There are a couple of ways to rename a Virtual Machine, but there are two in my opinion that stand out: Shutdown the VM Rename the VM in VirtualCenter Migrate the VM and move it to another Datastore done! And from the service console: vmware-cmd -s unregister /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm/vmold.vmx mv /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-old /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-new cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-new vmkfstools -E vm-old.vmdk vm-new.vmdk find . -name [...]