Quick Tip – Adding a custom prefix to your VCSIM environment

I just discovered this neat little feature of VCSIM (vCenter Server Simulator) which allows you to append a global string prefix to all vSphere objects in your inventory. I am not sure if this capability has always been there but definitely can be useful if you plan on running multiple VCSIM environments, this can be an easy way to uniquely identify a particular configuration.

To add the custom prefix, you will need to add the <prefix></prefix> tags to your VCSIM inventory configuration file. You can take a look at the default template /etc/vmware-vpx/vcsim/model/initInventory.cfg to get an idea of the available configurations.

Here is a the sample VCSIM configuration file for the inventory in the screenshot above:

<config>
  <inventory>
    <dc>1</dc>
    <host-per-dc>0</host-per-dc>
    <vm-per-host>0</vm-per-host>
    <poweron-vm-per-host>0</poweron-vm-per-host>
    <cluster-per-dc>1</cluster-per-dc>
    <host-per-cluster>2</host-per-cluster>
    <rp-per-cluster>1</rp-per-cluster>
    <vm-per-rp>3</vm-per-rp>
    <poweron-vm-per-rp>3</poweron-vm-per-rp>
    <dv-portgroups>0</dv-portgroups>
  </inventory>
  <prefix>vGhetto-</prefix>
  <worker-threads>1</worker-threads>
  <synchronous>true</synchronous>
</config>