- Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04
- Hardware: HPE Proliant Gen 11 Hardware is recommended with additional hardware being tested and certified over time
- CPU: One or more 64-bit x86 CPUs, 1.5 GHz minimum with Intel VT or AMD-V enabled
- Memory: Minimum of 8GB for non-hyperconverged (HCI) deployments or 8GB plus 4GB for each data disk for HCI deployments
- Storage: Minimum of 50GB for operating system storage
- Network: 100 Mbps or faster NIC (10 Gbps recommended)
- IP Addressing: Static IP address
- Internet Connectivity: Internet access is required to download and install the required packages and dependencies
An HPE VME cluster is a hypervisor clustering technology utilizing KVM. Beginning with just a few basic Ubuntu boxes, HPE VM Essentials can create a cluster of HPE VME Hypervisor hosts complete with monitoring, failover, easy migration of workloads across the cluster, and zero-downtime maintenance access to hypervisor host nodes. All of this is backed by a highly-granular RBAC engine, and image library with automation stacks.
- Automated HPE VME cluster provisioning
- CEPH storage configuration for multi-node clusters
- CEPH summary, a high-level dashboard of CEPH components and status
- DRS, automatic rebalancing of clusters based on resource consumption
- Compatibility validation of network and storage devices at time of cluster provisioning
- Hypervisor console
- Configuration and deployment of OVS networks (VLANs)
- Cluster and individual host monitoring
- Add hosts to existing clusters
- Console support for cluster hosts
- Add, edit and remove networks and datastores from clusters
- Gracefully take hosts out of service with maintenance mode
- Migration of workloads across hosts
- Configurable automatic failover of running workloads when a host is lost
- Ability to add and provision to fibre channel storage resources or iSCSI storage resources via GFS2 or OCFS2 filesystem
- Governance through HPE VM Essentials RBAC
- Workload provisioning and monitoring (Linux or Windows workloads)
- Console support for running workloads
- Affinity placement, pin VMs to hosts
- Brownfield discovery of existing VMs
- Reconfigure VM sizing
- Disk migration across datastores
- UEFI support
- Migration of VMs across hosts
- Configure automatic failover for individual VMs in the event a host is lost
- Reconfigure running workloads to resize plan, add/remove disks, and add/remove network interfaces
- Backup and restore VM workloads, with optional synthetic full backups
- Clone VMs
- Take snapshots and revert to snapshots
- HPE VM Essentials library and automation support
An HPE VME cluster using the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) Layout consists of at least three hosts. Physical hosts are recommended to experience full performance of the solution. In smaller environments, it is possible to create an HPE VME cluster with three nested virtual machines, a single physical host (non-HCI only), or a single nested virtual machine (non-HCI only) though performance may be reduced. With just one host it won’t be possible to migrate workloads between hosts or take advantage of automatic failover. Currently, a host must be a pre-existing Ubuntu 22.04 box with environment and host system requirements contained in this section. HPE VM Essentials handles cluster configuration by providing the IP address(es) for your host(s) and a few other details. Details on adding the cluster to HPE VM Essentials are contained in the next section.
- Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04
- CPU: One or more 64-bit x86 CPUs, 1.5 GHz minimum with Intel VT or AMD-V enabled
- Memory: 4 GB minimum. For non-converged Layouts, configure HPE VME hosts to use shared external storage, such as an NFS share or iSCSI target. Converged Layouts utilize Ceph for clustered storage and require a 4 GB minimum memory per Ceph disk
- Disk Space: For converged storage, a data disk of at least 500 GB is required for testing. More storage will be needed for production clusters. An operating system disk of 15 GB is also required. Clusters utilizing non-converged Layouts can configure external storage (NFS, etc.) while HPE VM Essentials will configure Ceph for multi-node clusters
- Network Connectivity: HPE VME hosts must be assigned static IP addresses. They also need DNS resolution of the HPE VM Essentials appliance and Internet access in order to download and install system packages for dependencies, such as KVM, Open vSwitch (OVS), and more
