How to Uninstall and Clean Up an HCX Deployment

The purpose of this article is to show you how to uninstall HCX from your environment.

The graceful uninstall of HCX appliances is always initiated from the source side. The process requires HCX to be fully functional, including site pairings and communication between source and destination sites.

When uninstalling HCX, the procedure can vary depending on your environment and the features used. Do not delete the HCX fleet appliances directly from the vSphere inventory; always use the HCX management portal to interact with service VM’s. OVH is responsible for uninstalling HCX on the cloud side.

The process for removing HCX has the following general workflow:

1. Stop all migrations and disaster recovery protections.
2. Unstretch the network, which removes Network Extension appliances.
3. Delete the Service Mesh, which removes the Interconnect and WAN Optimization appliances.
4. Site disconnection.
5. Remove the HCX Manager.
6. Remove the HCX plug-in from the vCenter Server.

Instructions

To access the HCX Cloud landing page, use this format https://hcx.pcc-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.ovh.us but substitute the URL for your Private Cloud.

Step 1 - Stop all migrations and disaster recovery protections

To remove the replications:

1. Navigate to Services,
2. Select Disaster recovery,
3. Find the protected VM and click the more options ⋮ button, and
4. Click Force Remove.

Once confirmed the replication will be removed.

Proceed to remove other protected VMs, using the force remove option.

NOTE: If the VM is recovered, the replication will break and the protected VM will be auto-removed.

Migrations

Please follow the steps below to delete the migrations. If network stretch is not configured, please move on to unstretch the network, which removes Network Extension appliances.

1. In the HCX dashboard, select Services, then Migration. The Migration Management interface displays a summary of migration information.
2. Identify the virtual machine on which to cancel migration and expand the entry.
3. In the Status column, select Cancel Migration.

This operation can take several minutes. When finished, the UI displays the message "Migration cancelled".

Please refer to this VMware guide for canceling Migrations.

Step 2 - Unstretch the network

Unstretching a Layer 2 network is necessary before removing the associated L2C appliance. If network stretch is not configured, please move on to Step 3 - Delete the Service Mesh.

To begin:

1. Log in to vCenter Web Client and click on HCX Plugin,
2. Navigate to Services, then the Extended Networks tab, and
3. Select the network you want to remove, click the X button, and confirm by clicking OK.

Delete the L2C virtual appliance

To delete the L2C appliance:

1. Go to Interconnect, then HCX Components,
2. Select the Network Extension Service tab,
3. Select the appliance and click Remove, and

4. Click Yes to confirm the deletion of the appliance.

Step 3 - Delete the Service Mesh

In the HCX system containing the Service Mesh configuration, complete the following to delete all Service Mesh instances:

1. In the HCX user interface, select the Interconnect tab,
2. Click the Service Mesh menu,
3. Select on View Appliance,
4. Click the CGW appliance,
5. In the top-right corner, open the more options ... menu, and
6. Select Delete Service Mesh.

Verify that the CGW gateway/Service Mesh is deleted.

Step 4 - Site disconnection

To disconnect all HCX site pairings, complete the following steps:

1. From the HCX dashboard, navigate to Site Pairing.
2. For each site pair, click Disconnect.

Step 5 - Remove the HCX Manager

To remove the HCX Manager, complete the following steps:

1. At the source site, navigate to the vCenter Hosts and Clusters tab,
2. Expand the cluster where the HCX Manager is deployed and locate the virtual machine,
3. Right-click on the HCX entry and power off the selection, and
4. Right-click on the HCX entry and select Delete from Disk.

NOTE: Once HCX manager is deleted, update OVH Support to remove HCX cloud manager.

Step 6 - Remove the HCX plug-in from the vCenter Server

Unregister the HCX Plug-in from the vCenter Server using the VMware instructions on how to remove or deactivate unwanted plug-ins.

Go further

Having followed the steps above, HCX should be uninstalled from your environment. However, you can also refer to the VMware documentation for uninstalling HCX.