Podcast #140: Inside HPE SimpliVity with Morpheus VM Essentials

Sep 27, 2025

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HPE integrates Simplivity Hyperconverged HCI plus Morpheus VM Essentials stack. Get the details in this podcast.

Brian and the team traveled to Spring, TX, to get an up-close look at what HPE is working on. After the tour, Brian sat down with HPE’s Vinay Jonnakuti, Director, Product Management for HCI and Ecosystems, to unpack the newly integrated SimpliVity plus Morpheus VM Essentials stack. They discuss why integrated HCI is important now, the benefits of two-node high availability at the edge, cost savings with per-socket licensing, and how Morpheus combines hybrid cloud and automation. It also includes real-world retail and AI at the edge examples.

Brian and Vinay’s friendship goes way back, making this podcast interactive and fun. They do a bit of reminiscing, talk about the Silicon Valley TV show from 2016, and the fact that Vinay still has the Pied Piper t-shirt.

From the tv show Silicon Valley

Then, it’s time to get down to business. HPE is strengthening its vertically integrated HCI stack by combining SimpliVity’s efficient data platform with Morpheus VM Essentials as the control plane. The result is a fully supported, single-vendor solution covering servers, networking, hypervisor, and management. Customers benefit from two-node HA, integrated backup and deduplication, automated deployments and upgrades, and per-socket licensing that lowers TCO, especially for SLED, retail, and distributed enterprises. Morpheus adds hybrid cloud orchestration to the platform, while ProLiant hardware accelerates the adoption of modern NVMe, CPUs, and NICs. Expect regular release schedules and more ISV-backed solutions for the retail, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors.

There is a lot to learn from this podcast. And it’s only 30 minutes! But if you don’t have the time to watch it in one sitting, we have broken it down into five-minute segments, highlighting the topics covered in each segment.

00:00–05:00

Introduction: Brian and Vinay set the scene at HPE in Spring/Houston. Brian introduces Vinay and asks him to describe his role leading product management for HPE SimpliVity and recall the pre-acquisition days and pop-culture tie-ins (Silicon Valley/Pied Piper bezel).
The situation: Transition from nostalgia to today’s focus on HPE’s vertically integrated stack, SimpliVity HCI, and HPE Morpheus VM Essentials as part of HPE’s end-to-end story.

05:00–10:00

Market dynamics and alternatives: Discussing VMware cost pressures, especially for SLED and smaller organizations, and exploring the landscape of alternatives, including support gaps in Proxmox, Nutanix costs, Azure Stack options, and other niche players.
HPE’s integrated differentiation: HPE’s unique “soup to nuts” approach, with servers, networking, hypervisor, and control plane, delivering a fully integrated, single-vendor solution with SimpliVity + Morpheus VM Essentials.
Morpheus scope: Morpheus Enterprise’s broad automation/customization capabilities and how VM Essentials provides a focused subset tailored to HCI management.

10:00–15:00

Operational simplicity and cost: Automated deployment/upgrades through the VM Essentials Manager; positive beta feedback; per-socket licensing helps TCO (no per-core tax), aligning well with budget-constrained sectors.
Feature depth retained: Built-in migration tooling, integrated backups, data efficiency (dedupe/compression), and day-one parity for core SimpliVity capabilities with a roadmap to expand features.
Two-node advantage: Unique two-node HA architecture (with lightweight witness) maintaining two copies of data, enabling predictable performance, resilience, and lower cost versus 3–4 node minimums elsewhere.

15:00–20:00

Portfolio fit and scale: Clear positioning for SimpliVity at the edge, distributed enterprise, and smaller clusters, with options to scale up through HPE’s broader storage portfolio (Electra MP/B10K) and similar management experiences.
Cadence and alignment: Tight release cadence: Morpheus VM Essentials shipping frequently (monthly to ~6-weekly) and SimpliVity targeting multiple releases per year, adding features, hardware support, and deep GreenLake integrations.
Unified platform vision: GreenLake + OpsRamp + Morpheus + ProLiant compute form the backbone for hybrid cloud management, observability, and orchestration with SimpliVity as a key edge component.

20:00–25:00

Hybrid cloud reality: The “world is hybrid” message—Morpheus can manage multiple hypervisors and public clouds alongside SimpliVity for a unified control plane and visibility.
Hardware matters (again): Emphasis on modern ProLiant-based platforms enabling faster adoption of NVMe, larger drives, faster CPUs/DRAM/NICs, and how moving off custom accelerators increases agility.
Edge AI use cases: Retail-edge scenarios (video analytics, loss prevention, restock, shopper intent, touchless/self-checkout) benefit from local inference; SimpliVity nodes with NVIDIA support can host AI/analytics VMs for real-time insights.

25:00–30:00

Vertical solutions and ISV ecosystem: HPE partnering with ISVs in retail, healthcare, and manufacturing to deliver validated joint solutions on SimpliVity with Morpheus control, combining resilience and data protection with domain apps.
Customer engagement: Houston Customer Briefing Center demos (rack of HPE gear + SimpliVity node), upcoming collateral and videos, and guidance to engage HPE partners/field for evaluations.
Wrap-up: Closing remarks and availability timing for the integrated SimpliVity + VM Essentials solution. Look for links to a deeper technical dive video and white paper accompanying the podcast.

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