This is related to the fix for Bug #5630.
The fix for this (http://projects.theforeman.org/projects/foreman/repository/revisions/e7d21bf01f2b9eee19b808c4ea320ddfd9c33b3d) breaks our deployment.

I'm wondering if the path_replace is even required?

So our datacenter is: 'Turitea ITS'
Our original path is '/Datacenters/Turitea/Turitea ITS/vm/Production/Foundation/Infrastructure'

After the path_replace has been done the path is: '/DatacentersProduction/Foundation/Infrastructure' - which obviously doesn't work.

But looking at the original code before the fix for Bug #5630 was applied, after running the original path_replace our path wasn't changed and seemed to deploy via vmware as expected.