HPE VM essentials Hypervisor OS?

[MartinCloudify]

Hi,

i am looking into moving some of our midsize (bank) customers of vmware (ending license contracts) on a short term.
HPE VM essentaisl looks very good.
I have 1 question that i need to answer to my customers.

The hyperviser runs on top of ubunu 22.04?
So this is not a bolted down OS llike ESXi?
CISO departments of 2 of my banks are asking me this exact question, and i can't find the answer.
They do not want another "layer" of OS management.

Thanks in advance for an answer, product looks very promising.

Martin

[CalvinZito]

Let's break down the hypervisor technology. Both VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V are examples of Type 1 hypervisors, meaning they run directly on a server's physical hardware rather than on top of another operating system. Our HPE VM (HVM) also fits this description.

HVM is built on KVM, a virtualization module integrated directly into the Linux kernel. This module effectively turns the Linux kernel into a bare-metal hypervisor. While we need Ubuntu to provide the kernel, the hypervisor doesn't run on top of the OS; it uses the kernel's built-in features to act as a hypervisor itself.

What makes it a type 1 hypervisor and what are the advantages of it? 

• It has direct access to the hardware,. It bypasses the OS and typcial OS overhead. 
• Better performance - again, because it has direct access to the hardware, HVMs have near bare metal performance. 
• Unique - it has all the qualities of a type 1 hypervisor and has access ot the ecosystem and features of the OS. 
• Security - it benefits from the robust security features of the underlying Linux OS.

Finally, VMware does use a microkernal (I think called VMkernal) to pull it's hypervisor features so while it isn't an OS, neither ESXi or HVM run on top of an OS.but both are bare metal type-1 hypervisors. 

[MartinCloudify]

Thank you for your answer.

but this would mean i still need to maintain the ubuntu OS that hosts HVM does it not?
I am getting these question from CISO departments at 2 of our bank customers
.
As new vurnabilities will appear i will need to patch/update the UBUNTU OS that hosts HVM.
Correct?

[Arnout_Verbeken]

Correct, just like you need to update/patch your ESXi Hypervisor when new vulnerabilites pop up.

HVM hosts --> Ubuntu with KVM functionality in kernel --> comparable to ESXi hosts
VM Essentials Manager  --> the management layer --> comparable to vCenter.