Limitation of renaming Partner Service VMs used with NSX Data Center

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

The name of Service VMs for third-party anti-virus, network introspection solutions or 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 6.4.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.3.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.

For Guest Introspection USVMs with NSX 6.4.0 or later, NSX Manager exposes the ESXi hostname on which the Guest Introspection USVM is running. USVMs are deployed with naming convention VM-NAME(HOSTNAME). However, this doesn't apply to 3rd party service VMs - 3rd party VMs remain deployed with VM-NAME(#)