VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) delivers secure and seamless app mobility and infrastructure hybridity across vSphere 5.0+ versions, on-premises, and in the cloud. HCX is a migration tool that abstracts both on-premises and cloud resources and presents them as a single set of resources that applications can consume. Using HCX, VMs can be migrated bi-directionally from one location to another with (almost) total disregard for vSphere versions, virtual networks, connectivity, etc. 

One of HCX’s coolest features is layer-2 extension, and in this post, I’ll cover it.

HCX Network Extension

HCX’s network extension service provides a secure Layer 2 extension capability (VLAN, VXLAN, and Geneve) for vSphere or 3rd party distributed switches and allows the virtual machine to retain an IP/MAC address during migration. The HCX Network Extension appliance provides Layer 2 extension capability, is deployed during Service Mesh creation, and allows VMs to keep their IP & MAC addresses during migration. … Read the rest

I had a working HCX setup in my lab, and I was making some modifications to my setup and tried chopping off my interconnect networking configuration on the HCX Cloud side. Deletion of the interconnect configuration was failing for me with the below error

Let me first explain how I landed in this situation. 

I deleted the interconnect appliances from my on-prem to show a demo to my peers on how the interconnects are deployed via the HCX plugin in the vSphere webclient. During the demo, I did not notice that the site pairing between my on-prem HCX and cloud side HCX was broken (due to a vCenter upgrade on the cloud side, a cert mismatch issue occurred).

When I kicked the CGW appliance removal, the backing VM got deleted, and the appliance configuration disappeared from on-prem. But when I checked on the cloud side, the peer CGW appliance and the Mobility Agent host were still intact.… Read the rest

This is in continuation with my last post where I discussed about what is service mesh feature of HCX and how it works. In this post we will learn how to create service mesh.

As we discussed earlier that we need to have compute/network profiles created on both on-prem and cloud side.

The compute profile describes the infrastructure at the source and destination site and provides the placement details (Resource Pool, Datastore) where the virtual appliances should be placed during deployment and the networks to which they should connect.

Login to HCX cloud appliance using your vSphere credentials (https://HCX-FQDN) and navigate to Multi-Site Service Mesh tab and click on create compute profile. 

Create compute profile page gives you a fair idea on what a compute profile comprises of.

Provide a name for your profile and hit continue. 

Select the HCX services to be enabled. I selected all services in my case.… Read the rest

Recently, I upgraded HCX appliances in my lab and saw a new tab named “Multi Site Service Mesh” appearing in both the cloud-side and on-prem side UIs, and I was curious to know about this new feature.

What is HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh?

To start consuming HCX, we need to have the interconnect appliances (CGW, L2C, and WAN Opt) deployed on both the on-prem and cloud sides. Before initiating the appliance deployment, we should have the interconnect configuration already in place on the cloud side.

The Multi-Site Service Mesh enables the configuration, deployment, and serviceability of Interconnect virtual appliance pairs with ease. Now you have the choice to deploy/manage HCX services with the traditional Interconnect interface or with the new Multi-Site Service Mesh. To deploy the HCX IXs, you will choose either of the methods. 

Before you plan to use HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh, let’s have a look at a few benefits that we get out of this feature:

• Uniformity: the same configuration patterns at the source and remote sites.

… Read the rest

HCX supports 3 methods for migrating VMs to the cloud:

• Cold Migration
• HCX Cross-Cloud vMotion
• HCX Bulk Migration

To know more about these migration methods, please read this post to know more about the migration methods. 

HCX migrations can be scheduled from the HCX UI using the vSphere Client or automated using the HCX API. In the last post of this series, I demonstrated a few PowerCli commands that we can use for the HCX system. 

API/PowerCli is an obvious choice when you think of automation. Using automation not only helps in reducing the amount of user input required in the UI but also reduces the chances of human errors.

In this post, I will show the use of HCX PowerCLI cmdlets, which you can use to automate HCX migration.

The cmdlet New-HCXMigration creates an HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension) migration request. 

Step 1: First, we have to identify the parameters that we need to pass with the cmdlet.… Read the rest

With the release of PowerCli 11.2, support for many new VMware products was introduced, including VMware HCX. The PowerCli module name for HCX is “VMware.VimAutomation.HCX” and it currently has 20 cmdlets to manage HCX.

You can use Windows Power Shell to install/upgrade your PowerCLI to v11.2 using the below commands:

1: Once the necessary module is installed, we can use the Get-Command to examine the cmdlets that are available for HCX.

2: Authenticate with HCX: To connect to the HCX Manager, we need to use the Connect-HCXServer cmdlet.

… Read the rest

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a powerful product for data center migration, replacement, and disaster recovery. VMware HCX supports 3 major clouds at the moment: VMware Cloud on AWS, OVH Cloud, and IBM Cloud.

Although the HCX interface for workload migration is very simple and even first-time users can migrate workloads without much difficulty, it is always good to know about the API offerings of any product so that you can automate it via scripting.

The HCX API allows customers to automate all aspects of HCX, including the HCX VAMI UI for initial configuration as well as consuming the HCX services that are exposed in the vSphere UI.

HCX has its own API explorer (similar to the vSphere swagger interface). You can use additional tools like Postman or Curl to explore the capabilities of the HCX API.

Method 1: Using HCX API Interface

The HCX API interface can be accessed by typing https://<hcx-manager–fqdn>/hybridity/docs/index.html,… Read the rest