In last post of this series we deployed the Cloud Gateway and the Layer 2 Concentrator virtual appliances. Next is to explore various migration methods to migrate workloads from on-prem datacenter to the cloud.
If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:
2: HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration
3: HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration
In this post we will learn about how to do cleanup of a HCX deployment in a right way.
Below are the high level steps for HCX cleanup.
1: Unstretch a Layer 2 Network : Unstretching a Layer 2 network is necessary before removing the associated L2C appliance. Steps given below
2: Delete the L2C virtual appliance: To delete the L2C appliance, go to interconnects > HCX Components > Network Extension Service tab and select the appliance and click on Remove.
Click on Yes to confirm deletion of appliance.
In last post of this series we did the fleet configuration so that we can deploy the fleet appliances. In this post we will discuss about the fleet appliances and will deploy them.
If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:
2: HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration
3: HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration
5: Configuring Interconnect Networks
There are 3 appliances that you can deploy in your HCX environment:
In last post of this series we paired HCX Enterprise with the HCX Cloud appliance. Now the next task is to deploy the fleet appliances, but before doing any deployment we have to configure the networks for interconnects i.e fleet configuration.
If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:
2: HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration
3: HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration
Basically we are defining a pool of IP’s which interconnect appliances will use when we start deploying them. High level steps of fleet config are summarized as below.
In this post we will be pairing the HCX-Enterprise appliance with the HCX-Cloud to start consuming HCX features.
If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:
2: HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration
3: HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration
Site pairing task is straight forward and it should compelte without any issue if all your configuration is correct. However In my lab I was getting an error “untrusted ssl connection” when trying to do site pairing.
In last post of HCX series, we deployed HCX Cloud appliance and performed basic configuration. The next step was to pair the HCX Enterprise appliance to the HCX Cloud so that we can start consuming HCX features.
When I tried pairing the on-prem HCX to HCX Cloud, I was getting ssl connection error and site pairing task was failing.
I was pretty sure that this is happening because of untrusted ssl certs in my lab and I was thinking that may be I need to replace the self-signed certs with the CA signed certs.
In last post of this series, we deployed the HCX Enterprise appliance in on-premise and connected it to vCenter server, NSX manager and PSC. In this post we will deploy HCX cloud appliance in cloud side and will walkthrough basic configuration steps.
As of now, I don’t have a true cloud site but I have 2 vCenter servers in 2 location. Site A is where I deployed HCX Enterprise and Site B is where I am deploying HCX Cloud applaince. I am treating my Site B as cloud location for now.
HCX Cloud deployment is very much similar to HCX Enterprise deployment. Below slideshow walkt hrough the deployment steps.
In first post of this series, we learnt about basics of HCX and we discussed that HCX is available in 2 versions i.e HCX Enterprise (for On-Prem) and HCX Cloud (for cloud providers).
In this post we will learn how to deploy HCX Enterprise appliance in on-prem and we will touch down on basic configuration.
Deployment of HCX Enterprise appliance is very much similar to a standard ovf deployment of any VMware product and nothing fancy is there. Below slide show walk-through steps of deploying the appliance.
VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (previously known as HCX technologies) was announced by VMware last year during VMworld 2017 Europe and it aimed at following use cases:
So what exactly is VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension?
VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a SaaS offering that provides application mobility and infrastructure hybridity across different vSphere versions, on-premises and in the cloud.
To know more HCX, please see the VMware HCX FAQ section.
VMware journey from HCM to HCX
Before HCX solution, VMware offered a similar product named “Hybrid Cloud Manager (HCM) ” to support their vCloud Air service. Customers were using HCM to migrate workloads from their on-premise to vCloud Air using HCM. Also it offered features like L2 network stretch, cold migration and vMotion to cloud.
3 weeks back I attempted my VCAP-NV (3V0-643) exam and passed with 408 marks. No I did not pass in first attempt and I failed with 282 marks as when I first attempted my exam, I left too many routing questions as I was not very much comfortable with them.
I interacts with NSX everyday as its core of our Networking in production and my job is to troubleshoot everyday network issues and this helped me a lot during my preparation.
VCAP6-NV exam have 23 questions and you have total of 3.5 hours to finish the exam. But believe me 3.5 hours are not enough as there are few questions which are very lengthy and you may have to read those questions 2-3 times to make sure you have understood the requirements completely.
Section 1 – Prepare VMware NSX Infrastructure
Objective 1.1 – Deploy VMware NSX Infrastructure components
Objective 1.2 – Prepare Host Clusters for Network Virtualization
Objective 1.3 – Configure and Manage Transport Zones
Section 2 – Create and Manage VMware NSX Virtual Networks
Objective 2.1 – Create and Manage Logical Switches
Objective 2.2 – Configure and Manage Layer 2 Bridging
Objective 2.3 – Configure and Manage Routing
Section 3 – Deploy and Manage VMware NSX Network Services
In this post, I will cover following topics of Objective 1.2 of VCAP-NV Deploy exam:
Lets get started.
Prepare vSphere Distributed Switching for NSX
NSX works only with distributed switch and not with standard switches. Before you deploy NSX and start configuring stuffs, you have to make sure that you have fully configured the VDS and have migrated portgroups/uplinks etc from VSS to VDS.
One of the most important requirement for NSX is to set the minimum MTU at VDS to 1600 bytes. So before you start adding hosts to VDS, make sure that appropriate MTU is already configured on VDS.
In this post, I will cover following topics of Objective 1.1 of VCAP-NV Deploy exam:
Lets get started.
Deploy the NSX Manager Virtual Appliance
Deploying NSX Manager is a straight forward task like deploying any other appliance from ova file. I have already covered the steps of deployment in one of my old post so I am not repeating the steps of deployment again.
Integrate the NSX Manager with vCenter Server
In this post I will cover following topics of Objective 8.1 of VCAP-NV Deploy exam:
What is REST API?
if you are new to Rest API and wondering what exactly it is and what do we do using API, then I would recommend reading this article first before moving down further in this post. Also I found this article very useful to understand how Rest API works.
Before starting the topics of objective 8.1, I want to pen down few facts about Rest API.
Construct and execute an API call using correct syntax and formatting
In this post I will cover following topics of Objective 7.3 of VCAP6-NV Deploy exam.
Lets get started.
Troubleshoot VPN service issues
There are 3 types of VPN which you can configure on NSX edges:
Lets start with troubleshooting IPSec VPN.
To troubleshoot any VPN issues, you should have knowledge of how to configure a VPN service so that you can verify that issue is not because of a mis-configured settings. To review the implementation and configuration of the IPSec VPN service refer to article