| VMware Cloud on Dell EMC | 14 JUN 2022 Check for additions and updates to these release notes. |
About VMware Cloud on Dell EMC
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is a service that brings the VMware Managed Cloud (VMC) to your on-premises edge and data center locations. The service encompasses hardware, software, and all required licenses and support including hardware break-fix. You subscribe to the service through the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal and the hardware gets delivered to your location as a rack appliance. The rack comes with a fully configured SDDC infrastructure and requires an external network and power connectivity to activate the SDDC.
What's New June 14, 2022
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Option to save the default settings for public/private connectivity to NSX Manager
In the Settings tab of the VMware Cloud on Dell console, you can change the default settings to either via the Internet (Public) or via internal network (Private) and save it. This feature is introduced to enhance performance and security.
What's New April 12, 2022
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VMware Cloud on Dell EMC AD/LDAP Support
You can use Active Directory (AD) or OpenLDAP as an external authentication method in VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.
This integration allows you to assign 'NSX Cloud Admin' and 'NSX Cloud Auditor' roles based on the Active Directory or OpenLDAP group membership
The AD/LDAP feature is available for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDCs version 1.18 and higher.
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VMware Cloud on Dell EMC NSX Local User Authentication
You can launch the NSX-T Manager User Interface (UI) using the public FQDN URL to configure the networking requirements of your SDDC through public access.
The following users can log in to the NSX-T standalone UI through the public FQDN URL:
- admin
- cloud_admin
- cloud_audit
This feature will be available for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDCs version 1.18 and higher.
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VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC
VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC enables customers to protect their workloads from disaster. VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is a fully-managed, subscription-based service, providing local cloud service in customers’ on-premises datacenter, preferred co-lo, and edge locations.
For information on installing and configuring VMware Site Recovery, see VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC Installation and Configuration.
What's New November 30, 2021
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Consistent Public APIs across VMware Cloud deployments (VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell, and VMware Cloud on Outpost)
Customers can use APIs to perform the following functions on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC:
- Get organization details: Organization name, SDDC provider name, timestamp, and so on
- Get SDDC details: SDDC identifiers, NSX, and vCenter FQDN details
Consistent APIs are created between VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell, and VMware Cloud on Outpost. For more information, see Developer Center.
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Tanzu Services on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC
Customers can develop modern containerized applications using VMware-managed Tanzu services that include Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service (TKGs) and Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) essentials.
Tanzu services on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC are supported for:
- 1.16 build or later
- New clusters created on 1.16
Tanzu services on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC allows you to:
- Activate Tanzu Services from the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC console
- Determine Tanzu optimized clusters and configure supervisor clusters using the cloud console
- Enable users to create and manage supervisor namespaces using vCenter
- Cloud admin has the access control to provide namespace access to DevOps/Developers
- Provision one or more TKG clusters within a namespace
- Scale workload deployments from TKG clusters
- Provide load balancing for exposing services outside the cluster
- Enable customers to monitor the TKG cluster health and manage deployment
- Manage multi-cloud Kubernetes deployment by using TKG
- Apply consistent policies for Kubernetes Clusters
For more information on enabling Tanzu Services on your cluster, contact your sales representative.
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Flexibility in CIDR blocks with /23 and /24
You can create the right CIDR block size depending on your deployment.
For the base R2 rack scaled fully to 26 (+1) hosts, you have the flexibility to choose a /24 or /23 subnet during the SDDC ordering process. You can choose /23 when a more advanced feature such as Tanzu is required.
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Multi-Rack Support
Multi-rack support provides a single pane of glass to manage larger deployments. It allows you to scale up your deployment up to 3 racks and 75+ hosts (3-phase) within a single SDDC and manage it using a single vCenter.
If you want to start by ordering a single rack, you can still scale up your future deployments by using the multi-rack feature.
Note: Single racks deployed before this release are not capable of scaling to multiple racks.
