[HCX] Installation and Initial Configuration

Hello, today we will install the HCX Manager and do the initial configuration.

What is HCX?

As it is written on VMware.com – it is an application mobility platform designed for simplifying application migration, workload rebalancing and business continuity across data centers and clouds.

What parts does HCX consist of?

  1. HCX Manager – is deployed on both source and destination sites from OVA and integrated 1-to-1 with each vCenter.
  2. HCX Interconnect – service appliance which provides replication and vMotion-based migration. Also, it encrypts the traffic.
  3. HCX Wan Optimization – service which improves the performance of the private lines or internet paths by the use of techniques like data-deduplication or/and line conditioning, etc.
  4. HCX Network Extension – service provides late Performance L2 extension capability. it permits using the same IP and MAC during the VM migration.
  5. HCX Sentinel Gateway – Used for OS Assisted Migration(OSAM). You can migrate guest (non-vSphere) VMs from on-prem to the cloud. HCX Sentinel software has to be installed on each VM which is planned for migration. Gateway is a source environment.
  6. HCX Sentinel Data Receiver – used to receive, manage, and monitor data replication in the destination environment

In this article, I will only cover the first part of HCX – HCX Manager.

Here we follow our standard path with the installation of the OVA:

After installation is done we have to login to our address https://hsxManager.domain.local:9443 with our “admin” credentials which we created during the installation:

At this step we have to provide our license and the system will be updated: for me, it took around 30 minutes to complete.

Now we are able to map our HCX to our endpoint (vCenter, vCD, etc.) and provide required creds.

After the reboot we shall see the similar picture:

At this step installation of HCX Manager is finished. In the next articles, we will configure the rest of the HCX services and do the test migrations.

Thank you for reading. I hope it was informative for you!

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