A virtual machine has been renamed and an administrator is unable to find files with the new virtual machine name in the datastore. What is the reason for this?

In vSphere, a VM rename via the inventory is purely a metadata operation that updates the display label in vCenter. The actual files on the datastore (VMX, VMDK, etc.) keep the filenames from when the VM was originally created. To align filenames with a new VM name, an administrator must perform a Storage vMotion or manually rename the files.

File corruption would cause I/O errors or VM instability, not a simple mismatch between the inventory name and the datastore filenames.

Re-adding the VM to inventory is unnecessary because the VM remains fully functional; it is only the file naming that does not reflect the rename.

DRS host migration relocates VM files but does not rename them, and it would not be triggered by a VM rename operation.