This was a huge update for the VMware HCX service. The service update included the availability of HCX Enterprise capabilities, which are distinct from the HCX Advanced technologies currently bundled into VMware Cloud on AWS, NSX Enterprise+, VCF, VCPP and with HCX enabled Public Cloud providers.

Lets take a moment to clarify what is meant by HCX Advanced and HCX Enterprise:

HCX Enterprise is an add-on SKU available initially for NSX Enterprise+ based deployments.

One important note for HCX veteran users:
The term HCX Enterprise may be especially confusing to you as it has been used in the past (along with HCX Cloud) to describe the installation of the HCX Manager at the source or destination environments. The term HCX Enterprise/Cloud to describe the managers being deprecated in HCX documentation and technical content.

New Features in this R124/Aug8 Update

 OS Assisted Migrations (OSAM)

OSAM technology is a means to unlock imprisoned applications living KVM (Hyper-V is in beta) for migration into a vSphere environment. This new option uses an agent to facilitate transfer the data.

OS Assisted Migrations Blog (By my RAV Ninja Rajeev Chawla)

 Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV)

This new migration option combines the scalability benefits of bulk migration (parallelism, scheduling, resiliency) with the vMotion capability to migrate with no downtime.
Replication Assisted vMotion Blog (By chief HCX PM Ninad Desai)

Integration with Site Recovery Manager (HCX + SRM)

With the combined solution, DR backup and recovery can leverage the HCX hybrid interconnect to optimize bandwidth and connectivity, secure VMs in transit and stretch networks to simplify IP address management for recovered VMs. HCX accelerates replication processes by eliminating incompatibility issues across networks and storage.

new vRealize operations management pack for hcx

What’s New in the 5.0 Management Pack:

• Support for HCX Multi-Site Service Mesh

• Support for new HCX Enterprise Migration Types (OS Assisted Migration, Replication Assisted vMotion & Disaster Recovery)

• Integrated Dashboards & Reports for multi-site visual views of HCX Site Pairings, Interconnects, Network Extension and Disaster Recovery

• Track & Monitor migration progress, transfer speeds, errors & status.

• Track & Monitor HCX Interconnect Tunnel state, degradation and connectivity alarms.

• Track & Monitor HCX Service Connection State

• 296 Unique Data Metrics for HCX Services

• Over 55+ Problem Alerts and Alarms

The added metrics and alarms are included for reference in the VMware HCX User Manual.

The management pack is not tethered to the HCX Enterprise launch. Head over to the VMware Solution Exchange and check that out!

That is all – thanks for reading. 🙌🏼