It has been almost a year since VMware introduced the Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) capability, which provides customers with a consistent operating experience for managing and consuming resources from both their on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) environments. Feedback from customers on HLM has been fantastic, especially when new or prospective VMC customers learn about HLM for the very first time. Customers were pleasantly surprised at how seamless the experience was when consuming VMC resources, using a familiar interface, the vSphere UI.
Here is a quick recap of what HLM provides today:
- HLM allows customers to link a single VMC instance to a single on-prem SSO Domain which can contain one or more vCenter Servers (Enhanced Linked Mode) while maintaining separate administrative domains (e.g. on-prem user is Administrator while VMC user is CloudAdmin only)
- SSO Domains will be different between on-prem and VMC, however it is a 1:1 relationship
- A trust is established where the on-prem vCenter Server trusts the incoming connections from VMC as they share the same Active Directory identity source. Data is sync'ed uni-directionally from on-prem to VMC
- Can be configured at any point in the on-prem vCenter Server lifecycle, no restrictions to initial install and can easily be un-linked unlike ELM
- Both Embedded & External vCenter Server deployments are supported
- HLM supports different versions of vCenter Server between on-prem (6.5d+) and VMC, especially as VMC will almost always run a newer version of vSphere
- Users MUST login to VMC vCenter Server for single-pane of glass management (H5 Client supported only), logging into on-prem vCenter Server will NOT show VMC vCenter Server
- Roles are NOT replicated due to the restrictive access model in VMC