The deployment specification details the design decisions covering physical design, sizing, and high availability for the VMware Live Cyber Recovery and HCX Connector appliances in the protected VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector Appliance

The VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliance connects the VMware Live Cyber Recovery service to on-premises data centers. The connector is distributed as a virtual appliance in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard.

A VMware Live Cyber Recovery connector appliance is required in the protected VMware Cloud Foundation instance to manage the replication and synchronization of data between the VMware Cloud Foundation instance and the Cloud File System to enable recovery of business workloads in the event of a disaster. You deploy the connector appliances in the management domain.

Note:

Depending on the number of virtual machines you are protecting, you might need to deploy additional VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances to your VMware Cloud Foundation instance. See System and Network Requirements for the Cyber Recovery connector for more details.

Table 1. Design Decisions on the Deployment of a VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CBW-CDP-CFG-001

Deploy two VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances in the default management vSphere cluster.

Required to establish secure communication between the VMware Cloud Foundation instance and VMware Live Cyber Recovery.

The VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances must be able to connect to the internet through a firewall.

CBW-CDP-CFG-002

Protect the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances by using vSphere High Availability.

Supports the availability objective without requiring manual intervention during an ESXi host failure.

None.

CBW-CDP-CFG-003

Place the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances in a designated virtual machine folder.

Provides organization of the appliances in the management domain vSphere inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during deployment.

CBW-CDP-CFG-004

Apply vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rules to the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances.

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler prevents the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances from residing on the same ESXi host and impacting the performance of replications.

  • You must perform an additional configuration to set up an anti-affinity rule.

  • For a default management vSphere cluster that consists of four ESXi hosts, you can put in maintenance mode only a single ESXi host at a time.
Table 2. Design Decisions on the Deployment of a VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector in Multiple Availability Zones

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CBW-CDP-CFG-005

When using two availability zones, add the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances to the VM group of the first availability zone.

Ensures that the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances runs in the primary availability zone hosts group.

After the implementation of the second availability zone for the management domain, you must update the VM group for the primary availability zone virtual machines to include the VMware Live Cyber Recovery Connector appliances.

HCX Connector Appliance

The HCX Connector appliance connects the on-premises data center to the HCX Cloud. The HCX Connector is distributed as a virtual appliance in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard.

An HCX Connector appliance is required in the protected VMware Cloud Foundation instance to manage the communication between the VMware Cloud Foundation instance and the VMware HCX Manager deployed in the VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. You deploy the HCX Connector appliance in the management domain.

Table 3. Design Decisions on the Deployment of an HCX Connector

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CBW-CDP-CFG-006

Deploy the HCX Connector appliance in the default management vSphere cluster.

Required to establish secure communication between the VMware Cloud Foundation instance and VMware HCX.

The HCX Connector must be able to connect to the internet through a firewall.

CBW-CDP-CFG-007

Protect the HCX Connector appliance by using vSphere High Availability.

Supports the availability objective without requiring manual intervention during an ESXi host failure.

None.

CBW-CDP-CFG-008

Place the HCX Connector appliance in a designated virtual machine folder.

Provides organization of the appliances in the management domain vSphere inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during deployment.
Table 4. Design Decisions on the Deployment of an HCX Connector in Multiple Availability Zones

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CBW-CDP-CFG-009

When using two availability zones, add the HCX Connector appliance to the VM group of the first availability zone.

Ensures that the HCX Connector appliance runs in the primary availability zone hosts group.

After the implementation of the second availability zone for the management domain, you must update the VM group for the primary availability zone virtual machines to include the HCX Connector appliance.