The deployment specification details the design decisions covering physical design, sizing, and high availability for the HCX Connector appliance in the on-premises private cloud VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

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 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 1. Design Decisions on the Deployment of an HCX Connector

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CCM-CDP-CFG-001

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.

CCM-CDP-CFG-002

Protect the HCX Connector appliance by using vSphere High Availability.

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

None.

CCM-CDP-CFG-003

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 before or during deployment.
Table 2. Design Decisions on the Deployment of an HCX Connector in Multiple Availability Zones

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

CCM-CDP-CFG-004

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.