Gotcha: Cannot Reset a vShield Edge in vCloud Director

Well kids, this one came full circle after a week of beating my head to a bloody pulp on the desk.  During some vCloud Director testing with David Hill and Duncan Epping, we ran into a snag whereby we could not seem to reset the vShield Edge Device.  Now, I admit I did read the error which was shown below I just focussed on the wrong part of it:

Deploy OVF template
System vDC (2e56eaa7-7a77-4d94-8743-543bbdc4d73d)
'vse-Management-s1-r-outed-protected (5031e3c2505a-426cb4c9-01e61c1ee908).updated' is invalid or exceeds the maximum number of characters permitted.

The key here is the part about the maximum characters.  What you should understand is that when create a Routed Network in vCloud Director and you name it a few things happen that extend that original name.

1. The original name in the vCloud Director configuration was “Management-s1-routed-protected“
2. When the OVF is deployed the name was extended to “vse-Management-s1-routed-protected (5031e3c2505a426cb4c901e61c1ee908)“
3. When the network was attempted to be reset the length was changed yet again to “vse-Management-s1-routed-protected (5031e3c2505a426cb4c901e61c1ee908).updated“

The last string was the straw that breaks the back.  By adding all the extra strings to the name we end up exceeding the vSphere Virtual Machine object character limit for a name.

The moral of the story?  Use short names in your vCloud configuration because it will get extended in the inventory especially on the vShield Edges.  The “Reset Network” function for a vShield also adds the .UPDATED so if you are on the border of the name length that may put you over.  I am currently looking into what exactly the maximum number of characters is and there is this KB Article on some vCloud lengths.

According to William Lam who also verified for me, the Virtual Machine name character limit in vSphere is in fact 80 characters.  This number seems to be documented in the 4.1 administrator guide but is not included in the vSphere 5.0 guides.  The final name version on reset of the vShield Edge ended up trying to be 87 characters.  Bottom line, don’t hit this issue if you don’t need to.  I lost just about a week in testing due to this little problem.

I did happen to try renaming the network in vCloud DIrector to try and work around it, BUT the actual virtual machine in vSphere is not changed until it is reset.  However if you already cannot reset it, you are stuck in a loop and will need to re-create the network first net new with a shorter name for it to get fixed.