What's New August 6, 2021
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New Host Type M1d.x small
M1d.x small is a cost-optimized host for CPU and memory with a minimum storage of 3.84 TB SAS. See the Datasheet for specifications.
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SDDC Version 1.14 Support (upgrade from 1.12)
Version 1.14 SDDCs support the latest versions of vCenter, vSphere, vSAN, and NSX including but not limited to performance optimizations, security fixes, and feature enhancements.
What's New April 29, 2021
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VMware Cloud™
VMware Cloud is a multi-cloud service for all apps across the data center, edge, and public cloud vendors. VMware Cloud enables multi-cloud infrastructure, app, and management services that accelerate app modernization and cloud transformation to deliver faster innovation for customers.
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VMware Cloud Universal™
VMware Cloud Universal delivers multi-cloud infrastructure and operations by combining compute, storage, networking, management, and modern application services with customer entitlements. This helps in the flexible deployment of VMware Cloud infrastructure across private cloud, local cloud, and public cloud.
VMware Cloud Universal provides the following modern infrastructure services, which are accessible through the VMware Cloud console:
- VMware Cloud Foundation Subscription: A new subscription service where you can manage a hybrid cloud platform delivering integrated compute, storage, and networking infrastructure for modernizing data centers and deploying modern applications.
- VMware Cloud on AWS: A fully managed VMware Cloud service running on elastic AWS bare-metal hardware available in 17 global regions. This allows you to extend on-premises vSphere environments and access the global footprint and native services of AWS.
- VMware Cloud on Dell EMC: A fully managed VMware Cloud service providing a simple, secure, and scalable VMware Cloud infrastructure for your on-premises data center and edge locations.
Other features and services of VMware Cloud Universal are:
- VMware Tanzu Standard Edition: Tanzu Standard is included with the VMware Cloud Foundation subscription. It simplifies the operation of Kubernetes for multi-cloud deployments centralizing management and governance for many clusters and teams for on-premises deployments, public clouds, and edge.
- vRealize Cloud Universal: vRealize Cloud Universal is included with the VMware Cloud Foundation subscription. This SaaS management suite accelerates cloud evolution combining SaaS and on-premises capabilities, such as automation, operations, and analytics logging, into one license to accelerate the business transition to the cloud.
- VMware Success 360: Success 360 is a comprehensive success service. It allows you to realize value from your investment in VMware Cloud and achieve faster outcomes as a customer.
You can access the VMware Cloud Universal features through the VMware Cloud console at https://vmc.vmware.com. The console also features the VMware Cloud Launchpad. For more information on VMware Cloud and VMware Cloud Universal, see http://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-universal.html and https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2021/03/31/distributed-multi-cloud-era-arrived/ respectively.
What's New March 9, 2021
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VMware Cloud Launchpad
The VMware Cloud Launchpad is a consolidated starting point designed to help customers learn about the latest VMware Hybrid Cloud solutions and infrastructure providers. From the VMware Cloud Launchpad, customers can find detailed technical information, relevant tools, and step-by-step integrated workflows that help them get to their business outcomes quickly.
The VMware Cloud Launchpad is designed to present a 360º view of each offering under the following categories:
- Resources page: You find technical documents (white papers, solution briefs, reference architecture, and so on), videos, FAQs, and much more to learn about the underlying technologies and the capabilities of the offering.
- Journey page: You can see the end-to-end journey with VMware for the selected offering. It consists of three or more stages to help you learn and prepare your environment, deploy the offering, and configure the offering to maximize value. For some offerings, the Journey page also allows you to track and monitor the progress after signing in.
- Overview page: Consists of a short video or image that provides a technical overview of the offering followed by additional details and diagrams discussing the architecture and technical capabilities.
The VMware Cloud Launchpad is available to everyone without requiring explicit login. This enables future VMware Cloud customers to learn how to use and deploy our solutions and service offerings before onboarding to the service. For more information, see Use the Launchpad.
