Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX)

 

Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) is an all in one solution for workload mobility. Customers can freely move workloads between multiple on-premises environments as well as VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC). The data center evacuation was using a new HCX migration type called Cloud Motion with vSphere Replication. The workloads were being migrated from an on-premises data center to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC). The big deal here is the impact during the migration to the users was NONE, ZIP, ZERO downtime. And there was also no replatforming of the workloads or applications.

What is Cross-Cloud Mobility?

Cross-Cloud Mobility is the capability to pair any cloud infrastructure together and expect each cloud to act as an extension to the other(s). The HCX platform becomes the basis on which Cross-Cloud Mobility is provided by leveraging infrastructure services (Any-Any vSphere Zero downtime migration, seamless Disaster Recovery, enabling Hybrid Architectures, etc.) to provide tangible business value.

Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) when migrating workloads from one location to another. The network is at the top of the list, ensuring adequate bandwidth and routing is in place. Not only from data center to data center or data center to cloud, but also across regions and remote sites. Validating vSphere version compatibility between the source and destination is also important. Other workload migration considerations could include:

•     Moving across different vSphere SSO domains independent of enhanced linked mode
•     Mapping workload dependencies
•     Older hardware preventing from upgrading to vSphere 6.x
•     Bi-directional migrations independent of vSphere SSO domains, vSphere versions, hardware, or networks
•     Validation of resources (compute and storage) on the destination side
•     SLA and downtime involved
•     Mobility options correlating to SLAs (downtime, low downtime, no downtime)
•     No replatforming of the workloads or applications including no changes to IP or MAC Addresses, VM UUID, certs

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