I stumbled upon a new update to the VMC on AWS service today. In working with a customer to spin up HCX, we began discussing the benefits of using Direct Connect versus Public WAN for HCX connectivity. In this case, the customer already had a Direct Connect in place, so it made sense to look into utilizing it for HCX. Having gone through this previously, I let the customer know that there were a couple minor things that needed to be done to accomplish this.
Similar to using vCenter over Direct Connect or VPN, the private IP address of HCX needs to be used to pair the sites across the private network connection. Within the SDDC console, the ability to switch vCenter DNS resolution from public to private has been around for a while, by clicking into the SDDC and selecting Settings -> vCenter Information -> vCenter FQDN. Choosing to edit that field allows for the ability to select a drop down and change between the public IP and the private IP.
Doing this for HCX wasn’t possible from the SDDC console … or so I thought! The previous time I had configured this for HCX, I had to follow the steps from a blog post by Ryan Kelly (@vmtocloud) on HCX Site Pairing Gotchas. The process essentially entails creating a local host file entry within the on-prem HCX appliance to use the private IP address.
Low and behold, looking at the SDDC console today, I noticed a new addition to the Settings tab:
There is now a new HCX FQDN field that allows changing from public to private resolution, just underneath the original vCenter option. A quick look at the VMC on AWS Release Notes confirmed my suspicion, as this setting was added in the most recent update on 8/30/19. VMC on AWS goes through a fairly quick update cycle, and it is great to see that the user experience for real world use cases is being enhanced on a regular basis.
