VMware HCX 4.4 Release Notes

VMware HCX 4.4 | 15 JUL 2022 | Build 20113476 (Connector), 20113475 (Cloud) Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

About VMware HCX

VMware HCX delivers secure and seamless application mobility and infrastructure hybridity across both on-premises and in the cloud. HCX abstracts the distinct private or public vSphere resources and presents a Service Mesh as an end-to-end entity. HCX Interconnect can then provide high-performance, secure, and optimized multi-site connectivity to achieve infrastructure hybridity and present multiple options for bi-directional virtual machine mobility with technologies that facilitate the modernization of legacy data centers.

For more information, see the VMware HCX User Guide in the VMware Documentation Center.

System Requirements and Compatibility

For HCX deployment requirements, see Preparing for HCX Installation.

The following resources provide information related to HCX deployments:

• For information regarding VMware product compatibility by version, see Product Interoperability Matrix.
• For appliance limit information, see VMware Configurations Maximums.
• For more information on where you can view port and protocol information for various VMware products in a single dashboard and to export an offline copy of the selected data, see VMware Ports and Protocols.
• For information about General Availability (GA), End of Support (EoS), End of Technical Guidance (EoTG) for VMware software, see VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix.

Early Adoption Features

Early Adoption (EA) denotes an initial release phase of a critical service feature with limited field exposure. While the feature has completed its entire development cycle and it is fully supported in production, due to strong dependencies on the deployment environment, thorough validation and qualification is recommended before activating it.

Installation and Upgrade

Installing HCX 4.4.0

For sample installation workflows by deployment type, see Installing the HCX Manager Appliance.

Upgrading to HCX 4.4

• Requirements:
  • Upgrading to HCX 4.4 from HCX 4.1 and above is supported.
  • Upgrading to HCX 4.4 from HCX 4.0 and below requires a full upgrade to 4.3 prior to 4.4.
  • All site paired systems must be upgraded.
• Upgrade snapshots (new):
  • During upgrades to HCX 4.4, HCX Manager snapshots are taken automatically.
  • Upgrade snapshots are only taken when an HCX Manager is deployed on the same vCenter Server registered to it. For other deployments, manual snapshots can be taken.
  • HCX retains automatic snapshots for 24 hours before deleting them.
• Assistance with upgrading from out-of-support releases is on a best-effort basis.
• VMware sends administrative messages to HCX systems that are running out of support and require upgrade. 
• Upgrade compatibility information is available as a table in VMware Product Interoperability Matrix - Upgrade Path.

What's New

VMware HCX 4.4.0 is a minor release that provides new features, improved platform security, compatibility updates and resolved issues. 

Transport Analytics

• HCX 4.4 brings Transport Analytics to HCX. New capabilities enable on-demand testing and baselining transport performance based on the conditions of the underlay network. Understanding transport network performance can help in planning migration wave size and in analyzing data transfer and performance issues. See Understanding HCX Transport Analytics.

VMware HCX on Photon OS

• This release improves platform security, package management, and orchestration through the implementation of VMware Photon Operating System on the HCX Manager and Service Mesh appliances.

Network Extension Enhancements

• Network Extension High Availability is now Generally Available!

  Network Extension High Availability uses additional Network Extension appliances to create HA Groups and provide data path and appliance redundancy in an Active/Standby mode. Refer to Understanding Network Extension High Availability for more information and additional resources required to activate this feature.

Migration Enhancements

• Host-based Replication module update

  Host-based Replication (HBR) server in HCX is updated to version 8.4. Version 8.4 modernizes the functionality, provides many fixes and improves migration performance. HBR is used during HCX Bulk migration, Replication Assisted vMotion, and HCX protection (DR) operations.

• Disk Size Alignment Validation

  For Replication operations to a VSAN datastore, the source disk size must be a multiple of 512 KB. With this release, HCX checks the source disk size prior to initiating a migration and automatically adjusts the size, which can prevent errors related to misalignment of the source and datastore disk sizes.

Platform Updates

• HCX Remote Plug-in for vSphere Clients

  The vSphere Remote Plug-in architecture was first released with vSphere 6.7 U1, and has several advantages over the legacy local plug-ins. This release adds HCX compatibility with the remote plug-in architecture.

  For more information about the vSphere Client local plug-in deprecation, see VMware KB 87880.

