HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct) provides support for VMware vSphere native cross-vCenter vMotion migration.

With native cross-vCenter vMotion, a direct data path is established using the underlying management network between the VMware ESXi hosts associated with the source and destination vCenters. In this case, HCX orchestrates the migration flows between the HCX Managers deployed in each vCenter. For more information about native vSphere vMotion, see Migration Between vCenter Server Systems.

Like other HCX migration types, you enable HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct) during the service mesh creation process.

If you configure a site pair with only the HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct) migration type, HCX establishes management plane connectivity between sites, creates a Service Mesh, and deploys the HCX-IX appliance. In this case, the HCX-IX appliance is only used for HCX control plane communication and not for migration traffic.

How it Works

The workload migration has the following high-level workflow in HCX:

  1. During the Service Mesh configuration, enable HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct).

  2. In the Migration interface, create a Mobility Group for the selected workloads.
  3. Select HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct) as the migration type and configure the available Transfer, placement, and extended options.
  4. HCX validates the configuration.
  5. Start the migration.
  6. HCX initiates the migration using native cross-vCenter vMotion.

  7. HCX displays the status of the migration operation.

Requirements

  • A dedicated vSphere vMotion data path must be set up between the source and the target ESXi hosts.
  • Standard switches at the source and target clusters must have matching security policies and the teaming and failover policies.
  • The Distributed Virtual Switch version at the source and the destination sites must be the same. See KB 56991.
  • The source and target sites are running vSphere 6.7 or later.
  • Migrating encrypted virtual machines:
    • The Key Management Server (KMS) used to encrypt the source VM is present on the target site for encrypted direct vMotion to be successful, regardless of the default KMS at either site.
    • The name and IP address of the KMS must match between the source and target sites.
    • The source and target sites must be running vSphere 7.0 or later.
  • Virtual machines must be running Hardware Version 4 or later.
  • VMware Tools are installed on the VM and their versions.
  • Review the port requirements: VMware KB 2106952.
  • All the native cross-vCenter vMotion dependencies detailed in KB article 2106952 must be satisfied.

Restrictions

  • HCX diagnostics are not available for HCX Assisted vMotion (Direct).
  • Virtual machines with mounted ISO images cannot be migrated. The HCX Bulk migration operation can be used for force unmount ISO images.
  • Virtual machines cannot be migrated while they are using a shared SCSI bus, flagged for multi-writer, enabled for fault tolerance, or configured for shared VMDK disk sharing.
  • Migration is not supported when the source VM is on an NSX-T-backed segment.
  • Virtual Machines with DvFilter configurations are not supported.
  • Virtual Machines with I/O Filter policies applied are not supported.
  • HCX Assisted vMotion is not available for VMware Cloud on AWS.
  • It is a best practice to avoid scheduling VM hardware upgrade in the source site vCenter while performing migration through HCX.
  • HCX applies a maximum of 50 concurrent relocation operations per HCX Manager to avoid overloading the vCenter Server.
  • All the native cross-vCenter vMotion limitations and restrictions related to scale and concurrency apply to HCX Assisted vMotion migration.