There are plenty of articles on why to migrate to VMC (VMware on AWS). 

But I am also facing so many trivial questions, even from people operating VMware on-prem every day. 

Typical question is why not migrate to the native cloud, or even to the virtual systems that are running on top of the public cloud. 

I had several discussions regarding this. Typical conclusion and the real reason is the fact of MIGRATION. Migration to the public cloud is a complicated task. Usually it is risky, can be expensive and HAVE to be very well prepared. The best if it is prepared by some consulting company with such experience. But even then it can take some time and burn some money even before the first application/system/database is migrated to the cloud. 

Advantages:Close to the cloud native servicesTemporary solution while migrate workload to the cloudVMware as a serviceReposnsibility

VMC (or in general VMware in the public cloud) is an excellent solution. It is service ready to use, well integrated with public cloud, with known cost and fast to implement. But – in my opinion – the biggest advantage of using this technology is the MIGRATION, and HCX solution in particular. 

Why do we migrate to the public cloud in general:Business corporate strategyHardware refreshingData center consolidationCloud adoption

First step before the administrators (or migration team) will migrate some workload into the cloud is assessment, where we need to discover applications to migrate (and their relations), verify impacts, cooperate with application owners, and prepare tons of documents. This is an extremely important step without which migration cannot be successful. 

Next step we would probably like to do, based on the application analysis, we need to prepare the correct VMC (or other VMware in public cloud solution) sizing. We would probably buy this service for 1 or 3 years, with the corresponding discount. We also need to calculate the application license costs and discuss this with our application vendor looking for reducing licensing costs.

For migration itself we can use HCX, but of course we are not limited to that one. There are many applications we can use for the migration. From the top of my head, we can use microfocus platespin, carbonite migrate, azure migrate, cloudendure migration, veeam and many others. 

As this article is about the HCX, this technology has some advantages over the rest. First of all, it is technology cooperated and supported by VMware. Well integrated with VMware solutions, both on-premise and cloud. HCX is supported in:

• Azure VMware Solution
• Google Cloud VMware Engine
• Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
• VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC)
• VMware Cloud on Dell EMC
• VMware Cloud Provider Program

Apart from the migration, HCX can be useful for platform upgrade, rebalancing (constant rebalancing at the end of the mth?) and DR to the cloud (with implemented mechanism).

For HCX, main advantages is:

• Low risk migration (from the application POV, we do not need to change IP address, MAC or UUID if we are using L2 extension)
• Migration from VMware to the VMware, no need to install specialised driver for the new platform, for some applications this can be quite challenging; remember how long it could take to customise new drivers, other OS setting when it is gonna to tune the application stack
• Zero (or near zero) downtime migration
• Well organised migration (in one console, with migration scheduler, with current status etc)
• No need to migrate on-prem environment (HCX support vSphere 6.0+)
• Migrating whe whole VMs (not just application) can simplify whole process

HCX can be used in two (three) licensing models:

• Advanced
• Enterprise
• Trial license (up to 20 migrations)**

LIcense are available depending on the product you are using:

The main features of the advanced license:

• Encryption (for each connectivity point)
• High-throughput network extension
• WAN optimization
• Bulk migration
• Live migration
• Disaster protection

The main features of enterprise:

• Traffic engineering
  • Tcp flow conditioning (MTU negotiation)
  • Application path resiliency
• HCX Replication Assistant vMotion
• Migration for Hyper-V and KVM (agent migration)
• SRM integration support
• Mobility groups

Depending of license type, we have few migrations types:

1. cold migration
2. HCX vMotion
3. HCX Bulk
4. OS Assisted Migration (OSAM)
5. Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV)

Installation is rather straightforward but you need to fulfill some requirements described here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-HCX/4.3/hcx-user-guide/GUID-D64901F4-6AB4-4820-9303-27927648A34D.html, https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-HCX/4.3/hcx-user-guide/GUID-8128EB85-4E3F-4E0C-A32C-4F9B15DACC6D.html.

Installation (or rather activation) HCX in VMC is extremely simple, but can take a while.

On prem deploying HCX manager and then configuring compute and network profile, should not cause many problems – BUT please take care of well network planning. Try to avoid bottleneck in this area. You will face some other (probably) related to the storage or WAN limitation.

There are several additional point to consider while HCX implementing:

• Test in POC (if possible)

• Deploy HCX service mesh (and verify it you have enough resources, if you understand them well)
• Understand the time to migrate VM (dependent from the application)
• Ability to use the bandwidth for the migration (can be shared with other workload and depended from it)
• Verify the requirements and adoption of L2 extension
  • Try to use extension just for the time of migration
  • Use several links
  • Install appliances in HA environment
• Understand the latency to SDDC

Service mesh will deploy the following functionality:

• HCX-WAN-IX
• HCX-NE (network extension)
• HCX-WAN-OPT
• HCX-SGW
• HCX-SDR

Network requirements (compare below table with the current one)

Pay attention that for network extension (NE) vDS needs to be implemented on-prem. Also there are some unsupported configuration (LACP can be on of them).

Also for on-prem NSX version must be as follow: NSX 6.4.8+ or NSX-T 2.4+

Conclusion:

HCX (and in overall VMC) is a great technology. HCX can simplify the migration process, minimize the risk and help with infrastructure maintenance after migration (DR). This is one of the first technologies you will meet with VMC implementation and one you will spend a lot of time during the migration. VMware knows how important the migration step is, they spent a lot of effort to work on that and HCX simply doing the job.

** contact to VMware Sales