Explore HPE Morpheus Enterprise: Free Community Edition Now Available

HPE just announced the availability of the HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software Community Edition. HPE Morpheus Enterprise is a robust solution designed to accelerate the multi-cloud and hybrid IT automation journey. Whether just starting or aiming to optimize your current cloud infrastructure, or looking at less costly alternatives to your current virtual infrastructure solution, this is your opportunity to explore HPE Morpheus Enterprise.

What is HPE Morpheus Enterprise?

HPE Morpheus Enterprise is an innovative software platform that enables IT teams to unify management, automate processes, and make operations easier across private and public clouds. It is designed to help organizations modernize their infrastructure while boosting agility and lowering complexity. With features focused on VM lifecycle management, self-service provisioning, and policy-based governance, HPE Morpheus Enterprise is the ideal solution for managing hybrid cloud environments.

HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software Community Edition is part of HPE’s hybrid cloud management portfolio, designed to unify and simplify managing on-premises, public cloud, and containerized environments. Morpheus Enterprise provides a single control plane for provisioning, automation, cost analytics, governance, and lifecycle management across various infrastructure, including HPE’s KVM-based hypervisor, VMware, and Kubernetes clusters. The platform is hypervisor, hardware, and cloud-agnostic, enabling organizations to avoid vendor lock-in and streamline operations through centralized governance and automation. It integrates with popular ITSM tools, backup providers, and orchestration systems, making it suitable for complex enterprise environments.

The Community Edition gives organizations hands-on experience with Morpheus Enterprise, enabling IT teams to provide service provider features internally for self-service VM and application management through GUI, API, or Infrastructure-as-Code. It offers rapid provisioning (up to 150 times faster), potential cloud cost savings (up to 30%), and improved security with role-based access controls. Usable as a standalone or with HPE’s private cloud solutions like GreenLake, its flexible, socket-based licensing lowers the total cost of ownership and supports unified management across edge, core, and cloud.

The HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software (including the Community Edition) is not a completely open, free-for-anyone download. It is primarily tied to enterprise software licensing, with pricing models based on the number of CPU sockets rather than core count. The full-featured Enterprise version is reported to cost around $2,500 per socket, while the more limited Morpheus VM Essentials is about $600 per socket, making it more accessible for smaller environments or those just starting with HPE’s virtualization stack. These products are positioned as cost-effective alternatives to VMware, especially for organizations looking to avoid high virtualization licensing costs.

However, there are indications that HPE offers a free 60-day trial for those interested in evaluating the software, but ongoing use beyond the trial would require a paid license. The Community Edition is designed to give organizations a hands-on experience with Morpheus’ capabilities.

Community Edition Highlights include:

• The HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software Community Edition includes all the features in HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, enabling you to:
• Deploy virtual machines quickly and efficiently through intuitive self-service workflows.
• Automate day-to-day VM operations with seamless provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Leverage policies for governance and compliance, ensuring consistent management across environments. Experiment with the platform at no cost and discover how it can transform your IT infrastructure.

If interested, head over to My HPE Software Center, click on Software on the left-hand rail, and search for HPE Morpheus Enterprise. The community edition can be obtained by sending an email to morpheus_communityedition@hpe.com. This is for non-commercial use, like home labs and education. It includes the features of HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, including HPE VMs for those who need VMs in their home labs. Registration is required. HPE is also offering a free 60-day trial of HPE Morpheus VM Essentials.

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