vSAN File Service SMB client errors out with: 'The file name you specified is not valid or too long'

Products

• VMware vSAN 7.x
• VMware vSAN 8.x

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms: 

- User is unable to copy files to vSAN File Service share, errors similar to 'The file name you specified is not valid or too long' can be seen on the client. 

 

Example: 

On ESXi side samba.log (at /scratch/log/vdfs_support/containers/fsvm_logs/containers/<container name>/samba/samba_logs/) may show the NT_STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND error, example:

[2024-09-05T11:32:29.497862, L3, pid=14191, cls=smb2] smbd_smb2_create_send(line 975)  Failed to create file <filename in non-Latin character set>.txt, status=NT_STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND

 

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.0.x
VMware vSAN 8.0.x

Cause

vSAN File services supports filenames 255 bytes in length while encoded in UTF-8 format. Some clients may use UTF-16 format which requires filename conversion to UTF-8 before saving. This may sometimes lead to exceeded supported filename length and write failure. 

Resolution

vSAN File services supports filenames 255 bytes in length encoded in UTF-8 format.
Clients using different character encoding should use filenames that adhere to supported length, post conversion to UTF-8.