Hybrid Linked Mode allows you to link your cloud vCenter Server instance with an on-premises vCenter Single Sign-On domain.

Important:

Before you can use Hybrid Linked Mode, you must configure your on-premises vCenter to enable single sign-on. See vSphere Authentication with vCenter Single Sign-On for details.

If you link your cloud vCenter Server to a domain that contains multiple vCenter Server instances linked using Enhanced Linked Mode, all of those instances are linked to your cloud SDDC.

Using Hybrid Linked Mode, you can:
  • View and manage the inventories of both your on-premises and cloud data centers from a single vSphere Client interface, accessed using your on-premises credentials.
  • Migrate workloads between your on-premises data center and cloud SDDC.
  • Share tags and tag categories from your vCenter Server instance to your cloud SDDC.

Hybrid Linked Mode supports on-premises vCenter Server systems with either embedded or external Platform Services Controller (both Windows and vCenter Server). vCenter Server systems with external Platform Services Controller instances linked in Enhanced Linked Mode are also supported, up to the scale limits documented in vSphere Configuration Maximums.

You have two options for configuring Hybrid Linked Mode. You can use only one of these options at a time.

  • You can install the VMware Cloud Gateway and use it to link from your on-premises data center to your cloud SDDC. In this case, SSO users and groups are mapped from your on-premises environment to the SDDC and you do not need to add an identity source to the SDDC LDAP domain.
  • You can link your cloud SDDC to your on-premises vCenter Server. In this case, you must add an identity source to the SDDC LDAP domain.