FindEntityView / NameValueCollection wildcard behavior

[jlegan]

So here is a fun one that I have been debugging for a couple of hours and I hope someone can shed some light on it.

Scenario:

ESXi 4.1 server - Two virtual machines on the server

VM1 = WIN2K8-32

VM2 = WIN2K8-32-1

Code: Pass in "WIN2K8-32" as either the "name" or "Config.Name" parameter in the filter.

// Create filter by VM name

NameValueCollection nvcFilter = new NameValueCollection();

//nvcFilter.Add("name", "WIN2K8-32");

nvcFilter.Add("Config.Name", "WIN2K8-32");

// Get VirtualMachine view object

VirtualMachine oVirtualMachine = (VirtualMachine)m_oVimClient.FindEntityView(typeof(VirtualMachine), null, nvcFilter, null);

The returned VirtualMachine object is actually the object for VM2. I do not have a ^ or any other wildcard denoting character in my filter keywords. Does anyone know why it is doing this and more importantly how to stop it?

Thanks,

Jim

[jlegan]

The code below is how I worked around the defect, but it is a significant one and I hope VMware decides to fix it.

// Create filter by VM name

NameValueCollection nvcFilter = new NameValueCollection();

nvcFilter.Add("name", sVirtualMachine);

// Get a complete list of VM's that match the criteria. Due to a defect in the "FindEntityView" call that returns the "last of"

// record that partially matches the string (for example, two machines "TEST" and "TEST1". Using a filter of name "TEST" will

// return a virtual machine object for "TEST1" even when no wildcard characters (^) are used. See VMware community post

// http://communities.vmware.com/post!reply.jspa?thread=322898 for more details.

IList<EntityViewBase> vmList = m_oVimClient.FindEntityViews(typeof(VirtualMachine), null, nvcFilter, null);

VirtualMachine oVirtualMachine = null;

// Iterate through all of the VMs returned in the list and match the exact string we are looking for, working around the defect

// described above.

foreach (VirtualMachine vm in vmList)

{

     if (vm.Config.Name.Equals(sVirtualMachine, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))

     {

          oVirtualMachine = vm;

          break;

     }

}

[jlegan]

VMware, please fix the API