HPE VM Essentials

[JaySt]

Thats indeed something they also mentioned, about the connection between the teams. So all good i hope.
Lets go!

[Gostev]

FYI today Veeam has officially announced the intention to develop a native integration with HPE VME
https://www.veeam.com/company/press-rel ... overy.html
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/pres ... overy.html

[JaySt]

Good news!

[Didi7]

@HPEStorageGuy

I really must admit that HPE VM Essentials looks like an interesting virtualization target platform for our future onprem infrastructure environment. There is hope to finally move away from this Broadcom VMware debacle. Nutanix did not convince us as well, we used it several years apart from other VMware infrastructure environments and imo its also way too expensive, less mature and more complex than VMware.

Nevertheless a free Community Edition of HPE VM Essentials (lets say 10 workloads) might draw more attention to the product. See what happened to Veeam since they launched their Community Edition, imo it was a very wise decision from Veeam. So spread the word!

No need to mention that it is awesome news that Veeam has decided to fully support this remarkable new hypervisor environment!

Regards,
Didi7

[Gostev]

TIL (from Reddit) that HPE VM Essentials is only supported on HPE hardware. Feels like an artificial limitation to drive more HPE hardware sales, however definitely something to consider when planning its adoption, depending on your existing server and storage fleet.

[JaySt]

correct, currently. But that could change. I think it's already on the roadmap to have it on other hardware as well.
HPE is also (preferably i think) packaging this as a part of disaggregated converged infrastructure, together with compute and storage, managed as a whole from greenlake cloud platform. They call it PCBE (Private Cloud Business Edition).

[CalvinZ]

@Gostev and @JaySt: Several 3rd party servers and storage are currently in test. Obviously, it's far easier for us to test HPE gear but going to 3rd party gear was always on the roadmap and is now in flight. All HPE Private Cloud solutions will include our HVM (the HPE KVM instance in HPE Morpheus Software). That includes HPE Private Cloud Business Edition and HPE Private Cloud. Also coming is HPE SimpliVity with VM Essentials. VMware will still be an option for customers that want to use ESXi as their hypervisor.

@Didi7: I'm working on a HPE Morpheus Enterprise Community Edition (branding won't like me but I'll call this MECE). Not sure what it will be but it was initially defined as 4 sockets. To allow home-labs with external block storage and dual-socket CPUs, I'm trying to get approval to have 6 socket MECE licenses. Not sure of the timing but hoping it will be in the next 4-6 weeks. Would love to hear back from home-labbers who want a Community Edition, how many servers, how many sockets, and do you have external block storage. Note the 3-server requirement is because KVM uses GFS2 and that requires quorum.

[CalvinZ]

BTW, here's a link to the HPE Morpheus VM Essentials Compatibility Guide: https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/do ... 05501en_us. I spy a couple of Dell servers have made the list (and again, more coming).

[Gostev]

@HPEStorageGuy for free offerings I recommend that you consider something like the current Veeam approach: say 2 sockets CE (with no production usage restrictions) and 6 socket NFR (for non-production usage like home labs). That's just something I learnt the hard way: if you make CE too good, the business will want to kill it off anyway, and it will be permanent overhead for you defending the offering in related quarterly calls (this has been soon 10 years of my life across three different management teams). While much larger NFR is never seen as a threat because it cannot be deployed in production and is for labs only.

Also, if it's not too late, do consider Core-based vs. Socket-based licensing right out of gate. Otherwise you're destined to some painful licensing revisions in 5-10 years from now, when a single socket will have gazillion of cores, even your larger customers only needing like 10 sockets total for their entire environment and your business faces dramatic drop in renewal revenue.

[jhoughes]

@HPEStorageGuy, MECE... I like it. For a community edition, I'd love to see 2 sockets, and for an NFR maybe 4 or 6. (Or a vExpert/community champion/, evangelist level of license whether per socket or cores)

I've just started getting it back in the lab, as I hadn't worked with it in a few years. I'm planning to release some unofficial documentation about getting it working with Pure Storage (doing it as a "my hat is off, this is vendor agnostic, just showing everyone their options" type of write-up).

Either way, hope you're doing well dude, and glad to hear you got saved. It was stupid to see you get your gold name badge and still be trying to find a role...

@Gostev, we really appreciate you supporting the fight for CE over the years. I still run the CE within 6 environments that I support, including the non-profit that I help lead, and another that I support. Please know that it's a decade of a good fight, for those of us that work with you, and those that don't (or just not directly anymore).

[CalvinZ]

@Gostev - thanks for the feedback. I'll add your feedback to my list of things as I work through it. We have NFRs for partners that have higher socket count and customer POC/trials but I'm not managing those - just the CE. The intent of the CE is non-commercial home lab use only. I'll raise the idea of a CE for commerical use but my role is focused on community.

The cores vs sockets was a decision made by HPE execs across all HPE Morpheus software to have VERY competitive pricing for paid licenses. For example, the HPE Morpheus VM Essentials costs $600/socket. I don't think I have an option to have the MECE licensed by cores since the baseline is sockets.

@Jhoughes - Yo Joe!!! Nice to hear from you. No comment on the knuckle-heads that thought it was a good time for me to get a gold badge.

I've had a handful of home-labbers tell me that for their homelabs, they want 6 sockets so they can use external storage with 2-socket servers. Not sure I get what you're thinking - 2 sockets on a home lab CE seems pretty limiting (one or two servers max). I'll reach out to better understand. The NFRs that partners or ISVs would use in their "official" labs would be 12-16 sockets and I'm not doing those myself, just focused on a CE.

[jcollins1]

We are officially migrating from VMware to VME. Hoping for some light at the end of the tunnel regarding VEEAM here.

Edit:

Just saw the post! Awesome!

[mark.salomon@acp.de]

Any news on the snap integration / vme native Veeam integration? The market is waiting for this to be released, then we can address our customers with this solution. Without a vaild backup integration (no agent backup is not enough) we are all waiting... Would love to see pressure on this topic!

[Gostev]

No news since last week see above

[CalvinZ]

@mark.salomon@acp.de - As Gostev said, nothing more since what was announced at Discover. But to recap, HPE and Veeam announced that we will have deeper integration between HPE Morpheus VM Essentials and Veeam: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/pres ... overy.html. Now the work needs to happen. The HPE Morpheus team has been working on Change Block Tracking API and Veeam will take it to the finish line from there.