Here is What is New in HCX 2 of 2. Writing a second one today made us sleepy, but we’re now perfectly caught up!

I wrote about the capabilities released with R136 earlier today. There were many usability related improvements added.

To re-summarize, R136 included the following:

• The ability to search Compute Profile configurations
• Support for Datastore Clusters in the Compute Profile
• Support for CPU and Memory Reservations in the Compute Profile.
• The HCX Manager previously referred to as (HCX Enterprise) has been relabeled as HCX Connector in the product screens and documentation.
• The R### release is now shown in the System Updates screens, where previously only the build was displayed.
• Network Profile “Show More” displays additional about the network and its underlying virtual switch.
• Certificate Import for Site Paring and NSX-T registration when endpoints use self-signed certs.
• Check for Updates capability was added to the HCX Manager systems.
• Added options for managing HCX Dashboard Alerts.

The R137 update features:

• Updates to the HCX OS Assisted Migration feature.
• HCX Integration with Data Integrated Customer Engagement (DICE).
• Update to the HCX CCLI.

HCX R137 – MARCH 14th, 2020

OS Assisted Migration Enhancements

If you’re not quite sure what OS Assisted Migration is about, start with this blog.

Support for RHEL 7.X on Hyper-V

With the R137 update, support has been added for the following OS/Hypervisor combinations:

• RHEL 7.x on Hyper-V.

A full table with supported systems (and limitations) can be found here.

Sentinel MANAGEMENT Enhancements

In R137 and going forward, Sentinel Agent (running on Non-VMware VMs) can be Upgraded in the HCX Sentinel Management tab.

* Note: The ability to Uninstall Sentinel Agents was added in the Sentinel Management UI in R130

Hyper-V or KVM virtual machine running the Sentinel Agent will populate the Manage Sentinel Software pane. To upgrade the sentinel agents, you select each VM/agent and click upgrade. As a pre-requisite – the Service Mesh OSAM components (SGW/SDR) should be upgraded first.

HCX Integration with DICE

Just to piggy-back on the Release Note text for this one:

The Data Integrated Customer Engagement (DICE) tool uses customer utilization data to model the business benefits of VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) products. Through DICE integration, you configure the HCX interface to upload the virtual appliance and host inventory of the vCenter that is registered with the HCX Manager. 

HCX integration is built into interface.

Once the required fields are entered, and the form is saved. The option to upload to DICE will become available:

Uploaded data will be populated in the Business Models in DICE:

Example Model Overview:

The modeled vCenter Inventory is dynamically updated the in the DICE model.

HCX Central CLI Enhancement

The ability to search the output of the list command is added to the HCX Central CLI through the grep command. The grep command can be used in conjunction with the list command and works similar to grep in Linux. Use the list –help for usage details. With this new feature the –nopager option will be set as the default.

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Gabe