Setting Up a Site Pair and Interconnect with HCX: A Step-by-Step Guide
In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of setting up a site pair and interconnect between your on-premises data center and your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. This setup allows for network stretching and other benefits, making it an essential tool for organizations with hybrid cloud environments.
Step 1: Site Pairing
To start, we will go to our on-premises vCenter and install the HCX plugin. From there, we will navigate to the site pairing section and fill in the FQDN of the HCX server, along with the [email protected] account and password. The completed setup will look like this:
Step 2: Creating an Interconnect
Once the site pairing is complete, we can create an interconnect. We will click on the Interconnect option and then select Compute Profiles. Here, we will create a compute profile by giving it a name, selecting one or more clusters where the HCX appliances should be located, choosing a datastore, folder, and CPU/memory reservation settings. Additionally, we will select a Management Network Profile, Uplink Network Profile, vMotion Network Profile, vSphere Replication Network Profile, and a distributed switch to be used for network extensions. The completed setup will look something like this:
Step 3: Creating a Service Mesh
Next, we will create a service mesh by selecting a Source Compute Profile (the network profile we just created), a Remote Network Profile (called ComputeProfile), and specifying the Source Site Uplink Network Profile(s) and Destination Site Uplink Network Profile(s). We will also set the appliance count to 1, and optionally, we can set a bandwidth limit. Once we have completed these steps, the interconnect will look like this:
And that’s it! We have successfully set up a site pair and interconnect between our on-premises data center and our VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. In the next blog post, we will cover the functions of HCX and how to use them effectively.
Stay safe, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
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