Renaming a datastore

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on renaming a Datastore even if virtual machine workloads are running on it; This also covers the multiwriter Cluster-in-a-box scenario.
This article does not apply to vSAN.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

 

Resolution

Scenarios:

 

1.) If the Datastore is shared by more than one ESXi Host:

You must rename the Datastore by using the vCenter Web Client

vSphere 7

vSphere 8

 

2.) If the Host is managed by vCenter Server:

You cannot rename the Datastore by directly accessing the Host from the VMware Host Client or using the command line.

You must rename the Datastore by using the vCenter Web Client

vSphere 7

vSphere 8

 

3.) If the Host is not managed by vCenter Server: Rename a Datastore in the VMware Host Client

vSphere 7

vSphere 8

 

4.) If the Host is not managed by vCenter Server: Rename a Datastore by using command line:

4.1) Determine the current Datastore name by running via SSH/Putty session:

df -h 

4.2) Run command to rename Datastore:
vim-cmd hostsvc/datastore/rename OldDatastoreName NewDatastoreName

4.3) Determine the new Datastore name by running via SSH/Putty session:

df -h