What's New February 25, 2021
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EMEA GA
You can now place subscription orders in France, UK, and Germany for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. The service deployment and experience are the same as in the USA. However, currently, the service is provided in English without any localization support. The cloud service will support European market requirements for GDPR compliance.
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Managed Services Provider (MSP)
As an MSP partner, you can sell VMware Cloud on Dell EMC to your customers using the Cloud Partner Navigator tool and the Rate Card/Commit Contract process. You can provision your customer organizations, assign the right level of service access (RBAC) to your customers, provide value-added services, such as Backup and DR, as required. You can support your customers as the primary contact throughout the subscription term. You can contact VMware for end-to-end service support.
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SOC2 Type 2
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is now SOC2 Type 2 Compliant.
What's New February 2, 2021
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Monthly Payments
You can use the infrastructure in a cloud-economics model by selecting a one-year or three-year subscription term, which you can pay for in monthly installments.
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Faction Cloud Control Volumes for External Storage
You can allocate additional external storage for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC through Faction. An SDDC with external storage has three NFS datastores that are backed by Faction cloud storage. You can deploy the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDC on Equinix by leveraging Faction Cloud Control Volumes (CCVs) from Faction. However, you must purchase Faction CCVs directly from Faction.
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New Host Type M1d.xlarge
If you are using Horizon or video analytics and need a host configuration that has the same CPU and memory as of M1d.medium, but with increased storage, you can use M1d.xlarge. See the Datasheet for specifications.
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Increased Scale-up Capacity for a Full Rack
The scale-up capacity of the full rack R2 with three-phase power is increased from 24 nodes to 26 nodes. Therefore, you can optimize the capacity and run advanced workloads per square foot of data center space.
What's New September 22, 2020
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New Host Type X1d.x-large
The host type X1d.x-large provides twice the memory and thrice the storage of the M1d.medium host with the same CPU and cache capacity. This host enables you to run storage and memory-intensive workloads, such as in-memory databases, CRM applications, storage-intensive video analytics, and databases.
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Compliance Certifications and Attestations
VMware Cloud on Dell is EMC has achieved the following certifications and attestations: ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, and SOC 2 Type 1. For more information, see VMware Cloud Trust Center.
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Privacy Policy
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC follows VMware policy on European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). VMware’s obligations and commitments are mentioned in the Data Processing Addendum. For more information on privacy policy, see VMware Cloud Trust Center.
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vRealize Operations v8.1 Support
Support for vRealize Operations (vROps) v8.1 allows you to use your existing on-premises vROps for workload placement optimization, monitoring, and so on. vROps Manager 8.1 delivers capabilities for self-driving operations so that you can optimize, plan, and scale VMware SDDCs across public and private clouds and unify multi-cloud monitoring. vROpS can now be used with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.
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vRealize Automation v8.2 Support
Support for vRealize Automation (vRA) v8.2 allows you to use vRA deployed in your on-premises environment for automated workload orchestration with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. In this release, vRA further enables the creation, delivery, and management of infrastructure environments across use cases, such as self-service cloud, network automation, and DevOps for Infrastructure.
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Single Rack with Multiple ESX Cluster Support
You can segment your workload deployments and have dedicated resources, such as CPU and storage for your applications with vCenter as a single platform to manage your rack. You can create eight clusters in a rack with a minimum of three hosts in each cluster.
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HCX for Workload Migration
You can enable HCX to migrate your workloads from your on-premises deployments to VMware Cloud on Dell EMC through the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal without any additional cost.
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Dynamic Routing with External Border Gateway Protocol (eBGP)
Dynamic routing with eBGP enables fast failover when there is a ToR switch or upstream aggregation switch failure. During the failover from one ToR switch to another, eBGP enables the underlay network to automatically update its routing tables so that the packets can route to the right destination bi-directionally. However, you can use this feature after you enable eBGP in your upstream network path.
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Horizon VDI certification
You can build your Horizon VDI deployments with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC as a core VDI infrastructure or supporting VDI infrastructure and use your existing on-premises Horizon or Universal license for this deployment without any additional cost.
