Updating virtual switch fails with error : “A specified parameter was not correct”

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• In vCenter, operations to add/remove Standard Switch or its portgroups, modify portgroups, add/remove pNics, or modify Teaming policies on a Standard Switch and operations to add/remove physical network adapter(vmnic) from a Distributed Switch fails with the error:
  "A specified parameter was not correct".
• In ESXi host client, operations to add/remove Standard Switch or its portgroups, modify portgroups, add/remove pNics, or modify Teaming policies on a Standard Switch fails with the error:
  "A specified parameter was not correct".
• Operations to add/remove a Standard Switch or its portgroups, modify portgroups, add/remove pNics or modify Teaming policies on a Standard Switch with a special character in its name and operations to add/remove physical network adapter(vmnic) on Distributed Switch from CLI fails with an error.
  eg: When adding uplink to a Virtual Switch, it fails with error:
  " Error updating teaming policy with new uplink. Failed with the following error(s): Unable to find vswitch at config location /net/vswitch/child Rollback sucessful, previous settings restored."

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi
VMware vSphere vCenter

Cause

• Host has a Virtual Standard Switch name with special characters like ' ? / \ * ' .
• There is a bug in ESXi's code in handling a host with a Virtual Standard Switch with special characters in its name.

Resolution

• It is a known issue.
• Contact Broadcom Support to rename the standard switch without any special characters.

Additional Information

Following alert will be observed in ESXi 8.0 when attempting to edit the standard switch with a special character in its name:

However, no such alerts will be observed in ESXi 7.0U3 when attempting to edit the standard switch with a special character. The edit option will be accessible, but the modifications made using the same will fail with error: " A specified parameter was not correct."