This section discusses rules and limitations in naming virtual services, pools and other objects in the NSX Advanced Load Balancer.

Object Names

Object names within the NSX Advanced Load Balancer, such as the names of virtual services and pools, have the following limitations:

  • Uniqueness within tenants: An object name must be unique within a given tenant. Different tenants can use the same name.

  • Maximum Length: 128 characters.

  • Alphabetic characters allowed: a -> z; A -> Z

  • Digital characters allowed: 0 -> 9

  • The space character, plus these special symbols: . @ + - _

Object names can be changed without impact to linked objects. For instance, each virtual service is associated with a pool. The name of a virtual service can be changed without requiring a change to the configuration of the pool that the virtual service is associated with.

Local User Names

The names of NSX Advanced Load Balancer user accounts that are maintained locally, in the Controller database, support the same characters as those for other object names within the Controller. (The supported characters are listed above.)

Note:

  • User accounts created through Keystone or LDAP / AD have the same limitations as other user accounts in those authentication systems.

  • The NSX Advanced Load Balancer user names that include any of the supported special characters ( . @ + - _ ) can access the Controller through the web interface, API, or CLI. However, these accounts cannot access the Controller’s Linux shell. For example:

shell 
Shell access not allowed for this user

Best Practice for Referring To Object Names

Each object is assigned a unique identifier (UUID). As a best practice, API calls and custom scripts must refer to UUIDs rather than the object names. This practice can eliminate potential impact to the operation of scripts following a change to the name of an object.

Restrictions

The following are the naming restrictions for objects:

  • There is no limit on name length for objects.

  • The only characters that are not allowed are "<" and ">".

  • The usage of colon in names for Pool and PriorityLabels objects are not allowed.