VMware HCX 4.6 is the mid-February and latest iteration of VMware’s workload mobility platform. In this post I will highlight updated functionality.

Additional resources:
VMware HCX 4.6 User Guide
VMware HCX 4.6 Release Notes
VMware HCX 4.6 Configuration Maximums

What is New?

Let’s get right into it.

Migration Retry

While we love to see green dominate the migration screens, sometimes these operations need to be cancelled “oops – began this migration too soon” or you maybe you are hit with environmental curve balls “oops the target datastore became full.. oops the network” or maybe the operation went sideways and failed.

Retry is a simple but very handy addition to HCX. It gives a vehicle to expedite returning to a migrating state. When you migrate a workload you’re making a good dozen+ choices like on how to migrate and which options to apply.

A retry fast-tracks the experience when you are resuming using the previous selections. When configurations need to change, you can set HCX Enterprise mobility groups back into a draft state for adjustments.

HCX for IPv6 Workloads

This is the beginning of the IPv6 workload mobility journey. In this initial phase, we’ve certified the migration component. The target is dual-stack infrastructure managing IPv6 virtual machines.

With HCX 4.6 you can use the following migration technologies for IPv6 workloads:

• Replication Assisted vMotion (Mass live migration)
• HCX Bulk Migration (Mass warm migration with vm customization and post-scripts)
• HCX vMotion (High compatibility serial live migration, proxied vMotion)
• HCX Cold Migration (Powered off virtual machines)

Migrated IPv6 virtual machines can use existing IPv4 HCX network extensions (those can even be converted to use IPv6 gateways.

In future HCX releases we will tackle in IPv6 Network Extension, Mobility Optimized Networking, OSAM and everything needed to deploy HCX in fully IPv6 infra.

HCX for NSX 4.1.0

VMware NSX 4.1 released today! 🥳 (Feb 28, 2022).

✔️ HCX 4.6 is fully compatible with the NSX 4.1.0 release.
✔️ HCX 4.5 is also fully compatible with the NSX 4.1.0 release.
✔️ Did you know HCX Advanced is included with NSX Enterprise Plus? If you’re planning to lift and shift into a new NSX environment you can use HCX to bring the workloads!

The latest NSX release has new functionality in these focus areas:

• IPv6 support for NSX internal control and management planes communication 
• Multi-tenancy available in UI, API and alarm framework 
• Antrea to NSX Integration improvements
• Online Diagnostic System

There are many other improvements: MultiTEP HA, BGP Admin Distance, configurable AS number per T0, improved Inter-VRF routing, DPU-based acceleration for NVIDIA, for IDS/IPS/Distributed Firewall, and more.

For much more detail, check out the What’s New section of the NSX 4.1.0 Release Note

& that is it for this one!

Hope you enjoyed this update. Cannot wait to bring you the next one.

—
Gabe 🫡

P.S. We implemented no-device days and now the house becomes a nerf war zone.