VMware HCX

VMware HCX is an application mobility platform designed for simplifying application migration, rebalancing workloads, and optimizing disaster recovery across data centers and clouds.

And it delivers on a number of key customer use-cases in the adoption of new VMware infrastructure – from one-time migrations for datacenter consolidation or evacuation to cloud adoption, HCX is the perfect tool to move VMs from legacy to new. HCX can also manage the upgrade of vSphere versions during migration – perfect for customers moving from vSphere 5x/6x to 7x in the course of VCF adoption or simply adopting the latest vSphere version – HCX can also help customers replatform from KVM and Hyper-V to vSphere. Rebalancing workloads in multi-cloud scenarios – moving VMs across cloud regions or from one provider to another is a great application providing a level of insurance and comfort. Because of the hybrid interconnect HCX creates and its rapid migration capabilities it also works well as a simple disaster recovery and disaster avoidance alternative. And more recently HCX has been adapted to enable management of network functions in Telco environments

VMware HCX use cases:

Application migration -You can schedule and migrate thousands of vSphere virtual machines within and across data centers without requiring a reboot.

Change platforms or upgrade vSphere versions – With HCX, you can migrate workloads from vSphere and from non-vSphere (KVM and Hyper- V) environments within and across data centers or clouds to current vSphere versions without requiring an upgrade.

Workload rebalancing – Workload rebalancing provides a mobility platform across cloud regions and cloud providers to allow customers to move applications and workloads at any time to meet scale, cost management, compliance, and vendor neutrality goals.

Business continuity and protection – Using HCX capabilities, administrators can protect workloads by replicating them to other HCX sites. Workload migration is available on-demand, or it can be scheduled for business or for maintenance planning.

HCX Licensing

HCX is available with an Advanced and an Enterprise license.

HCX Advanced functionality is packaged into all SDDC offerings today.

Hybrid Interconnect:- This service creates and secures connections between HCX installations, supporting management, migration, replication, and disaster recovery operations.
HCX Network Extension:- This service extends the Virtual Machine networks from an HCX source site to an HCX remote site. Virtual Machines that are migrated or created on the extended segment at the remote site are Layer 2 adjacent to virtual machines placed on the origin network.
WAN Optimization:- The WAN Optimization service works with the HCX Interconnect service to improve the network performance through a combination of deduplication, compression, and line conditioning techniques.
Disaster Recovery:- The HCX Disaster Recover service replicates and protects virtual machines to a remote data center.
vMotion Live Migration:- This migration method uses the VMware vMotion protocol to move a single virtual machine between HCX sites with no service interruption.
Bulk Migration:- This service uses VMware vSphere Replication protocol to move virtual machines in parallel between HCX sites.

HCX Enterprise is an add-on license – sold on top of NSX Enterprise Plus, Azure VMware Solution, available in VCPP program and soon to be available for VMware Cloud on AWS. These features are really skewed to advanced services for larger enterprise use-cases.

OS Assisted vMotion:-This migration service moves Linux- or Windows-based non-vSphere guest virtual machines from their host environment to a VMware vSphere data center.
Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV):- This service uses both VMware Replication and vMotion technologies for large-scale, parallel migrations with no service interruption.
SRM Rediness:- This service integrates HCX functionality with the VMware SRM for protection and recovery operations.
Mobility Groups:– is a feature that allows for simplified logical groupings of VMs using network and application level data to discover, group and manage VMs into migration waves. This greatly simplifies planning for larger customers with thousands and tens of thousands of VMs.
Traffic Engineering:– At its core HCX does a lot to create secure L2 or L3 connectivity across source and destination sites while masking that complexity from customers. These two TE features are designed to ensure resiliency and efficiency of those links.
Mobility Optimized Networking:– is an automated way to manage network creation on the destination site, enabling migrated VMs to automatically be routed through a local gateway. This is an integration between HCX and NSX-T 3.0.

For More Information on HCX, Please refer VMware Documentation