While some readers might be surprised of me comparing Hybrid Cloud Manager and vCloud Connector as many might assume that Hybrid Cloud Manager is replacing vCloud Connector, so why compare them. While this might be true in the long term, its still not the case today. While Hybrid Cloud Manager Excel at some of the features vCloud Connector used to deliver and add few that vCloud connector did not have, it still lack some of the features vCloud Connector had that you might still need. I have put this post to help you decided which one fit your need better or do you need both. Yes, there will be cases where you will need both products to co-exist.

Let’s compare Hybrid Cloud Manager and vCloud Connector on their merits in the different use cases:

Target Cloud it support:

• Hybrid Cloud Manager is only meant to support VMware vCloud Air (Previously known by VMware Hybrid Cloud Service) Dedicated Cloud at the momement, where it will expand to the other vCloud Air offering in the near future. This might even expand to VMware vCloud Air Network providers in the future, but its not there yet.
• vCloud Connector is currently supported with VMware vCloud Air, vCloud Director, and most VMware vCloud Air Network providers.

Workload Mobility to the Cloud:

• Hybrid Cloud Manager support advanced capabilities that allows you to move virtual machines to vCloud Air and back with a minimal downtime using replication technologies with software WAN acceleration. Cross-Cloud vMotion was shown as a tech previews at VMworld which will allow a zero downtime migration betweem on-premises environments and vCloud Air in the near future.
• vCloud Connector while it allows the move of VMs from on-premise to vCloud Air, vCloud Air Network partners, and vCloud Director environments, it requires the VM to be down during the full syncing process, which requires a longer downtime than what can be achieved with Hybrid Cloud Manager.

Data Center Extension

• Hybrid Cloud Manager offers a seemless way to extend your internal network to vCloud Air using L2VPN, where it will automatically deploy/configure the required appliances to your vSphere environment. Your network get extended into org vDC network on the vCloud Air side.
• vCloud Connector which allow you not to only extend your internal network to vCloud Air, but to vCloud Air Network Partners and vCloud Director setups, setting it up is more involved than with Hybrid Cloud Manager as you will have to setup vCNS Edge manually at the customer side. Further, it extend your network to the vAPP network level which means you will have more network extensions to setup.

Single Pane of Glass:

• Hybrid Cloud Manager provides you with a view of both your on-premise and vCloud Air inventories from the same screen
• vCloud Connector has the ability to provide you with a view of your on-premise VMs, vCloud Air VMs, vCloud Air Network Provider VMs, and vCloud Director VMs.

Catalog Sync:

• Hybrid Cloud Manager does not support syncing Catalogs between your different public clouds or vCloud Director instances
• vCloud Connector does support syncing Catalogs between your different public clouds or vCloud Director instances. If you need this, then you need vCloud Connector.

Cost:

• Hybrid Cloud Manager requires a subscription and comes at a cost that you can find more about by visiting: http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/pricing-calculator
• vCloud Connector is a free.

The below table should summarize this comparison:

	Hybrid Cloud Manager	vCloud Connector
Supported Cloud Platform	vCloud Air	vCloud Air, vCloud Air Network, vCloud Director
Workload Mobility	Minimal Downtime	Downtime during the full copying
Datacenter Extension	Optimal, at the Org vDC Level	Less robust than HCM, at vAPP level
Single Pane of Glass	Provided	Provided
Catalog Sync	Not Available	Available
Cost	Subscription Cost	Free