HPE GreenLake and aaS terms are the contract documents under which Hewlett Packard Enterprise provides on-premises and cloud-based as-a-service offerings. The HPE aaS Terms for Customers govern HPE’s provision of on-premises and cloud-based as-a-service offerings to the customer, directly or through a reseller.[1] The customer terms index lists the aaS terms and aaS Commercial Terms as the documents used for purchasing GreenLake services.[5] The agreement is the combination, in ascending order of precedence, of the aaS Terms, the aaS Commercial Terms (when buying from HPE), the Solution Material, the customer order, the legal quote and any Data Privacy and Security Agreement.[1] Earlier GreenLake Terms and Conditions are archived and may be used only for sales before July 1, 2024, while remaining available to support active agreements.[4]
Editions
GreenLake is a family of services rather than a single product. The GreenLake Flex Solutions service description presents a cloud pay-per-use model on-premises, built on HPE server, storage, network, software and services and installed at the customer’s site or a colocation facility.[3] Each product in a Flex Solution requires a base product support layer of HPE Tech Care Service or HPE Aruba Networking Foundational Care on select products.[3] Software such as Ezmeral ML Ops or Runtime Enterprise can be included in a GreenLake managed service, in which case the licences are deployed on the HPE-managed environment and cannot be transferred to third-party infrastructure or a public cloud.[6] HPE Compute Ops Management subscriptions are assigned to servers in GreenLake.[7]
Metrics
The aaS Commercial Terms define a Unit of Measure (UOM) as the billable unit of the service as defined in the Solution Material or legal quote, a Commitment as the amount of service committed, expressed in UOM or as a spend amount, and Consumption as the amount the customer uses based on one or more UOMs.[2] The Flex Solutions description gives examples of what the metering tools collect: powered-on server or virtual machine allocated memory, physical used CPU cores or usable storage.[3] The solution material or legal quote may include UOM rate bands tied to the quantity of UOMs available for the customer’s use.[2] For the Ezmeral SaaS products the unit is vCPU-hours or GB per month, as described in the Ezmeral article.
Counting / floors
Payment models
Unless otherwise agreed, services are available under one or more of three payment models.
| Model | Charging | Billing |
|---|---|---|
| Pay per use | Metered usage of Units of Measure at the applicable rate; no Commitment | In arrears[2] |
| Subscription | Fee for the right to use the service up to a defined quantity, for the Commitment period | In advance[2] |
| Subscription with a Pay per use option | Subscription fee plus pay per use fees for use above the Commitment | Subscription in advance; overage in arrears[2] |
The pay per use rate stated in the Solution Material or quote applies as long as the agreement is in effect. If the rate is not fixed, it may only be changed by the seller with prior notice.[2] Ezmeral terms describe a similar split between Reserve Capacity, which may attract discounts, and On-demand Capacity above the reserve, which does not.[6]
Billing and payment
Unless otherwise agreed, billing for services begins on the Service availability date provided by HPE, and billing is monthly. Billing can occur through auto-activation if the customer delays installation or set-up for 30 days.[2] Invoiced amounts are payable without offset within 30 days.[2] Purchasers must provide an updated or new purchase order annually, or when funds in the current order are insufficient to cover estimated usage for the next three months, and failing to do so does not affect the obligation to pay.[2]
Early termination and end of term
If services are terminated in whole or in part before the Commitment period ends, other than for HPE’s uncured material breach or insolvency, the purchaser pays early termination fees equal to the Subscription fee for the impacted services multiplied by the remaining Commitment period. This includes termination for convenience within a Commitment period.[2] For services with customer-controlled Systems, unless the purchaser bought de-installation and return services, the purchaser bears the costs of de-installation, packaging and return and is billed until HPE receives the returned Systems.[2]
Renewal
The customer is authorized to use the services for the contracted period. Unless either party gives at least 90 days prior notice of non-renewal, the authorization extends automatically for the minimum extension period, which is monthly unless a service includes systems that cannot be extended monthly, such as third-party software.[1] The customer may terminate all or part of the agreement for convenience on 90 days written notice unless the Solution Material says otherwise, which should be read together with the early termination fee above.[1]
Virtualization & partitioning
No virtualization or partitioning licence rule appears in the aaS terms. Virtual machine counts matter only as a measured unit when a service’s UOM is defined that way, for example allocated memory of powered-on virtual machines in Flex Solutions metering.[3]
Cloud / BYOL
Under the aaS terms, HPE or its affiliates remain owner or licensee of all Systems, unless the Solution Material or order identifies a transfer of title or software licence to the customer at the start of the services. HPE grants the customer a right to use the Systems, subject to restrictions in the Solution Material.[1] Where a software licence does transfer, HPE-branded software is subject to the HPE EULA and software licensing terms and any ALAs, and non-HPE software to third-party terms, and licences terminate automatically when the services end unless the licence terms say otherwise.[1] This means GreenLake software is generally not a perpetual, portable licence. The customer may not transfer, assign, pledge or encumber Systems that HPE owns or licenses, and must return them at the end of the services.[1] Use of the services is a non-transferable right to use internally for the customer and its end users, and service provider use applies only if purchased.[1]
Programs
Pilots, proofs of concept, trials and demos must be converted to a paid contract or stopped when complete.[1] Flex Solutions has an onboarding phase in which metering tools are configured and the measurements become the basis for the monthly charge, and a standard service level in which HPE may provide agreed Buffer Capacity for unforeseen demand and replenish it as it is consumed.[3]
Audits and compliance
HPE provides the metering tools, which collect data inside the customer’s data centre firewall and send it to HPE over encrypted SMTP or HTTPS. Metering begins when the metering tools are installed and HPE administers and updates them, while the customer must help install and operate them.[3] Information about the metering tools, the billing process and usage reporting is HPE Confidential Information and may be shared with resellers and distributors, and the customer must assist HPE in resolving metering or remote monitoring problems caused by its own environment.[1] Each calendar quarter, on three business days notice, HPE may inspect, audit and test the metering tools, all usage data and the Systems, and may do so immediately where a tool appears to have failed, usage data shows a discrepancy or manipulation is suspected.[3] HPE states it uses metering data only for invoicing and capacity planning.[3] These rights are specific to the metering and Systems, and the general software licence audit clause in the EULA is described in the licence terms article.
Out of scope
This article does not describe the individual GreenLake service descriptions (private cloud, block storage and others), pricing or rate cards, the data privacy agreements, or HPE Aruba Networking subscriptions that are sold under separate terms.