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HPE Zerto Software vs Oracle Data Guard comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 11, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
341
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (1st)
Oracle Data Guard
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Data Guard is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Zerto Software2.6%
Oracle Data Guard0.9%
Other96.5%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features
Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.
Azhagupandi Parthiban - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers near-real-time replication for data consistency and continuously introducing new features through upgrades
There are various advantages. First of all, easy to deploy. The only difficult part is the cost factor, licensing. In other ways, the implementation is very, very important. Like, we have not encountered any major challenges with replication. We were able to achieve near-real-time replication. Also, with the switchover failover, we were not getting any technical issues. It's a pretty stable product. Once you configure it, it goes through the rollback, and then Data Guard introduces this snapshot thing. So once the restoration happens, we can go back to the original thing, and we make that a standard. It's a pretty decent and key function for Oracle. So, enterprise organizations go for Oracle only for features like these.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution has helped to reduce downtime in situations; it gave us the ability to roll back a bad change that was made."
"Speed of recovery has been very effective in getting our information back as fast as we're able to get it. The daily backup solution that we use alternatively only allows a single backup versus having continuous backup replication with Zerto, it's a no-brainer."
"The whole package is valuable. The most useful feature for the company is the rapid RTO, which offers a faster return to operations and brings us back online quicker. The last time we had an issue, we recovered within about 36 minutes, which was probably the most valuable thing for us because, previously, it took four to seven days."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and easy. We were able to start replication within minutes of the initial setup."
"The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario."
"Zerto has helped us reduce overall DR testing in our company. What used to take a month I can do in less than two days."
"The features of HPE Zerto Software have benefited our organization by increasing our recovery rate on systems that have a tight recovery RPO, and it's also allowing us to migrate workloads from VMware to Hyper-V in a seamless fashion."
"I like the automation of transferring data in the case of any disaster to our VMs. It is also easy to use and fast."
"Backup and application continuity are most valuable."
"If you have a problem with your primary site and can't access your primary database, you can continue working with the database that you have as standby on the other site, by changing its role to primary."
"Another valuable feature is the possibility of backing up the database from the standby database instead of the primary database, to avoid backup process overhead in the primary system."
"Oracle Data Guard is a free solution. When you apply for Enterprise Manager, it comes for free with the solution."
"The solution has been stable so far."
"We have found the replication feature the most useful. We use this feature the most. The ability to recover a database with less effort and the use of Oracle Data Guard Broker to administer the complete environment are also very useful features."
"We have not encountered any major challenges with replication. We were able to achieve near-real-time replication. Also, with the switchover failover, we were not getting any technical issues. It's a pretty stable product."
"The solution is quite stable. We haven't experienced any bugs, glitches, or crashes. We find it to be quite reliable."
 

Cons

"There's one feature that SRM had that Zerto doesn't have, and it's one that we've been asking for. With the orchestration part of the failover, with our DR and our primary sites, the IP addresses are almost identical. The only difference is one octet. With SRM, we could say during a failover change. With Zerto, we keep hearing that it's coming, but we haven't received it yet. It's a feature that would be very beneficial. It would reduce the time a little bit more."
"There should be more comprehensive cyber recovery capabilities."
"One aspect I don't appreciate about Zerto is the plug-in, especially when it migrated from appliance from Windows server to the appliance, and you have to configure Active Directory authentication. I think it's unnecessarily complicated."
"In terms of improvement, we have VMware and Nutanix, and we are looking for solutions to perform migration between these two setups to save costs."
"The pricing could always be lower."
"Some of the cloud instructions around VNets and peering of networks could be clearer with some best-case examples. It is more complicated once you move into the cloud than running it on-premises. Actually doing these things is quite easy in the cloud and with Azure, but understanding how it fits in my environment can be quite a head-scratcher at times."
"I want to have an OVF or some local deployment where I can deploy the ZVRA rather than having to push it from the console. Some of our smaller remote sites have relatively poor bandwidth, and they can't keep up with the constant deployment stream from our center console, meaning we have to find some creative hours to get around the bandwidth bottlenecks. If I could push out a small install file, install it locally, and then reach back to the console, that would be excellent."
"In future releases, doing backups of the environment we need to be able to do hot backups of the database."
"The IP implementation and maintenance are a little bit hard to manage across Oracle solutions, including Oracle Data Guard."
"When the data replicates into the standby database there is a possibility of having a microsecond amount of data loss. The data loss occurs when there is a network disconnection between the primary and secondary standby database located in the data centers or if there is a crash in the primary database."
"Overall, there are some operational issues that need to be dealt with."
"Oracle Data Guard is stable, but you need to keep monitoring the system all the time. You need to keep monitoring the archives."
"Oracle could be improved by the ability to manage it on the cloud. This on-premises version is secure and reliable, but I'm sure that they will soon provide a cloud solution that will be even better. In one to two years, we will probably move to the cloud—we have already moved to the cloud with Microsoft Exchange, but our databases are still on-premises. I would prefer managing a cloud version of Oracle."
"It is a rather complex solution, so it could be more user-friendly."
"For every standby server you have, you must pay a licensing fee, which is the main disadvantage."
"The initial setup is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While conducting our proof of concept, I compared prices with just one other vendor. At the time, the price for Zerto was more favorable."
"Price-wise, it works fine for me, but my budgetary team is always looking for ways to cut costs, and it seems like they first look at the data center and the IT side to find savings."
"It's expensive, for sure, but for us, it comes down to the fact that we do not replicate our entire environment using Zerto. We replicate the mission-critical servers and services, so the yearly cost of Zerto is heavily outweighed by the potential cost of an outage."
"The pricing seems reasonable. It's still within what we consider to be value-add."
"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"The pricing seems fair."
"Licensing is based on the number of VMs to replicate. The first thing should be to get the number of VMs to replicate based on your business needs."
"It is very expensive. It is overpriced. No doubt. What held us up for many years from committing to buying it was always the cost. That's also why we only have 10 licenses."
"It is not a cheap product, but if you look at the price, features, availability, scalability, and maturity, it is a very good product."
"The cost of the Oracle license will depend on the negotiations with Oracle."
"If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
"​Oracle Data Guard is a feature available only in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and is available for extra cost."
"It's a cost-effective solution."
"The cost is expensive."
"The licensing cost is significantly high."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise193
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What do you like most about Zerto?
Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I think on the pricing side, I don't generally deal with it, but from what I hear from my finance team, it's somewhat on the higher...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs. I strongly recommend Data Guard. I've been using it for eight years and I would strongly recommend it. I'd rate Oracle Data Guard a se...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
We're Oracle partners. We've worked with databases 11G and 12C. If a company is planning to implement Oracle solutions, I would suggest they also implement Data Guard. I'd rate the solution nine ou...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
This solution is for small to medium-sized businesses, who can't afford to have two data centers or two servers. Oracle Data Guard has many features to ensure that the database is in place. In case...
 

Also Known As

Zerto Virtual Replication
Active Data Guard
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Athenahealth, Discover Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Zerto Software vs. Oracle Data Guard and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.