Impact of renaming a virtual machine’s files using “New Name” in the Datastore Browser

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Impact on a virtual machine when renaming its files using “New Name” in the Datastore Browser.

Environment

ESXi 8.x

Resolution

If you rename a virtual machine’s files from the Datastore Browser, only the name of the selected file is changed.
Other files that still reference the original file name are not updated, which can impact virtual machine operation.

If you need to change file names, you must follow the procedure described in
the knowledge base article below (“Renaming virtual machine files using Storage vMotion”).

Renaming a virtual machine and its files in vSphere