When installing vShield Zones on a host is it possible to specify the name of the appliance? Or am I stuck with vShield-FW-myhost.fqdn?
you mean vShield Manager? Yes, any appliance imported into your VI can have it's name changed.
To be clear:
I've deployed and configured a vShield Manager appliance. Then, via the vShield Manager Web console I've 'installed' the vShield Zones service onto an ESXi host. As part of this installation a vShield Service VM is created using the following naming convention: vShield-FW-host.fqdn.
While this automatically generated VM name is fine, it does not follow my server naming convention; so I'd prefer to have the VM created with a specific name.
I believe the name can be changed, dare to try and report back to the forum?
Shortly after my original post I did just that...simply renamed the machine in vCenter. This in combination with logging into the appliance and renaming the host appears to have been successfull. We'll see if this holds true, for a rather simple work around.
Note: I have performed only basic testing...repeat at your own risk.