80 characters |
| Distributed Port Group | 80 characters |
| Datastore | 80 characters |
Error Messages when attempting to use more than 80-characters
Datastore & Resource Pools – No Error
Note: It appears as though you can create Datastores and Resource Pools with 81-characters, but if you look closer you will see that the name is being truncated.
Cluster Name – Cluster name exceeds 80-characters. Enter a new name.
Folders & Virtual Machines – The name is too long. Up to 80 characters may be used (fewer if the characters %, \ or / are used)
Datacenter – Operation failed. <name entered> is invalid or exceeds the maximum number of characters permitted.