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Getting started with the Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) APIs

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VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) is the de facto VMware solution when it comes to Enterprise scale workload migration whether that is from onPrem to onPrem or from onPrem to Cloud, including our VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) offering. In fact, one of the most popular use cases for HCX right now is datacenter evacuation/consolidation and customers are migrating their workloads to VMC because they want to get out of the business of running datacenters and get back to running their core business. This is especially attractive for customers wanting to expand to new markets without requiring the need of new datacenters. This makes a ton of sense, especially when you go beyond the initial CapEx, its the on-going OpEx costs that folks may not always be thinking about immediately and being able to easily scale up or down is not always possible for most onPrem environments.

HCX already provides a rich UI interface within the vSphere Client for scheduling migrations including the new Cloud Motion with vSphere Replication feature which was announced at VMworld US 2018.


However, it should come as no surprise that our customers are also interested in Automation, especially as it can help expedite migrations and remove potential user error, especially around mapping the destination networks which can be quite daunting for a large number of migrations. The good news is that HCX provides a Restful API that allows customers to automate all aspects of HCX including the HCX VAMI UI for initial configuration as well as consuming the HCX services which are exposed in the vSphere UI.

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How to unregister Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) from your onPrem vCenter Server?

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I recently had to redeploy my Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) setup on my onPrem vCenter Server as a newer version had been released since the last time I had looked at this which was some time last year. I had already deleted my HCX Manager and cleaned up the other HCX VMs but one thing that is not handled for you currently are the extension plugins that HCX uses to register with vCenter Server, which is no different than any other solution that integrates with vCenter Server.

Today, the only easy way to unregister an extension is to use the vSphere MOB, which I have blogged about in the past here. As you can see from the screenshot below, HCX has a number of plugins and because this is done by hand, its entirely possible that you may accidentally unregister the wrong extension which could severely impact your vCenter Server.


To help reduce that risk, an alternative and recommended method is to simply use the vSphere API (which is exactly what the vSphere MOB is talking to) and specifying the specific extensions to unregister. Below is a quick PowerCLI snippet which talks to the vSphere API and unregisters the 8 extensions related to HCX. After this, if you are still logged into the vSphere Client, you simply need to logout and log back in for the UI components to go away. If you are still seeing the UI plugins, you may need to restart the vSphere Client service.

$extensionManager = Get-View $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Content.ExtensionManager

$hcxExtensions = @(
"com.vmware.hybridity"
"com.vmware.hybridity.dr"
"com.vmware.hybridity.hcsp-dashboard"
"com.vmware.hybridity.publisher"
"com.vmware.hybridity.troubleshooting"
"com.vmware.hybridity.hybrid-interconnect-ui"
"com.vmware.hybridity.auditlog-ui"
"com.vmware.vca.marketing.ngc.ui"
"com.vmware.hybridity.mobility-app"
"com.vmware.hcsp.alarm"
)

foreach ($hcxExtension in $hcxExtensions) {
    $extensionManager.UnregisterExtension($hcxExtension)
}

Once the HCX extensions have been removed, you can now download the new HCX Manager appliance from the VMC portal and redeploy.

If you are still seeing the HCX Plugin in the vSphere UI after unregistering the extension, I have found that you also needed to clear the H5 Plugins on the vCenter Server itself. Here is what I needed to do to fully clean it up. Login to the VCSA and then run the following commands:

cd /etc/vmware/vsphere-ui/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/
rm -rf com.vmware.hybridity*
rm com.vmware.vca.marketing.*
cd /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/pickup/
rm -rf com.vmware.hybridity*
rm com.vmware.vca.marketing.*

Getting started with Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) on VMware Cloud on AWS

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I had been hearing a lot of cool things about VMware's Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) but never tried the solution myself nor had a good understanding of what it actually provided. With the recently announced Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMWonAWS) offering being available, I thought this was a great way to get hands on with HCX and take advantage of my VMWonAWS infrastructure. Having only spent a couple of days with the solution, I can see why customers are excited for HCX and the new offering on VMWonAWS makes it super easy to consume. I also recently learned that HCX is now free for all VMWonAWS customers and you can easily live migrated your VMs to/from your onPrem environment!

There are a number of impressive capabilities that HCX offers, but two that really stood out to me which I thought was quite unique and interesting compared to other VM-based "migration" options. The first is that HCX can perform live VM migrations (vMotion) or replicated migrations (vSphere Replication) which includes scheduled switch over across different versions of vSphere (vSphere 5.x to/from vSphere 6.x). This is great for customers who may not be able to upgrade their underlying vSphere environment to 6.0 or later and take advantage of things like Cross vCenter vMotion feature which only supports VM migration between vSphere 6.0u3 to/from 6.x.

The second capability is that HCX can abstract and protect the underlying ESXi hosts by not requiring direct connectivity between the source and destination ESXi hosts. Traditionally, for vMotion and vSphere Replication traffic, you either had to stretch the VLAN or ensure the VMkernel interface was routable so that it can communicate with the destination ESXi hosts for data transfers. This was not always possible and adds additional networking requirements which can be challenging to implement depending on how your network infrastructure is configured. The way HCX solves this problem is by using a special HCX Cloud Gateway which securely proxy vMotion and vSphere Replication traffic from the on-premises environment out to the respective HCX Cloud Gateway Peer which then gets transfered to destination vSphere environment. Below is a diagram to help illustrate this:


Note: HCX also supports WAN optimization (compression and de-duplication) out of the box, which the diagram includes as that is what I had deployed in my env. This is an optional virtual appliance that can be deployed at each location ensuring efficient data transfer between the source and destination vSphere environments.

While going through and getting HCX configured on both my VMWonAWS and onPrem environment, I had ran into a few minor gotchas and to help others avoid some of the issues I had ran into, I figure I would outline the process and include some additional tips that can be help.

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