Catching up here my friends! With VMworld @ Barcelona around the corner and related happenings, these posts took a backburner and got away from me! Update R126 arrived during the middle of last month, so I will start there and cover the gap chronologically.

HCX R126 – Released September 13th

Network Extension using NSXv Universal Logical Routers at the Destination

This update added support for Extending with a UDLR selected from the Extension dropdown (without local egress).

To quickly recap, Universal NSX objects are part of Cross-vCenter NSX for vSphere architectures. A Universal Distributed Logical Router provides the first hop gateway as a distributed function across all of the ESXi hosts that are in the Universal Transport Zone clusters.

In the HCX Network Extension interface, Universal DLR will be shown in the selector:

This requirements page was added to the HCX User Manual.

OS Assisted Migrations (OSAM) – New OS Support

If you don’t know what OSAM, start with this blog.

With the R126 update, CentOS 6.X (32-bit) and RHEL 6.X (32-bit) were added to the supported OS list. (64-bit versions were already supported). For more detailed requirements, see this page.

THE HCX Components UI is now Deprecated

This refers to the previous way of deploying HCX services. Before we had Compute Profiles, Network Profiles and Service Mesh configurations, each HCX component deployed was managed individually using the now deprecated interface. Any services deployed today should be done using the Multi-Site Service Mesh tab. Older configurations still managed in the HCX Components tab should be upgraded sooner than later.

To migrate to the Multi-Site Service Mesh, navigate to Infrastructure > Interconnect > HCX Components, and click Upgrade to the Service Mesh.

HCX R127 – Released October 2nd

Updated diagnostic commands

There is a new packet capture command added to the CCLI.
ssh hcxm
ccli
start capture interface <interface> count 1000 expression port 4500

Some other examples:

1. start capturing on eth0 with max of 1000 packets, and tcpdump expression of “host 10.134.252.9 and icmp”

start capture interface eth0 count 1000 expression host 10.134.252.9 and icmp

2. start capturing on eth0 with ingress and tcpdump expression of “port 4500”.  Each packet will be truncated to 256 bytes.

start capture interface eth0 expression port 4500 direction input -s 256

3. start capturing on eth0 with complex expression ‘tcp[((tcp[12:1] & 0xf0) >> 2):4] = 0x47455420’

start capture interface eth0 expression 'tcp[((tcp[12:1] & 0xf0) >> 2):4] = 0x47455420'

OS ASSISTED MIGRATIONS (OSAM) – NEW OS SUPPORT

Once again – if you’re still unsure what HCX OSAM, start here.

With the R127 update, Windows Server 2016 was added to the supported OS list. For more detailed OSAM requirements, see this page.

HCX R128 – Released October 20th

This cycle was focused on non-customer facing fixes.

We also officially announced HCX inclusion in ports.vmware.com. I believe I mentioned this in a previous post… but if you haven’t seen that, do check it out!

At VMworld Barcelona Next Week! 🇪🇸

I’ll be out there next week! I’ve never been, so I’m looking forward to practicing my ceceo. ;D. If anyone wants to chat HCX, ping me!

—
Gabe
Twitter gabe_rosas