HCX

HCX and EVC #HCX #VMware #vExpert

April 23, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 1

So I have been deploying and testing HCX recently for a customer. This customer wants to use the HCX vMotion feature to migrate out of their legacy DCs. Normally HCX Bulk Migration is used to move the majority of VMs out and HCX vMotion is used for the key heavy hitter VMs that you do not want to power down for XYZ reason. The main reason for this is time, Bulk Migration can move 100-200 VMs at a time quite easily as it uses vSphere Replication, but the downside is that during the cutover there is some downtime: VM is powered off at the source Off-line sync happens VM is powered on at the destination You can define when the […]

HCX Migrations using L2 Ext Legacy Complexities #L2VPN #HCX #VCF

March 16, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 5

Lay of the land I have been working with a customer and came across something interesting. Most people when configuring 2 vCenters don’t share VLANs between the 2, with management networks being the exception. But here we had a VLAN in 2 vCenters which needed to be migrated to our new VCF site. This new site would utilise NSX-v to terminate the default gateway. I think this is best shown in a diagram: For some unknown reason, a decision was made to separate out the Windows and Linux workloads into 2 vCenters but use the same VLAN. Sometimes you can come back and visit a decision you made previously with fresh eyes and new info and realise it wasn’t the […]

HCX Service Mesh Considerations #HCX @VMwareHCX #vExpert

January 20, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 0

So let us have a quick overview of HCX Service Meshes before we continue: Service Meshes can contain all 3 appliances or just an Interconnect appliance or just a Layer 2 Ext appliance, depending on your needs. The WAN Optimiser is optional. Features are always being added to HCX, but these are the key services/appliances. The Interconnect (IX) appliance holds most of the services, I tell people to think of it as a vSphere Replication Manager, as that is one of the main services it holds. HCX uses vSphere Replication for all its replication bits, so the same pros and cons that apply to vSphere Replication apply here as well! How the Mesh is configured and deployed is dependant on […]

HCX Gotchas Vol 1

September 2, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 3

Right so I have been spending a lot of time working with and learning HCX recently. There are loads of people telling you how great it is and the funky things it can do (and it is great). BUT there are things that can trip you up when deploying it, and every-time I have come across one I have documented it, in the hope that I can help people who deploy it and configure it in the future! Deploying HCX Manager Now HCX is a bit of a resource hog, especially when you start deploying the additional appliances, so I was hoping to make full use of my Intel NUCs but that wasn’t meant to be. HCX Managers need 4x […]