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Organizations exploring alternatives to VMware have seen a growing number of choices, especially after Broadcom’s acquisition reshaped pricing structures. HPE’s response to this shift is HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, a KVM-based virtualization platform that became generally available in early 2025. Positioned as a direct competitor to vSphere, it can scale to support tens of thousands of virtual machines.
To strengthen its ecosystem, Veeam has now expanded data protection capabilities for this platform, competing with other major players like Cohesity and Commvault, which also provide support for HPE’s solution.
With the HPE Morpheus plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication (version 13.0.1 and above), organizations can perform host-level, image-based backups of HVM virtual machines—without needing to install agents inside each VM. Veeam integrates directly with both the HVM hypervisor and the Morpheus control plane, bringing the same advanced capabilities already available for other hypervisors to HPE’s platform.
For instance, Veeam Data Platform v13, released in November, broadened hypervisor support as part of its wider focus on improving security, flexibility, and cross-platform compatibility.
What This Integration Offers
The integration delivers a feature set aligned with enterprise needs. Changed Block Tracking (CBT) enables faster incremental backups while reducing the load on production systems. Full VM recovery into HVM is supported—even from backups created on different hypervisors—making it especially valuable for organizations in the middle of migration projects.
It also supports cross-hypervisor recovery, allowing workloads to be restored across multiple platforms. Additional features include application-aware processing with VSS integration and file-level recovery for critical services such as Exchange, SQL Server, Active Directory, and Oracle.
For data transfer, both Network Block Device (NBD) and HotAdd transport modes are available. Supported storage options include GFS2 and NFS, along with integration for the HPE Alletra Storage MP plug-in. Security and usability are further enhanced with backup encryption and guest file indexing.
From a disaster recovery perspective, organizations can restore workloads to cloud platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure, ensuring flexibility and avoiding dependence on a single recovery destination.
Strengthening the Veeam–HPE Partnership
This release builds on earlier collaboration between Veeam and HPE. In December, both companies expanded their partnership with multiple integrations focused on improving data resilience, backup capabilities, and cybersecurity in hybrid cloud environments.
Support for image-based backups in HPE Morpheus VM Essentials was first introduced as a planned feature in mid-2025. With its general availability now confirmed, the capability is fully ready for enterprise deployment.
Why It Matters
For HPE, native integration with a leading backup provider like Veeam is essential to position Morpheus VM Essentials as a serious VMware alternative. Given its KVM-based architecture and HPE’s emphasis on multi-platform compatibility, this integration allows organizations to migrate workloads without the added complexity of switching backup solutions.
In short, businesses gain greater flexibility, reduced vendor lock-in, and a smoother path toward modern, hybrid cloud environments.
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