What is VHM?

Versa Hosted Management (VHM) is Versa’s cloud-based, SaaS-delivered headend and orchestration service: Director, Concerto, Analytics, Controller, and Messaging Service run in Versa’s cloud rather than on customer premises, offered as a shared multitenant instance or a dedicated instance sized to a specific customer, eliminating the overhead of installing and maintaining headend infrastructure.

Key takeaways

• VHM hosts Director, Concerto, Analytics, Controller, and Messaging Service.
• Available as shared multitenant capacity or a dedicated instance.
• No on-premises install: Versa provisions and runs the headend suite.
• Dedicated VHM ships in named CPE capacities from 500 to 20,000.
• Shared VHM prices per device across four bandwidth-based tiers.

On this page: Why it matters · How it works · VHM deployment models · VHM & Versa · FAQ

Why is VHM important?

Standing up an on-premises Versa headend is real infrastructure work: downloading orchestration software images, installing them on your own servers, sizing a headend suite for a specific CPE ceiling (250 up to 20,000 devices), and installing a license file on Director before anything can be activated. That work has to happen before the first branch onboards, and it has to be maintained – upgraded, patched, kept redundant – for as long as the deployment runs.

VHM removes that step. Instead of building the headend, a customer subscribes to it: Versa instantiates a redundant, cloud-hosted headend and provides right-to-use access for the subscription’s duration, with no installation or ongoing maintenance obligation on the customer’s side. That matters most for organizations that want to start deploying Secure SD-WAN quickly, that don’t want a data-center footprint dedicated to management infrastructure, or that want their headend capacity and their CPE license purchases to scale independently rather than being tied to a fixed on-premises install.

What is VHM?

VHM delivers the same headend components an on-premises deployment would run, just hosted and operated by Versa: Versa Director (the management plane), Versa Controller (the control plane), and Versa Analytics (the telemetry and reporting database) are the minimum components, with Versa Concerto (the orchestrator) and the Versa Messaging Service (streaming) recommended alongside them. Every component is multitenant-capable with granular role-based access control, whether it runs on-premises or in VHM.

Once subscribed, a customer uses the hosted headend exactly as it would use an on-premises one – deploying, configuring, and operating VOS instances, whether those instances sit on the customer’s own premises or in the customer’s own cloud locations. The underlying hosted headend itself is a fully redundant setup, with Versa’s SD-WAN headend components deployed across the globe rather than concentrated in one facility. A VHM subscription provides right-to-use access to that headend platform for the length of the term, so what a customer buys is access and capacity rather than a piece of software to install.

VHM deployment models

VHM comes in two forms. A dedicated instance is provisioned for one customer only, with no sharing of that instance across other Versa customers – the customer runs its own software version, sets its own upgrade timeline and maintenance windows, and chooses its own cloud orchestration location. Dedicated capacity is sold in fixed sizes of 500, 1,000, 2,500, 4,000, 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 CPEs, instantiated by Versa’s Managed Services team, who also monitor and maintain it. A shared instance instead runs in a cloud environment used by multiple customers or tenants at once, priced per device across four bandwidth-based buckets – Small (up to 50 Mbps), Medium (up to 500 Mbps), Large (up to 2 Gbps), and X-Large (above 2 Gbps) – reflecting both the aggregate WAN bandwidth and the expected log volume per CPE. Both forms are instantiated in high-availability form by Versa personnel.

VHM & Versa

VHM capacity is deliberately decoupled from Secure SD-WAN, Secure SD-LAN, and NGFW licensing: subscribing to a given VHM size sets a ceiling, but the number of CPEs a customer is actually entitled to deploy is determined by the CPE subscription licenses purchased separately – the same model used for on-premises headend licensing. That means growing a fleet doesn’t require re-sizing the headend investment first, and a customer who under-buys CPE licenses relative to their VHM capacity simply has headroom to grow into later. Add-on services like the Advanced Logging Service integrate with either an on-premises or a Versa-hosted headend, so VHM customers get the same logging and analytics ecosystem as customers who self-host. See Versa Secure SD-WAN Licensing Overview for the full licensing model VHM sits alongside.

Frequently asked questions

What headend components does VHM host?

VHM hosts the full Versa headend suite: Versa Director, Versa Controller, and Versa Analytics as minimum requirements, plus the recommended Versa Concerto orchestrator and Versa Messaging Service. All of them run in Versa’s cloud rather than on the customer’s own servers.

What is the difference between dedicated and shared VHM?

Dedicated VHM is a single-customer instance with its own software version, upgrade schedule, and region, sized in fixed CPE capacities. Shared VHM runs in a multitenant cloud environment used by several customers, priced per device across four WAN-bandwidth tiers instead of a fixed capacity purchase.

Does VHM replace the need for Secure SD-WAN CPE licenses?

No. VHM provides and operates the headend that manages devices; Secure SD-WAN, Secure SD-LAN, and NGFW licenses are purchased separately per CPE. The number of devices a customer can actually deploy is set by those CPE licenses, not by the VHM capacity purchased.

Who manages and maintains a VHM instance?

Versa does. Both dedicated and shared VHM instances are instantiated in high-availability form by Versa personnel, and dedicated VHM additionally includes ongoing monitoring and maintenance from Versa’s Managed Services team – work an on-premises deployment would otherwise leave to the customer.

Can VOS devices be deployed on-premises with a VHM-hosted headend?

Yes. VHM hosts the management and orchestration layer only; the VOS instances it manages can run on the customer’s own premises or in the customer’s own cloud locations, connecting back to the Versa-hosted headend the same way they would to an on-premises one.

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