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Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Support
You can leverage Tanzu Mission Control for monitoring and automated policy management of clusters. You can leverage an enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime that packages automation tooling necessary to develop modern applications on top of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. However, you must procure the TKG license separately, deploy, and manage TKG. You can use vRA to automate workload and container deployment and TKG to monitor the container and Kubernetes deployment.
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M12 Support (Upgrade from M10 v5 Build)
The M12 VMware Cloud SDDC stack allows you to use all the vSphere 7 features on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. However, you cannot use the Workload Control Plane (WCP) feature.
What's New April 15, 2020
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Full Rack Configuration
A full rack configuration, R2 is now available with a higher scale and network throughput. See Datasheet for R2 specifications and other rack types.
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New and Updated Hosts/Nodes
New host M1d.medium is now available with additional CPU, memory, and storage. See Datasheet for specifications of all the host/node types.
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Capacity Expansion Through the Portal
The portal now supports the ability to add additional hosts to increase the overall rack compute capacity up to the rack maximum, which is 5 for R1 and 16 for R2. For example, if you initially purchased the infrastructure with 3 nodes, you could add 2 more nodes to a maximum of 5 nodes post initial deployment.
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Backup Ecosystem Vendor Certification
N/ABackup ecosystem vendor Dell Power Protect and Veeam are now certified to work with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. For more information, see the Ecosystem page.
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Common Inventory View Between VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and VMware Cloud on AWS
N/AIntegration with project Atlas provides a common inventory view between the two VMware Cloud services. This allows you to monitor and manage the SDDC across the two services from a single-view pane.
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HCX Certification and Early Access
This release certifies HCX-based migration and introduces early access to specific customers on a case-by-case basis. Contact your sales lead if you require access and additional information regarding HCX-based migration.
What's New December 17, 2019
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New Host Types
You can now choose between the following host types within the R1 rack appliance.
- G1s.small: Focuses on workloads that require balanced compute to memory ratios and smaller storage footprints.
- M1s.medium: Focuses on heavier storage requirements and memory-optimized workloads such as video applications, databases, and virtual desktops.
See Datasheet for detailed specifications of all the available host types.
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Host Naming Conventions
The hosts have specific naming conventions. The following table provides the naming conventions.
M1s.medium Workload Type G = General Compute, M = Memory Optimized Chip Architecture 1 = Intel Cascade Lake Number of Sockets s = Single Socket, d = Dual Socket Storage Capacity Size .small = 11TB, .medium = 23TB -
Additional Nodes for Capacity Expansion
You can now increase your rack appliance total capacity by adding hosts up to a maximum of five nodes. For example, if you have purchased an infrastructure with three nodes, you can add two additional hosts after the initial deployment.
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vRealize Automation Validation
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC has validated interoperability with vRealize Automation 7.6. You can use VMC on Dell EMC Cloud Admin credentials in vRealize Automation to deploy blueprints on the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDC. See, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC vRealize Automation Integration Guide.
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1 Year Subscription Term
You now have two options for purchase: 1 and 3-year terms.
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2 Month Paid Pilot
You can now receive and deploy a VMware Cloud on Dell EMC solution before committing to a 1 or 3-year subscription. A paid pilot short-term licensing is introduced to provide the service on-premises for two months. However, you must pay a fee to participate in the two-month paid pilot.
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Configurable Theme for the Portal
The capability to switch between dark and light themes on the portal is introduced to provide more visual comfort and personal experience.
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Networking Updates
Ping tests can be conducted from the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC ToR to the customer ToR through the VMware console.
What's New September 10, 2019
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Availability Region
The service is available in the United States of America only.
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Cloud Control Plane
The VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal is the main interface for you to add locations, order SDDC cloud, track orders, request support from VMware, monitor the health of the cloud.
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White-Glove Deployment Service
The service comes with a white glove deployment. A Dell EMC engineer schedules a date and time with the customer to help install and activate the cloud service at the location.
