VMware vSphere 6.7 Character Limits for Objects

I was recently working with a customer who had a very detailed naming scheme for objects.  The naming scheme was so detailed that some objects would have exceeded the maximum number of characters permitted by VMware vSphere.  I couldn’t find a VMware KB article that listed the maximum character lengths for objects so I have provided them below in the interim.

For testing I connected to a vSphere 6.7 vCenter Server and attempted to create objects with the character string below which includes 81-characters

Asdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjka

Object	Limit
Datacenter	80 characters
Cluster	80 characters
Folder	80 characters
Virtual Machine	80 characters
Resource Pool	80 characters
Distributed Switch	80 characters
Distributed Port Group	80 characters
Datastore	80 characters

Error Messages when attempting to use more than 80-characters

Datastore & Resource Pools – No Error

Note: It appears as though you can create Datastores and Resource Pools with 81-characters, but if you look closer you will see that the name is being truncated.

Cluster Name – Cluster name exceeds 80-characters.  Enter a new name.

Folders & Virtual Machines – The name is too long.  Up to 80 characters may be used (fewer if the characters %, \ or / are used)

Datacenter – Operation failed. <name entered> is invalid or exceeds the maximum number of characters permitted.