Cannot Resolve the Path to Virtual Machine (code 1911)

Situation

A VMware backup plan terminates with the following error: Cannot Resolve the Path to Virtual Machine. The path to a virtual machine {VM name} contains non-supported characters

Cause

VDDK libraries are not localized, but backup partners can support any locale that uses UTF-8 encoding. Other than Unicode, VDDK does not support multibyte character encodings such as Extended Unix Code (EUC) for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (ISO-2022).

The pathname to a virtual machine and its VMDK can be expressed with any character set supported by the host file system. As of vSphere 4 and Workstation 7, VMware supports Unicode UTF-8 path names, although for portability to various locales, ASCII-only path names are recommended.

Windows 2000 systems (and later) use UTF-16 for localized path names. For example, in locale FR (Français) the VDDK sample code might mount disk at C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-Système, where è is encoded as UTF-16 so the VixMntapi library cannot recognize it. In this case, a workaround is to set the tmpDirectory configuration key with an ASCII-only path before the program start-up.

Solution

Modify a path to your virtual machines.

To modify a path, proceed as follows:

1. In vCenter, select Edit.
2. Select Preferences.
3. In the Preferences property box, switch to the Workspace tab.

4. In the Default location for virtual machines and teams field, specify the new pathname using ASCII characters only.
5. Once you are done, click OK.