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Rack details
The hardware is delivered in a rack configuration called R1 as illustrated below. The rack appliance is available in two power configurations of 110v and 220v powered by a 30 Amp circuit.
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Initially, there will be a single host type called G1 based on VxRail technology. Its configuration is as follows:
- Dell EMC VxRail G1 E560F
- Intel Cascade Lake, Single CPU 20 cores @ 2.5GHz
- 192 GB RAM
- 11.5 TB of raw storage
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SDDC (version 1.8)
The SDDC running on this version includes vSphere, vSAN, and NSX-T.
Note: Not all features supported in VMware Cloud on AWS are supported in this service at launch.
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3 Year Subscription term
The service is available for a term of 3 years. The subscription needs to be paid up-front at activation time. Apart from this, there are no other charges.
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Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 support
The hardware supports TPM 2.0. All keys are stored locally and the SDDC will continue to function even with no internet/cloud connectivity.
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Cloud Services Platform (CSP) Integration
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is integrated with CSP as part of the VMware Cloud Services suite with support for Single Sign-On (SSO) across the services authenticated against MyVmware.com. CSP provides a well know and common user experience across all VMware cloud services.
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Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
VMware Cloud on Dell EMC provides 4 roles to suit your needs.
- Administrator (Full access)
- Read-Only (Full access with Read-only permission)
- Cloud Admin role for NSX (ability to create rules and policies)
- Cloud Auditor role for NSX
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Data Encryption
vSAN datastore is encrypted. All network traffic between SDDC and cloud is encrypted.
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Uplink Network Connectivity
Post-service activation (basically SDDC is now active and usable), you can configure your uplink connectivity to connect VMware Cloud on Dell EMC to your internal networks and systems through the Top of Rack (TOR) switches. During the white glove deployment process, the engineer helps physically connect the TOR switch port(s) to your uplink ports. You can then use the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal to configure the TOR switch ports with the right IP address and routes.
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NSX-T firewall and security policy configuration
The VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal includes a UI to configure the firewall and security policies to fully leverage the power of NSX-T.
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vCenter Access
The service allows access to vCenter through the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal (basically access vCenter from anywhere through a browser) or direct vCenter access from within the customer data center/network.
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Hybrid Linked Mode
VMware vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) extends support to on-premises vCenters running vSphere 6.0 U3c and later. Both embedded and external PSC topologies for on-premises vCenters are supported.
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L2VPN and vCenter based vMotion
You can extend Layer 2 networks from your current on-premises SDDC to VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDC using the VMware NSX L2 VPN feature. The layer 2 extension enables you to move workloads from the current on-premises SDDC to the SDDC running on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC without changing IP addresses, and zero downtime during migration. This enables bi-directional VMware vSphere® vMotion® to and from the two SDDC’s and helps in disaster recovery scenarios by enabling applications to retain their same IP address during recovery.
- You must have vSphere6.0 U3 or above version on-premises along with L2VPN.
- You can perform vMotion between current on-premises SDDC and VMware Cloud on Dell EMC using the UI (which requires vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode to be connected) or using API or PowerCLI.
Additionally, vMotion between hosts within a VMWare Cloud on Dell EMC cluster in a single SDDC is supported.
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Monitoring
You can monitor your SDDC in terms of total capacity for CPU, memory, and storage through the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC portal. Also, the portal displays the health of the hardware infrastructure to track any upcoming break-fixes.
Known Issues
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Document - VxRail plugin is visible for cloudadmin user
The VxRail plugin is visible when you log in as a CloudAdmin. However, when you click the VxRail plugin, you are not navigated to the VxRail dashboard, as expected.
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Document - HCX vMotion based migration fails because of EVC configuration.
When you establish a site pairing for the on-premises SDDC where an Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) configuration is not enabled either at the cluster or VM level, the vMotion-based (live) migration fails.
Use one of the following workarounds:
- Enable the EVC configuration either for clusters or for VMs on the on-premises SDDC.
- Migrate workloads by using either the bulk migration or the cold migration method.
