It’s a pretty straightforward question I recently got…can you combine Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) and Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM)?
First a short refresher:
- Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) allows you to link multiple vCenter Servers, so you can view and search across all linked vCenter Server systems. You can log in to all linked vCenter Server systems simultaneously with a single username and password. Roles , permissions, licenses and tags are replicated across all vCenter Servers. ELM is extensively used by VMware Cloud Foundation where the different (Management) Workload Domains (and their respective vCenter Servers) are linked to each other (up to 15).
- Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) allows you to link your cloud vCenter Server instance with an on-premises vCenter Single Sign-on Domain. It provides similar capabilities: you can view and manage inventories of both your on-premises and cloud data centers in a single pain, you can migrate workload between de cloud and on-premises vCenter Server and you can share tags. There are two deployment models voor HLM: through a on-premises Cloud Gateway Appliance (in this case you link from the CGA to your cloud vCenter). The other way around is to connect your cloud vCenter Server to your on-premises vCenter Server. This requires an identity source to b added to the SDDC LDAP domain. HLM is used by VMware Cloud on AWS and provides flexibility in terms of latency and on-premises/cloud vCenter Server versions may differ.
So, and now the answer to the initial question – can you combine the two?
So yes, (of course) you can combine ELM and HLM:
When you link a vCenter Server instance on VMware Cloud on AWS to a workload domain where multiple vCenter Server instances are connected in Enhanced Linked Mode, all those instances are linked to the SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS.
This answers the question, so no problem to connect your on-premises VCF environment to VMConAWS :).
