Use non encoded urls for HTTP Upload of VM Files

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• With vSphere 6.5U2d (and later versions), on using encoded URLs, while trying to PUT VM files in specified Datacenter and Datastore using HTTP PUT request then the request fails.  
• In vSphere 6.5U2, the PUT request succeeds , regardless of encoded or non encoded URL
  
  
• Example of non encoded URL 
  https://vc1.example.com/folder/vm1/vm1.vmx?dcPath=Test-DC&dsName=iSCSI-1
  
  
• Example of encoded URL:
  https://vc1.example.com/folder/vm1/vm1.vmx?dcPath%3DTest-DC%26dsName%3DiSCSI-1
  
  where we replace "=" with %3D and "&" with %26
  
  
• For a VM containing space characters in its name (E.g.: "vm with space"), GET/PUT HTTP requests will fail if the space is not encoded with %20, in all versions.
  
  

Environment

VMware vCenter 6.5 U2d

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

• For VMs having no space characters in the name, do not use encode URLS.
• For VMs having space characters in the name, the space characters should be encoded with %20. 
• Example:
  https://vc1.example.com/folder/vm%20with%20space/vm%20with%20space.vmx?dcPath=Test-DC&dsName=iSCSI-1
  
  
• The above guidelines should work across all vSphere versions consistently.