• Self-signed Certificate Rotation

  HCX uses self-signed certificates for the Appliance Management Interface (port 9443) and HCX Service UI (port 443) appliances. Going forward, HCX upgrades detect and rotate self-signed certificates nearing expiry. For more information, see Managing CA and Self-Signed Certificates.

• Virtual Machine Compatibility (HW Version 10)

  New deployments of HCX 4.4 use compatibility set to Hardware Version 10. Existing deployments can be manually updated to version 10. See VMware KB 1010675.

• HCX Publisher Notifications

  All HCX Connector and Cloud Manager deployments maintain a connection to the HCX Publisher, which is responsible for verifying licensing and supporting system upgrades. An enhancement to HCX Publisher now identifies systems that have reached End of General Support (EoGS). For systems that reach EoGS, HCX deployments receive a banner message similar to the following notice:

  "The installed HCX version system with version number is running out of support and cannot be upgraded. Redeployment with the latest version is required."

User Interface Enhancements

• HCX Alerts

  The HCX Manager UI includes a new selection for monitoring system alert messages. You can also view alert messages from the Alerts panel in the HCX Dashboard.

• Virtual Trusted Platform Module Validation

  In HCX for VMware Cloud on AWS deployments, HCX migration operations involving encrypted virtual machines are currently not supported. This release adds a validation, preventing failed migrations of encrypted virtual machines.

Interoperability Enhancements

• Expanded HCX Region Support

  HCX for VMware Cloud on AWS has been expanded to include the Hong Kong, Cape Town, and Bahrain regions.

• VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Readiness

  This HCX 4.4 release adds compatibility with VMware Cloud on AWS version 1.19.

PowerCLI 12.7 Module for HCX

The PowerCLI 12.7 release improves the performance of GET-HCXMigration and includes bug fixes. For more information about this release, please find additional information in the PowerCLI 12.7 Release Blog and PowerCLI 12.7 Release Notes.

Note: It is a best practice to use the latest PowerCLI release with VMware HCX deployments. For a list of PowerCLI releases, see VMware PowerCLI Change Log.

Resolved Issues

Resolved Migration Issues

• PR/2936999 - Datastore Clusters with Distributed Resource Scheduler disabled can lead to placement of migrated virtual machines on the wrong target storage.
• PR/2927021 - HCX virtual machine migration is stuck at initializing state as web server cannot process the incomplete API payload as the payload size is limited.
• PR/2938442 - After scheduling and starting a group migration, the migration API call exceeds the timeout limit, causing the migration wizard to become unresponsive and not close.
• PR/2943930 - Virtual machine inventory API call failing with 502 proxy error.
• PR/2974195 - vMotion, RAV, and Cold migration can fail with the error "Failed to get the mobility agent proxy host's datastore of host name <addresss>."

Resolved Network Extension Issues

• PR/2738978 - MON is prevented from working with some FHRP vendors.

  HCX 4.4.0 supports enabling MON on an extended network that has an on-premises router using first hop redundancy protocols (VRRP, HSRP).

Resolved Interconnect Issues

• PR/2736904 - After updating the Compute Profile, resynchronizing the Service Mesh reports that no changes were found.
• PR/2785950 - A Service Mesh with WAN Optimization enabled fails to deploy.
• PR/2932705 - Using the Force Redeploy operation generates an error that another workflow is in progress.
• PR/2963567 - Updating the MTU size in the Network Profile for the Uplink network and then resynching the Service Mesh does not update the FOU MTU size.
• PR/2969566 - An ARP cache problem makes the HCX-IX appliance fail to connect to the WAN Optimization appliance (WAN-OPT) when the WAN Optimization appliance is enabled on the management network.

Resolved Management Issues

• PR/2976815 - In disaster recovery scenarios, where Network Extension HA is enabled and the HCX source site is lost, HA operations can freeze and become unresponsive.
• PR/2982126 - Excessive audit log messages cause out-of-memory (OOM) errors.
• PR/2982680 - Following a Network Extension HA failover operation, extended networks do not appear in the Network Extension Details for the newly Active Network Extension in the Service Mesh appliance UI.
• PR/2975489 - Common Partition usage increase in HCX Manager.

Security Issues

• This release includes important security enhancements and updates.

Product Support Notices

Deprecated features or functionality receive no further development or code fixes, and will be removed in a future release.

• Support for NSXv at HCX destination sites

  This release deprecates support for NSXv at destination sites for new HCX Cloud Manger deployments. New HCX deployments require NSX-T at the target site. Support for NSXv in existing deployments is provided on a best effort basis.