Catching up here after a much needed break. We chose to self-quarantine in South Texas, near the sea! Much needed moment of respite…
Back to business!
My previous “What’s New” post covered R135, both R136 and R137 have been published since then… so I try to keep things brief so I can get everyone caught up.
HCX R136 released 29 Feb 2020
Component Name Change
Text from the release note:
Build 15734685 (Connector), Build 15734687 (Cloud)
HCX has always included two distinct OVAs, the HCX Enterprise OVA would be used to deploy the the HCX “Enterprise” Manager in “the source environment”. That component is now called the HCX Connector. The functionality doesn’t change. The destination site component maintains the same name.
The name adjustment corrects a nomenclature overlap. Going forward HCX Enterprise is only used when referring to the HCX premium capabilities (RAV, OSAM, TE, etc).
Compute Profile Support for Datastore Clusters
With R136, Service Mesh deployments can use datastore clusters. Previously one could only select one or more individual datastores.
Compute Profile Support for CPU and MEM Reservation Settings
The HCX CP can be used to reserve resources. Prior to this enhancement, resource reservations could not be applied to the the individual appliances persistently.
The change is applied to the Service Mesh, at the Virtual Machine level:
Enhancements to the HCX User Interface
R### version identifier is now displayed
The more reader friendly R### service update name is shown along with the build versions.
Service Mesh Search
This allows HCX users with very large configurations quickly locate relevant configurations.
Network Profile – Additional Details
You can view additional details in the Network Profiles UI, namely the related Virtual Switch & vCenter Server. This additional detail is useful for identifying segments in environments where distinct/isolated clusters use identical standard names for the same network type.
Site Pairing and NSX Registrations to Systems Using Self-Signed Certificates
Previously, HCX Site Pairing and NSX-T Registrations connecting to target systems that leverage self-signed certificates would result in an error, and required the user to open the HCX Appliance Management (9443) interface and import the certificates manually.
That workflow has been improved. Those operations now display a Certificate Warning, and allow the user to automatically import those certificates.
HCX Client Side “Check for Updates”
A Check for Updates function is added to the System Updates page. This function checks whether you have the latest HCX service update. If an update is available, it adds that update to your currently available service updates. Prior to this release, the HCX Manager systems could only receive updates published from the service.
This feature is helpful in a couple of scenarios:
- When a N-3 OVA was used to deploy a new HCX system. The system will have missed the latest published release, but it can now query the HCX service for the latest. NOTE: Using very old OVAs is not ideal, it may require multi-step updates and may not be supported. Check the SUPPORT DISCLAIMER section of the release note for more details on this.
- If a system had a temporarily degraded connection to connect.hcx.vmware.com it is possible to manually check for the latest update.
Alert Message Options
In the HCX Dashboard, the Alerts panel now includes operations for managing, deleting, and filtering alert messagesAvailable operations: Acknowledge, Reset and Suppress.
Available filters: Status, Entity Name, and Creation Date.
Prior to this update – alert were provided in as a dated historical ledger but could not be cleared from the dashboard. This new capability allows the user to eliminate alerts that are no longer actionable.
HCX ⦿ DESIGN 