Limitation of renaming Partner Service VMs

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

The name of Service VMs for third-party anti-virus or network introspection solutions, as well as the Guest Introspection USVMs is defined by the system when it is deployed in the form of <Solution Name> (#) where Solution Name is the name assigned by the product (i.e. Guest Introspection, or Palo Alto Networks NGFW, followed by an incrementing number, resulting in a VM name such as Guest Introspection (3).

This name may not match current naming standards and may be difficult to identify the ESXi host on which the VM is deployed.

Environment

VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.3.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.4.x

Resolution

The Service VMs are system deployed and managed, it is currently not supported to change the name of these Service VMs, and they should be left as provisioned through the Solution Deployment page in NSX Networking & Security.

With NSX 6.2.4 and later, for Network Introspection Service VMs (i.e. Palo Alto Networks NGFW), NSX Manager exposes the ESXi hostname on which the 3rd-party VM Series firewall SVM is running to improve operational manageability in large-scale environments.