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Automating Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Manager OVA deployment

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Feedback on my recent Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Automation articles has been very positive, thanks to those who have reached out. One area that I have not had a chance to spend much time on which a few of you have pinged me about is the automating the actual deployment of the HCX Manager, which is provided to customers as an OVA image. In this article, I have created a basic PowerCLI script called deploy_hcx_manager_ova.ps1 that demonstrates using the Import-VApp and Get-OVFConfiguration cmdlets to import the OVA along with specifying the required OVF properties. The script will also wait for the HCX Manager to be ready by checking the VAMI URL located at https://[HCX-MANAGER]:9443 

Lastly, for those of you who are new to HCX or would like a step by step walk through of setting up HCX, Emad Younis just kicked off a new blog series on learning about HCX, which I highly recommend folks check out here.

Here are the instructions on using the PowerCLI script to automate the HCX OVA deployment:

Step 1 - Download the latest HCX Manager OVA from HCX Cloud (you will need to login with your cloudadmin credentials)

Step 2- Download the PowerCLI HCX deployment script here.

Step 3 - Edit the script with your HCX configuration and deployment details

Step 4 - You will need to connect to your vCenter Server by using the Connect-VIServer cmdlet and then run the deployment script using the following command:

.\deploy_hcx_manager.ova.ps1


Once the deployment is successful, you can now open a browser to https://[HCX-MANAGER]:9443 and login using the admin credentials that you had specified in the script. I also plan to do a follow-up to this blog post on automating the initial configuration using the HCX VAMI APIs, so stay tuned.

NSX-T Policy PowerShell Community Module for VMC

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Earlier this week I had published an article on how to get started with the new NSX-T Policy API in VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), if you have not read through that guide yet, I recommend you take a look at that first as this covers the prerequisites which will be required. As mentioned in that article, I planned to add a few more NSX-T Policy API examples and now the community NSX-T Policy PowerShell includes 37 additional functions which you can see the complete list below:

  • Connect-NSXTProxy
  • Get-NSXTFirewall
  • Get-NSXTGroup
  • Get-NSXTSegment
  • Get-NSXTService
  • New-NSXTFirewall
  • New-NSXTGroup
  • New-NSXTSegment
  • New-NSXTServiceDefinition (renamed as of 07/01/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTFirewall
  • Remove-NSXTGroup
  • Remove-NSXTSegment
  • Get-NSXTDistFirewallSection (as of 01/02/2019)
  • Get-NSXTDistFirewall (as of 01/02/2019)
  • New-NSXTDistFirewall (as of 01/03/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTDistFirewall (as of 01/03/2019)
  • Get-NSXTOverviewInfo (as of 02/02/2019)
  • Get-NSXTInfraScope (as of 03/14/2019)
  • Get-NSXTInfraGroup (as of 03/14/2019)
  • New-NSXTDistFirewallSection (as of 04/19/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTService (as of 04/19/2019)
  • Get-NSXTPolicyBasedVPN (as of 05/09/2019)
  • New-NSXTPolicyBasedVPN (as of 05/09/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTPolicyBasedVPN (as of 05/09/2019)
  • Get-NSXTDNS (as of 06/08/2019)
  • Set-NSXTDNS (as of 06/08/2019)
  • Get-NSXTPublicIP (as of 07/01/2019)
  • New-NSXTPublicIP (as of 07/01/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTPublicIP (as of 07/01/2019)
  • Get-NSXTNatRule (as of 07/01/2019)
  • New-NSXTNatRule (as of 07/01/2019)
  • Remove-NSXTNatRule (as of 07/01/2019)
  • Set-NSXTSegment (as of 03/05/2020)
  • Get-NSXTT0Stats (as of 07/16/2020)
  • Get-NSXTLinkedVpc (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTL2VPN (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTPortMirror (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTIPFIXCollector (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTDirectConnectVIF (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTVifPerHost (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTVM (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTSegmentPort (as of 08/01/2020)
  • Get-NSXTGroupMember (as of 08/01/2020)

After importing the module, to see the list of all functions, you can run the following command:

Get-Command -Module VMware.VMC.NSXT


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Getting started with the new NSX-T Policy API in VMC

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Today, when you deploy a new SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), NSX-T is now the default networking stack and NSX-V is no longer used for net new deployments. In fact, we are about to start migrating existing VMC customers who have an NSX-V SDDC and converting them to an NSX-T SDDC. Humair Ahmed who works over in our Networking & Security Business Unit has an excellent blog post here that goes into more details on what NSX-T brings to VMC.


Upon first glance, you might think that this is the exact same version of NSX-T that we have been shipping to our on-premises customers but in fact, it is actually a brand new and improved version. Similar to vSphere (vCenter and ESXi) and VSAN, VMC is always running a newer version of our software than our on-prem customers. One immediate difference that you should be aware of when using NSX-T in VMC is that the current NSX-T API is not available and instead a new NSX-T Policy API has been introduced to help simplify the consumption of NSX-T. All functionality in the current on-prem NSX-T API can be consumed using the new Policy API.

At VMworld, I spoke to a number of current and upcoming customers with NSX-T based SDDCs and they were really interested in using the new NSX-T Policy API and as the title of this blog post suggests, this will be a quick primer on how to do that. Before we get started, confirm that you have an NSX-T based SDDC deployed. If you are not sure, there are a few ways to determine this using either the VMC Console UI or API, instructions can be found here and here.

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