VMWare HCX is a piece of software that helps you migrate applications across data centres and clouds.

We're not talking about backing up your holiday snaps to iCloud or Google Workspace, though. We're talking about large-scale transfers of applications between data centres.

This could be a migration from a physical data centre to the cloud, or from one cloud to another. Often, customers link their on-premise environments to multiple clouds.

VMWare's HCX software aims to streamline these processes and keep them as secure as possible. This helps your business by reducing downtime and ensuring continuity between data centres and clouds.

How does HCX help with migrating applications?

This is a question that could get very complex, very fast – so we're going to stick to talking about some of HCX's core processes, not the intricacies of code that make this software possible.

Let's say you want to migrate applications from a data centre to the cloud. These are two separate networks that have two separate IP addresses.

To make this migration possible, two HCX managers need to be deployed – one at the source, one at the destination. You then build what's known as a "service mesh" inside HCX manager.

This configures services for both source and destination sites. Depending on the services selected in the mesh, HCX deploys virtual appliances in the source site and corresponding "peer" virtual appliances on the destination site.

The service mesh consists of three components.

The first is an "interconnect". This creates a secure tunnel between the two sites so that workloads can be migrated.

The second is a WAN optimiser – WAN being the wide area network that connects the two local networks. As the name suggests, this exists to optimise or boost the speed of traffic between the two centres.

A WAN optimiser is recommended if you're migrating from a physical data centre to the cloud – but it's possible to do without if you're going from data centre to data centre and have a strong connection.

The third part of HCX's service mesh is a layer 2 network extension.  This enables you to use the same workload IP addresses on both the source and destination data centres.

You'll remember we said that the source data centre and destination data centre have different IP addresses. If you move data from one to another, you have to change the IP address. This makes live migration tricky.

A solution to this is what's known as a "stretched VLAN" – a network that makes these data centres local to each other. With one of these, there's no need to fiddle with IP addresses as the layer 2 network extension enables smooth migration between data centres as though they're all neighbours on the same network.

When using HCX, you're still able to deploy a layer 2 extension with VMWare's NSX-T, or with physical hardware like Cisco OTV.

HCX can be used with private, public and hybrid clouds.

Ensuring continuity

In the above example, we focused on a single large-scale migration from one data centre to the cloud.

HCX also offers disaster recovery. This means you can backup your workloads to a secondary site and recover these workloads in the event of a disaster.

It also supports large-scale workload migration so you can recover your applications in the event of disaster.

HCX's features in more depth

OK, so we've tried to explain what HCX can do for your business without too much lingo. But for those who are interested, here's an in-depth look at its features.

• Any-to-Any Mobility

HCX can migrate large amounts of applications and workloads across any VMWare platform, as well as from vSphere 6.5+ to newer versions of vSphere. This applies both to modern data centres and to the cloud.

There's also the possibility of converting from KVM and HyperV to any of the current versions of vSphere.

Finally, HCX supports hybrid cloud services including VMWare Cloud Foundation.

• Secure, large-scale migration
  
  HCX can migrate applications with zero downtime – meaning no disruption to your business. It offers a range of methodologies to suit your own workloads.

It's capable of live migrations of thousands of VMs. These migrations can be seen on your migration planning and visibility dashboard.

HCX provides a secure proxy for vMotion and replication traffic.

• Hybrid networking
  
  HCX offers WAN optimisation, automated routing with NSX, and a high-throughput layer 2 network extension. The result is seamless network connectivity and optimised migration. It also removes the need for changes of IP and MAC addresses during migration.

Where is HCX available?

You can get HCX in two versions.

The first is HCX Advanced. This forms part of most SDDC bundles and is available through VMWare's cloud partners.

HCX Enterprise offers additional functionality. For this you need an add-on licence.

What are people saying about HCX?

Testimonials from clients and product owners focus on HCX's non-disruptive nature, as well as its speed and flexibility.

One product user praised "its ability to do scheduled bulk migrations as well as live non-disruptive migrations to and from multiple cloud environments" – a capability which has given "flexibility and control" and helped in "maximising our workload mobility".

It's also been described as "the simplest and quickest way to move at scale onto the VMC platform… if we were to take every single application on that single-path journey, we would be at this forevermore."

Black Mountain say that they were able "to migrate 400+ production workloads and 30TBs of storage in 20 days with no downtime and without upgrading the software or physical network."

This is key to HCX's success: the functionality to enable large-scale migration without stopping you from carrying on with business as usual.

Here at Ascend Cloud Solutions, we have the technical expertise to help you with cloud migration. With more than 400 successful migrations under our belt, we know how to manage a large-scale migration with minimum disruption to your business.

We have decades of combined experience with the VMWare software suite and have supported VMWare's HXC since day one. Indeed, one happy customer described us as "incredibly knowledgeable and diligent when it came to understanding our requirements and data needs" as we supported them to migrate around 130 customer and internal servers between 2 data centres "with no interruption to client workloads".

Interested? Then please don't hesitate to get in touch.