"Invalid Datastore path" error when provisioning from a VM Template in Aria Automation

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to provision form a template you see that provisioning fails with a status of 

"REQUEST_FAILED" and "CREATE_FAILED"

and an error similar to: 

"Provisioning operation failed: Error from vCenter: Invalid datastore path '[<datastore>] <vm-name>/<vm-name.vmx>"

Environment

Aria Automation 8.18.1

Cause

This can be caused by having a template name with an unsupported special character. 

In 8.x the allowed special characters are underscore and dash.

Working with template formats
When defining your template format, you can use strings and properties. The primary advantage of using properties is that you can use the same properties as the format for multiple projects, but the name is derived from the value properties, which can vary by project, cloud template, platform, and other properties.

The template format properties include the provided properties, discussed here, and any custom properties that you defined in the Design > Property Groups.

Valid characters
Spaces are not allowed.
For readability, you can use special characters to separate properties. The allowed characters are _ (underscore) and - (dash).

Resolution

Rename the VM template to include only supported characters.