Renaming a Datacenter in vCenter Server

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

You may need to rename a Datacenter object in your vCenter Server inventory for organizational, naming standard, or restructuring purposes.

This article outlines the implications and recommended precautions when performing this change.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

Resolution

You can safely rename a Datacenter object in vCenter if the environment is not managed by VMware Cloud Foundation (SDDC Manager) and no external systems are dependent on the original datacenter name.

Considerations:

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF):

Do not rename datacenter objects in environments managed by VCF, as it may break internal mappings and lifecycle workflows. Check this document for the same: Renaming VCF SDDC manager objects

External Integrations:

Verify whether backup solutions, monitoring tools, or automation scripts refer to the original datacenter name.

Update any static references in these tools after renaming.

Best Practices

Take a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) before making the change to allow rollback in case of unexpected behavior.

Communicate the change to teams managing:

PowerCLI, Ansible, Terraform, or other infrastructure automation tools

Backup and DR solutions (e.g., Veeam, Commvault)

Monitoring platforms (e.g., vROps, Nagios)