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VMware HCX

Definition

VMware HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension) is VMware's workload-mobility and network-extension product for moving virtual machines between vSphere environments — classically from an on-premises data center to a cloud VMware stack — with minimal or zero downtime. It is the canonical lift-and-shift migration tool for VMware estates, pairing an HCX Connector on-premises with an HCX Cloud Manager on the target, then establishing site pairing and Layer-2 network extensions so VMs can move while keeping their IP addresses.

Stub page — surfaced on the wiki as migration-path #1 for moving on-premises Oracle onto Amazon EVS. Expand as further VMware-mobility sources are ingested.

Migration modes

  • HCX vMotion / Replication Assisted vMotion — live migration with near-zero downtime; the VM keeps running and is cut over without a reboot. Best for interactive / can't-take-downtime workloads.
  • HCX Bulk Migration — scheduled, parallel migration of many VMs with a brief switchover window; best for large fleets on a planned cutover.
  • L2 network extension — stretches the on-prem VLAN/segment to the target so migrated VMs retain their IPs during the transition (removes re-IP as a migration blocker).

Oracle-on-EVS migration role (2026-10-02)

In AWS's step-by-step Oracle-on-EVS deployment, HCX is the first of four migration paths for enterprises already running VMware on-premises:

  1. Deploy HCX Connector on-premises and HCX Cloud Manager on EVS.
  2. Create site pairing and network extensions (L2 stretch).
  3. Migrate Oracle VMs via HCX vMotion (zero downtime) or Bulk Migration.
  4. Post-migration: storage-vMotion the Oracle VMDKs from EVS vSAN onto FSx ONTAP NFS datastores to gain snapshot / clone / SnapMirror-replication capabilities.

The notable sequencing detail is that HCX gets the VM into EVS, but the VM only acquires FSx-ONTAP data-management semantics after a second, storage-level move (storage vMotion onto the NFS datastore) — the migration and the storage-tiering decision are deliberately separated. (Source: sources/2026-10-02-aws-deploy-oracle-database-step-by-step-on-amazon-evs-with-fsx-ontap)

HCX is one of four paths; the alternatives (SnapMirror ONTAP-to-ONTAP, Oracle PDB relocation, RMAN restore) are chosen by on-prem storage type and downtime budget — see Oracle Database.

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