HPE will make its KVM-based virtualization solution available to customers next month. With HPE VM Essentials Software, customers can virtualize their VMs, which can be done within HPE Private Cloud solutions or on their own hardware. This means customers can also purchase HPE VME separately from HPE.
Earlier this year, HPE announced during HPE Discover in Las Vegas that it was working on a virtualization solution. VMware’s name remained unmentioned at the time. However, it was clear to everyone that HPE wanted to offer an alternative for VMware customers who could not afford the price increases implemented by Broadcom. So, HPE is specifically targeting customers who primarily use vSphere. HPE VME lets you manage both VMs running on vSphere and those running on HPE VME.
HPE highlights the competitive offering of HPE VM Essentials Software
The company reveals that customers can save significantly on costs by switching to HPE VME. It uses a price per socket, a model customers are already familiar with and often prefer over a subscription model.
HPE VM Essentials Software should make managing VMs especially easy. In addition, HPE has worked on support for common storage protocols, distributed workloads, high availability, live migrations, and integrated data protection.
Commvault and Cohesity have signed on as HPE partners to provide support for backing up VMs on the HPE VME platform. However, that is just the beginning; many other partners and applications will begin to provide support for HPE VME in the coming months.
In addition, HPE itself offers a broad software portfolio that will directly support HPE VME. Examples include Cloudphysics, Zerto, Morpheus and OpsRamp.
The video below shows a demo of HPE VME, in which the simplicity of management becomes quickly apparent.
Morpheus Data should ensure rapid adoption and management
Last summer, HPE completed the acquisition of Morpheus Data, a hybrid cloud management tool and application infrastructure automation engine. Morpheus Data allows users to manage workloads on different hypervisors and deploy migration from one hypervisor to another. The latter, in particular, is very important for the rollout of HPE VME. HPE customers will soon be able to use Morpheus Data to easily migrate their VMware workloads to HPE VME.
The acquisition of Morpheus Data is still fairly fresh in memory, and the question remains what role this software will have within the HPE portfolio.
Availability
HPE VME will become available as a standalone solution on December 24, 2024. HPE GreenLake Private Cloud customers will have to be a little more patient; they will be able to start using HPE VME within their private cloud environment next spring and then begin migrating their VMware instances to VME within their private cloud environment.