With the recent announcement of HPE VM Essentials, now generally available in a standalone version in January 2025 and in HPE Private Cloud later this year, I’ve received many inquiries from Veeam and HPE sellers eager to understand the current state of Veeam's support for this new hypervisor offering. Although direct integration between Veeam and HPE VM Essentials is not yet available, addressing these questions now is crucial for sellers and customers considering this new offering.
We need to provide clarity on Veeam's position, ensuring that HPE and Veeam sellers have the information they need to communicate effectively with customers. While there isn't yet native integration with the HPE VME hypervisor, Veeam remains competitive and on par with other HPE data protection partners in offering a robust solution through its agent-based approach. This ensures that organizations considering HPE VM Essentials have reliable options for securing their data while Veeam explores deeper integrations.
Managing virtual environments efficiently has become critical for organizations of all sizes, and HPE VM Essentials provides businesses with a unified approach to manage their virtual environments across the HPE VME hypervisor and VMware.
What is HPE VM Essentials?
For more detailed information, visit the official HPE VM Essentials page.
HPE VM Essentials advertises the following benefits:
- Simplified Virtualization Management: Provision and manage both KVM and VMware-based virtual machines from a single interface, streamlining management and significantly reducing costs.
- Unified Interface: Connect existing VMware clusters to provide VM vending into ESXi and the HPE VME hypervisor, allowing customers to manage their entire virtual environment from one interface.
- Flexible Consumption Model: Available as a standalone software or integrated into HPE's private cloud solutions, it ensures that organizations are future-proofed, adapting to their evolving needs.
Built on a KVM-based architecture, HPE VM Essentials has enterprise-grade cluster management capabilities that include high availability, live migration, and distributed workload placement. This new offering is designed to provide customers with an alternative hypervisor to VMware, while still offering a solution where organizations can efficiently provision workloads on-demand. With a focus on enabling unified management across on-premises and cloud environments, HPE VM Essentials allows for greater flexibility as customers determine their optimal workload strategy. Amidst rising concerns over costs and customer focus—especially in light of VMware's recent acquisition by Broadcom—HPE VM Essentials is positioned to be a viable choice for organizations looking to future-proof their virtual infrastructure.
Current Veeam Support for HPE VM Essentials
While Veeam does not currently offer native integration with the HPE VME hypervisor, businesses can still protect their workloads using Veeam agents. This approach is ideal for those familiar with setting up Veeam agents to protect physical Windows and Linux workloads, as the process seamlessly extends to virtual machines within HPE VME.
- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows: A comprehensive solution for backing up and recovering Windows VMs. Find detailed setup and configuration steps in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.
- Veeam Agent for Linux: Tailored for Linux environments, this agent ensures secure and efficient backup processes. Learn more in the Veeam Agent for Linux User Guide.
- Veeam Agent Management Guide: For a broader understanding of how to deploy and manage these agents within your infrastructure, refer to the Veeam Agent Management Guide.
By implementing Veeam Agents, customers gain a trusted and versatile solution for maintaining data integrity, assuring peace of mind as they choose HPE’s new hypervisor offering.
A Reminder of Key Advantages of Using Veeam Agents:
- Change Block Tracking: Efficiently backs up only changed data to reduce backup windows and storage needs.
- Instant Recovery: Quickly recovers entire machines, files, or application items directly from backup files to natively-supported hypervisors.
- Flexible Recovery: Supports recovery to different environments for flexibility in disaster recovery.
- Application-Consistent Backups: Ensures reliable restores for complex applications like SQL Server and Exchange.
- File-Level and Application Item Recovery: Provides granular restore options to recover specific files or application items.
- End-to-End Encryption: Secures data during transfer and at rest with robust encryption.
- Centralized Management: Manages Veeam Agents via a single console for simplified operations.
- Automated Backup Scheduling: Flexible schedules automate backups to meet business needs.
For organizations using HPE VM Essentials, employing these agents will provide critical data protection and help bridge the current integration gap.
Conclusion
HPE VM Essentials provides organizations with a flexible and cost-efficient virtualization platform. While Veeam does not currently offer direct integration, our agent-based solutions ensure reliable data protection, maintaining our competitive position among other HPE partners. Veeam Agents enable customers to secure workloads within HPE VM Essentials, supporting data security and business continuity.
Our focus remains on evaluating our support for HPE VM Essentials to best meet customer needs. As we continue these assessments, we will update customers and partners with any developments. Organizations can rely on Veeam's proven solutions for effective data protection as they navigate their virtualization strategies.
