Any way to just show VM names?

[godbucket]

Hello, newbie here. Excited to learn more about Proxmox.

So! Hey, I get it, you guys are xNIX guys and you love to number things and "that's just the way it is." I get it, I do. But...

My company is about to dump VMware due to all Broadcom's changes, but I'm sorry guys, there's no way in hell they're going to pay lots of money for Proxmox if they have to reference their hundreds and hundreds of VMs by a number. Sorry, its just not going to happen. They'll move to Hyper-V before they'd do this.

So that's why I will ask again like so many others in these forums: is there any way around this? Can we not just have the VMs name displayed in the view and within storage? No numbers?!?!

(...preparing for all the hateful comments coming my way...)

 

[Dunuin]

Nothing will prevent you from creating two or more VMs called "Windows". All PVE cares about is the VMID that has to be unique to identify/point to the correct VM. How would you solve this without breaking existing millions of VMs where the name might not be unique?

 

[godbucket]

Because of this... (see screenshot below)

They don't want to browse their virtual infrastructure looking for numbers. Can't say I blame them.

They want to see "SQL07-PROD" or "WEB03-TST" or whatnot. Not 101, 102, 103, etc.

And it gets much worse from a storage perspective; within the datastores it doesn't even mention the guest name! Just "vm-101".

Hey, they got money to spend for a nice enterprise subscription, and I'm trying to steer them your way. But I need help, because this is a deal breaker (and, in my opinion, with good reason)

 

[_gabriel]

indeed, in the storage view , "guest name" after the disks will be nice , an "allocated" size disk column will be nice too.

 

[Dunuin]

In addition in the webUI yes, but not instead. Keep in mind that everything is based around that VMID number and its really important to know that one as it is the thing you actually care about as you need to use it with every command in the CLI.

 

[godbucket]

Sure, that's fine, like I said, I get the number thing, all my friends are Unix/Linux guys and I know they love their NWorldIDs and whatnot. I get it.

But can't they not be switched?! Now its: 100 (servername) but can't it be: SERVERNAME (101)? That alone would be enough for buy-in.

Would still need to fix the storage naming issue though. I'm sorry but there is no way in hell we're fishing through datastores during a datacenter failover, trying to find VMs based on a number. What, are we expected to cross reference with a spreadsheet?!?! C'mon...

 

[Dunuin]

But can't they not be switched?! Now its: 100 (servername) but can't it be: SERVERNAME (101)?

You could do that already:

 

[UdoB]

it doesn't even mention the guest name! Just "vm-101".

I am really happy they did not decide to use UUIDs like vm-550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000 to get a unique identifier ;-)

 

[generalproxuser]

Have you seen how RHEV does their stores? Proxmox is easier in comparison (IMO).

 

[godbucket]

You can already do that:
View attachment 65857

THANK YOU! Simple answer for a simple problem. I appreciate you! Now, the storage naming is still an issue... Guess we'll see(?)

 

[Dunuin]

I am really happy they did not decide to use UUIDs like vm-550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000 to get a unique identifier ;-)

We already talked about that. If I'm right that is already on the wanted feature list in the bug tracker. Also got its benefits, especially when moving VMs between datacenters or when cloning VMs so the IDs won't collide.

 

[BobhWasatch]

If what the OP says about his customer community is true, it will be impossible for Proxmox to succeed there in any case. An attitude that says "if numbers come first I'm out" is one of rigidity. It is almost certainly coupled to "we must have VMware but without the cost" and Proxmox is not VMware. No amount of wanting will make it into VMware. None of the other non-VMware competitors is VMware either and they will all have impossible blockers as well. Are they really dumping VMware or are they just agressively whining about it?

If he wants to get "them" to switch, to anything, the OP will have to take on an education task. He will have to teach that there are many ways to skin cats and quite a few of them are equally effective.

 

[godbucket]

If what the OP says about his customer community is true, it will be impossible for Proxmox to succeed there in any case. An attitude that says "if numbers come first I'm out" is one of rigidity. It is almost certainly coupled to "we must have VMware but without the cost" and Proxmox is not VMware. No amount of wanting will make it into VMware. None of the other non-VMware competitors is VMware either and they will all have impossible blockers as well. Are they really dumping VMware or are they just agressively whining about it?

If he wants to get "them" to switch, to anything, the OP will have to take on an education task. He will have to teach that there are many ways to skin cats and quite a few of them are equally effective.

you need to take a business class my friend! you have much to learn...