By Erik van Klinken
Publication Date: 2026-03-10 13:53:00
Veeam Data Platform now supports agentless, host-level, image-based backup for HPE Morpheus VM Essentials Software. The general availability brings HPE’s offering on level terms with its rivals such as VMware, Nutanix and Microsoft.
Organizations evaluating VMware alternatives have had no shortage of options since Broadcom’s acquisition changed the pricing landscape. HPE’s answer is HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, a KVM-based virtualization platform that became generally available in early 2025 as a direct vSphere alternative, scalable to tens of thousands of VMs. Data protection is now expanded by Veeam, taking on Cohesity and Commvault which also support HPE’s solution.
With the HPE Morpheus plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication version 13.0.1 or later, customers can perform host-based image-level backups of HVM virtual machines. This is possible without installing agents inside individual VMs. Veeam integrates directly with the HVM hypervisor and the HPE Morpheus VM Essentials control plane. Improvements made for other hypervisors now apply fully to HPE’s offering. Veeam Data Platform v13, released in November, for example, expanded hypervisor support as part of a broader push toward more security and flexibility options.
What the integration delivers
The feature set covers the essentials enterprises tend to need. Changed Block Tracking (CBT) enables faster incremental backups with reduced read I/O on production VMs. Full VM…
