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Automating HCX Add On for VMware Cloud on AWS

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Enabling Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) for a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC is just a click of a button and is completely self-service which makes consuming the HCX Service extremely easy! All the hard work of deploying and configuring the required HCX infrastructure for your SDDC is completely automated for you by VMware when you click on "Deploy HCX" button.


Once the HCX infrastructure has been deployed in your SDDC, you can then deploy the respective HCX components for your on-premises vSphere environment which you can fully automate end-to-end which I have blogged about here.

Although the deployment of the HCX components for the SDDC is just click of a button, I recently had a need to automate this and I figure this would be a nice addition to my HCX PowerShell Community Module and complete the end-to-end story quite nicely from enabling the HCX Cloud Service to automating the deployment and configuration of the on-premises HCX components.

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Automating complete HCX deployment and configuration to first cloud migration using PowerCLI

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PowerCLI 11.2.0, was just released last week and for a "dot" release, it includes a number of new capabilities and enhancements. One of the most exciting features for me personally was the introduction of the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) PowerCLI module which I also had the pleasure of working on and providing early feedback to the HCX Engineering team. The new HCX module enables customers to use PowerCLI to now easily automate the HCX Fleet deployment (Interconnect, WAN Optimization and Network Extension) as well as perform bulk live migrations of  workloads between two HCX-enabled environments, with on-premises vSphere to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) being the most popular.

I have written a number articles on HCX Automation using both the HCX REST API and PowerCLI and with this latest PowerCLI module, I realized that we now have complete end-to-end automation with PowerCLI from the HCX OVA deployment to initial configuration and fleet deployment to your very first HCX vMotion! This is quite exciting as I know a number of folks have been asking about automating the fleet deployment, especially for enabling quick proof of concepts and quickly showing the value of HCX to our customers for moving large amount of workloads without any downtime.

Below, you will find a breakdown of the HCX setup which I have split into three sections, each section includes the respective PowerCLI sample code that can easily be adapted to your own environment. I look forward to seeing what customers do with the new HCX PowerCLI module and if you have any feedback, be sure to leave a comment or better yet, file a feature enhancement using the PowerCLI Feature Request Tool.

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Automating Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Manager initial configuration for VMC

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Following up from my previous Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Automation article which looked at deploying the HCX Manager OVA, this article will now focus on automating the initial configuration of HCX Manager including the registration to HCX Cloud which will enable the on-prem HCX Manager to be used with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC). Once HCX Manager is up and running, customers can configure the system using the HCX VAMI interface which is available on port 9443 via the UI or in our case with the HCX VAMI APIs. 


I have updated my HCX PowerShell Module to include 8 additional functions that can be used for initial configuration of HCX Manager:

  • Set-HcxVCConfig
  • Set-HcxLicense
  • Get-HcxNSXConfig
  • Set-HcxNSXConfig
  • Get-HcxLocation
  • Set-HcxLocation
  • Get-HcxRoleMapping
  • Set-HcxRoleMapping
  • Get-HcxProxy
  • Set-HcxProxy
  • Remove-HcxProxy

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