To provide the most flexibility for sites activated with different service entitlements, HCX provides a notion of inheritance.

HCX services operate between paired sites. Before mobility operations can take place, HCX creates a Service Mesh between each site pair. The Service Mesh deploys the appliances and makes the service connections necessary to allow mobility operations. To complete the Service Mesh, the required services must be enabled in the Compute Profile at each site, and each site must have a license entitlement to use those services.
Note: For inheritance, paired sites must be running HCX 4.9.0 or later.
With inheritance, the logic to decide what a site can do is a function of the site pairing along with the entitlements granted to each site during activation. When creating the Service Mesh, the inheritance logic compares the entitlements applied at each site and then employs the broadest level of entitlement. After establishing the level of service entitlement for the site pair, the inheritance logic looks at each site's Compute Profile configuration to determine whether the Service Mesh supports the configured services.
Note: Regardless of what services are configured in the Compute Profile, the Service Mesh for the site pair determines the entitlement to those services. For example, for any HCX site, you can configure the Compute Profile for all services, but if the Service Mesh for the site pair provides entitlement to only some services, only that subset of services is allowed between sites. For site pairs that have entitlement to all HCX services, the Compute Profile provides a means to customize services between sites.

For a description of HCX Services, see System Services.

Refer to the following examples.

Example 1:

Sites A and B are paired. Site B was activated using VCF Solution Licensing, which provides entitlement to all HCX Services. Site A was activated using the NSX DataCenter Enterprise Plus license, which has entitlement to HCX Advanced services. In this example, you want to use Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) to migrate virtual machines between paired sites A and B. At each site, you have selected RAV in the Compute Profile, but Site A does not have license entitlement to use RAV. Site B is entitled to use the RAV service. In this case, the Service Mesh inheritance logic uses the entitlements of Site B to generate a Service Mesh that supports RAV migrations from Site A to Site B.

Example 2:

Sites A and C are paired. Site A was activated using the NSX DataCenter Enterprise Plus license, which provides entitlement to HCX Advanced services. Site C was activated using the NSX DataCenter Enterprise Plus license with the add-on HCX Enterprise license, which together entitles all HCX services. In this environment, you want to migrate non-VMware workloads to your VMware data center using OS Assisted Migration (OSAM). At each site, you have OSAM selected in the Compute Profile, but Site A does not have license entitlement to use OSAM. In this case, at site pairing, Site A inherits the capabilities of Site C. Now that both sides of the site pair have entitlement to all HCX capabilities, HCX creates a Service Mesh that includes OSAM.

Example 3:

Sites B and D are paired. Site B was activated using VCF Solution Licensing, which provides entitlement to all HCX Services. Site D was activated in Evaluation Mode, which supports all HCX services but with limitations (see HCX Activation and Licensing for Evaluation Mode limitations). In this example, even though Site D is activated in Evaluation Mode with grace period and capacity limits on migrations, it inherits the all the VCF entitlements since it is paired with a site licensed with the VCF license key and can perform operations without any restrictions.

Example 4:

Site A is paired with Site B and Site C, creating a "V" topology. Site A was activated in Evaluation Mode, providing limited access to all HCX Services. Site B was activated using VCF Solution Licensing, giving entitlement to all HCX services. Site C was also activated in Evaluation Mode. In this example, Site A inherits the entitlements of Site B, but Site A inherits no additional entitlements from Site C. Site pairs A and B will operate in VCF mode. Site pairs A and C will operate in Evaluation Mode.