We compared Azure Backup and Zerto based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Azure Backup is commended for its scalability, comprehensive security options, and non-disruptive backup process. Users also like its seamless integration with various Azure services. Users say Zerto offers excellent data protection, and it’s easy to create VMs. Zerto users also like its real-time replication features. Azure Backup needs to improve its backup and file-level restoration procedure. Zerto could improve cloud environment configuration, PowerShell scripting, and multi-site replication.
Service and Support: Azure's customer service is generally considered helpful and proactive, but a few users have reported longer wait times and slow issue resolution. Customers have generally had positive experiences with Zerto's customer service, noting their quick response times and ability to resolve issues. Some customers have encountered slower response times and needed to go through multiple levels of support to get their issues resolved.
Ease of Deployment: Azure Backup's setup is easy, quick, and can be completed with minimal user involvement. The setup process for Zerto can be either simple or complicated, depending on the individual's experience with backup solutions.
Pricing: Azure Backup is a cloud-based solution, so its pricing depends on factors like storage and data consumption. Azure offers competitive pricing and is considered more cost effective than many competing solutions. Zerto’s price tag is considered reasonable and in line with industry norms. Others said it was somewhat expensive but still worth the cost.
ROI: Azure Backup offers a solid return on investment with its affordable pricing and low initial costs, particularly when upgrading solutions. Zerto reduces risks while saving costs and time. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance, and helps businesses grow.
Comparison Results: Azure Backup is an affordable, scalable solution that features an effortless deployment and native integration with Azure services. While reviews of Azure Backup’s features were generally positive, some users reported unsatisfactory experiences with Azure support. Zerto offers top-tier data protection, excellent customer service, and real-time replication, but some users say its cloud and multi-site functionality could be better.
"The backup features are very useful."
"The deployment process is quite easy in Azure."
"When it comes to Azure Backup, the advantage is that it's native and it's very easy to configure. We don't require a separate tool or manage something on a separate server. At the backend, it's managed by Microsoft itself, and we don't need to manage it."
"I like that it's a simple system."
"Our client’s infrastructure is protected by the tool."
"The most valuable features of Azure Backup for us are its flexible retention options and the ability to recover to a second region with geo-replication and read access."
"The product is very reliable and easy to use."
"First of all, you can schedule a backup for the client. You can schedule it as you like. You can also control the bandwidth, so the backup will not utilize. The internet will depend on the bandwidth."
"Using Zerto for the migration was incredibly valuable, enabling us to save tremendous amounts of time."
"Zerto is easy to use and the interface is very intuitive."
"Zerto enables us to do sandboxing failovers. You can run tests on a production environment in a sandbox and spin up a copy of your actual production environment in a few hours. When you're done with it, you can click a couple of buttons, and it's all blown away. You don't need to worry about reverting changes or interfering with your on-prem production environments."
"It enables protection of a virtual workload to be done by the app, whether single or multi-tiered, with a boot time scheduler. It is pretty awesome."
"The replication piece with the built-in WAN compression is important because the network circuit that we send our replication traffic across isn't actually behind our normal WAN accelerators. We were able to use Zerto's built-in WAN acceleration to help those workloads compress."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the live migration."
"From a management perspective, one of the biggest benefits is to see the excitement of your engineers having a tool that truly enables them, really making their lives easier. That is something that I love. When we came out of the PoC, their eyes were just wide with excitement of what was possible now."
"During a failover to a DR site, Zerto can automatically change the IP address of servers."
"I would like to have the option to increase the frequency of the backups. Azure Backup does backups on an hourly basis, but I would prefer it to take backups more often."
"The Azure Backup support for on-premises service is limited."
"I can’t use the solution to restore another native cloud solution. Azure must add this new feature."
"The solution is quite technical. I wouldn't describe it as user friendly. It could be simplified a lot to make it more accessible to the average user."
"In Avamar, the file-based restores are very quick and fast, whereas, in Azure Backup, VM restore is super easy, but if I have to do a file or a folder restore, I have to mount the entire VM image. I have to wait for some time for it to be mounted, and then I have to go inside and then check the file and copy it somewhere. It's a bit of a manual process, whereas in Avamar, you can directly select a file and folder, and it'll recover with whatever permissions you want."
"They need to improve the frequency of the backup. You can only backup one to three times a day. It would be better to back up continuously throughout the day."
"Azure lacks sufficient solutions for a particular scenario, we may need to resort to using third-party applications. In such cases, these applications can be employed to facilitate backup, replication, and the efficient utilization of internet connectivity and bandwidth. They enable us to effectively manage and transfer data while ensuring optimal utilization of network resources. However, it would be a benefit if we did not have to use third-party applications for these operations."
"I once tried restoring a Linux environment, and the size of the Linux VM or the data disk was really huge. It took a really long time to restore the environment and send the data from the storage to the disk. It took around 25 to 30 minutes, which was much longer than I anticipated. They can improve the duration of such restore operations. In the next release, it would also be good if they could reduce the duration for transferring the data from their storage to the actual storage while creating a virtual machine. They can reduce the duration or increase the data transfer rate."
"The full site recovery is not up to SRM standards."
"The biggest improvement would be exporting VPGs and a configuration of VPGs, as well as increasing or improving their IP customization rule set."
"It would be beneficial if Zerto also offered integration with other cloud management platforms, such as VMware Aria Automation."
"I would like to see a separate product offer for performing backups, although I think that this is something that they are expecting to release in the next version."
"The replication appliances tend to have issues when they recover from being powered off when a host is in maintenance mode. Sometimes you have to do a manual task where you go in and detach hard disks that are no longer in use, to get the replication appliances to power back on. There are some improvements to be made around the way those recover."
"It has some quirks. We have quirks with appliances. Some things don't really work as expected, but it is minor."
"When building out a VPG and doing the machine types within Azure, they were not coming across correctly. It would say it had a CPU and memory of a specific type, but it was not accurate... It was a bug and they were working on it."
"If I had to pick anything, it would be the documentation for upgrades. They need to make it easier for users to do upgrades without having to contact support, by providing better documentation for that."
Azure Backup is ranked 7th in Backup and Recovery with 50 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 234 reviews. Azure Backup is rated 7.8, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Azure Backup writes "Straightforward to set up and manage and allows us to monitor all backups in one place". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Azure Backup is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Commvault Cloud, Acronis Cyber Protect and Veritas NetBackup, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines and Commvault Cloud. See our Azure Backup vs. Zerto report.
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