VMware HCX 4.7 | 27 JUL 2023 | Build 22152196 (Connector), 22152365 (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:

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 4.7.0

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

Upgrading to HCX 4.7

  • Requirements for HCX deployments:

    • Upgrading to HCX 4.7.0 from HCX 4.2 and above is supported.

    • Upgrading to HCX 4.7.0 from all versions less than 4.2 requires a full upgrade to 4.3.3 first.

    • All site paired systems must be upgraded.

    • All Service Mesh appliances must be upgraded to 4.7.

  • Upgrade snapshots:

    • During upgrades to HCX 4.7, 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.

      Note: To restore the HCX Manager from a snapshot, contact VMware Support.

  • 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.

Important:

HCX 4.5.0 and later releases have new security requirements for OS Assisted Migration (OSAM). If you use OSAM in your environment, you must upgrade HCX Connector, HCX Cloud Manager, and HCX OSAM data plane appliances (Sentinel Gateway, Sentinel Data Receiver) to HCX 4.5.0 or later. Additionally, you must upgrade Sentinel agents running on the source workloads. For compatibility with HCX 4.7.0, the Sentinel agents, Sentinel Gateway, and Sentinel Data Receiver must be running HCX 4.5.0 or later. If not all appliances compatible, migrations can stall and must be started again after upgrade.

What's New

VMware HCX 4.7.0 is a minor release that provides new features, interoperability enhancements, and resolved issues. 

Workload Migration for NSX V2T in Federated NSX Environments

  • HCX Workload Migration for NSX V2T now includes Federated NSX architectures. For V2T workload migrations on Federated NSX environments, you must configure the HCX Cloud Manager UI (:9443) with the location of Global Manager that is running V2T Migration Coordinator, under the NSX Migration Coordinator section. After configuring the Global Manager location, you can migrate to or from an NSX Federated environment using all migration types: Bulk, Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV), vMotion.

    Note: HCX Network Extension does not support NSX-T Global Federation configurations.

    For more information, refer to Understanding Workload Migration for NSX V2T. For migration procedures, see Migrating Virtual Machines with Mobility Groups.

vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA)

  • VMware HCX is now interoperable with VMware vSAN 8 ESA, which is an alternative vSAN architecture for high-performance storage devices.

Host-Based Replication Module Update

  • The Host-based Replication (HBR) server in HCX is updated to version 8.7EP2. Version 8.7EP2 modernizes the HBR the functionality and performance, and is a requirement for VMware vSAN 8 ESA. HBR is used during HCX Bulk migration, Replication Assisted vMotion (initial/delta sync), and HCX protection (DR) operations.

Interoperability Enhancements

  • VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 1

    HCX is now compatible with VMware vSphere 8.0U1. HCX 4.7 enables workload migration to and from vSphere 8.0 Update 1-based public clouds and bundled offerings.

  • VMware NSX 3.2.3 and NSX 4.1.1

    With this HCX release, all networking and migration features are compatible with vSphere environments running NSX 3.2.3 or NSX 4.1.1.

  • VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC 1.22

    HCX 4.7 adds compatibility with VMware Cloud on AWS version 1.22.

Scale Enhancements for Bulk and Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) Migrations

  • With additional tuning and scaling of the HCX Manager resources, the number of concurrent migrations can be increased to 600 for Bulk and RAV migration types. This is higher than the current maximum of 300 per HCX Manager with default configurations. For detailed instructions for scaling and tuning HCX Manager, refer to VMware KB 93605.

Resolved Issues

Resolved Management Issues

  • PR/3101848 - kafka retention framework enhanced to not cause 100 percent of the space utilization in the /common folder.

  • PR/3115245 - Bulk migrations fail with the error, " JSONObject["peerAppliances"] not found."

  • PR/3181950 - HCX Manager Admin services over TCP port 9443 (SSL/TLS) flagged for older cipher and discovered by modern security scanning tools. Refer VMware KB 91880 for more info.

  • PR/3221954 - The state of the SSH service on the HCX Manager does not persist following  OVA installation or system reboot.

  • PR/3231027 - In HCX for VMware Cloud on AWS Govcloud deployments, HCX-WAN-IX, HCX-NET-EXT, and HCX-SGW appliances can run out of disk space in /var/log and stop working.

Resolved Network Extension Issues

  • PR/3157339 - In some cases, removing a network segment used for network extension following a rollback of the HCX version, and then redeploying that Network Extension results in an error: “<appliance ID> does not exist.”

  • PR/3158887 - In VMware Cloud on AWS deployments, HCX created groups that get created as "Generic" by default become group-type "IPAddress". Attempts to update this group to set it to "Generic"(default) fail.

  • PR/3218675 - Network Extension information displayed for HA groups using the HCX command line interface (CCLI) command "show netext networks" does not match what is shown in the HCX Manager UI.

Resolved Migration Issues

  • PR/3214204 - Unable to remove or archive completed OSAM migrations from the Migration Management tab.

  • PR/3214474 - For Linux systems, if the workload VM has a block device name ending with a numeric, HCX Sentinel Agent fails to get the sentinel configuration for that system and blockDevId is not generated.

  • PR/3221498 - HCX Assisted vMotion migration can fail with the error,  “The vMotion interface is not configured (or is misconfigured) on the Source host <host ip address>."

Product Support Notices

OSAM 32-Bit Guest OS Deprecation Notice

  • Support for 32-bit guest operating systems for OSAM (OS Assisted Migration) is deprecated. There will be no further enhancements or bug fixes in OSAM to support 32-bit guest operating systems. Support will be removed in HCX 4.8.0

Non-compatibility of HCX MON with Onprem Gateway using first hop redundancy protocols (HSRP/VRRP)

  • This HCX release is not compatible with Onprem Gateway/Router using FHRP when using MON (Mobility Optimized Networking). Interoperability of MON with Onprem Gateway/Router using FHRP is planned for an upcoming release. Refer to VMware Knowledge Base 85849 for more information.

About NSX for vSphere systems in Extended Support

  • NSX for vSphere General Support ended on January 16, 2022.

  • NSX for vSphere systems in Technical Guidance (under Extended Support contracts) are only supported at the evacuation site (source), with HCX Connector.

  • To determine the HCX Connector version for evacuation, refer to VMware KB articles 82702 and 71398.

Note that HCX Cloud installations require current (Generally Available) VMware software components.  NSX for vSphere is not suitable or supported for HCX Cloud installations.

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