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HPE Zerto Software vs IBM ProtectTIER vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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 IBM ProtectTIER is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.1% 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%
IBM Storage Protect2.2%
IBM ProtectTIER0.3%
Other94.9%
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.
ValereFEUGWANG - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects data in hybrid infrastructures, but it is an expensive product with poor support
The main challenge for our customers is to replicate the virtual environment upon restart, without using any additional solutions such as VMware SLM. I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM. It would be much better for us. This solution can be made easier to use. Technical support is very frustrating and we are considering other solutions because of it. Stability is something that should be improved. The product is expensive and the licensing should be changed.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's good for reliability, timing, and simplification. For reliability, it's a logical construction that behaves productively. It's a critical system where timing and coordination are necessary. It also offers simplicity to design and analyze the system by clearly defining the relationship between events and conditions."
"It reduced the time for DR tests from the infrastructure side. Being able to get our work done in a matter of a couple of minutes so the app teams can get to work and can do their testing has been significant."
"A new feature is the One-To-Many VPG allowing a VM to be replicated at up to three different locations, including local."
"HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted our RTOs and RPOs by improving our recovery objectives and ensuring data is always available."
"My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's Near-Sync Replication are that it minimizes the loss of data."
"Zerto's user-friendliness is valuable."
"Zerto has improved our restoration time and made it easier to test software upgrades. It has simplified tasks like decommissioning a site and replicating virtual machines from one location to another."
"The RTO and RPO are unparalleled. In the event you do have an issue, you can be back up and running (depending on the size of your infrastructure) within minutes. Your RTO can be 15 minutes and data loss be five minutes. I don't think that's matched by anybody else in the field."
"The cataloging is the best feature. It takes millions of frames for the backup. It's incremental, so it takes less time to complete."
"The command-line interface is good."
"The solution is highly stable."
"Overall IBM ProtectTIER is a great solution. It is easy to use."
"The most valuable features are the Self-Service, and the ability to search the data."
"In terms of stability, I've found it to be very stable. I've walked into the server room when it was at 60 degrees Celcius, and it was still running fine."
"What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines."
"Good user interface."
"The solution is very stable. It is one of the most important features that we look for in a product before putting it into the market and when establishing a strategy with our customers."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is a scalable solution."
"It allows us to have one interface."
"With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site."
"It saves you a lot of storage."
"It scales from very small to very large. It is easily the most scalable product out there."
 

Cons

"From the technical side, there can be a little bit more PowerShell integration. I know it leverages APIs, but people still use PowerShell. Some people would rather use PowerShell if that is an option."
"While going in, we were looking at the backup tool so that we had a DR tool and a backup tool, but they stopped developing their backup solution built into it. That was a bummer for us, so now, we have a DR solution, and we have a backup solution."
"I need to get up to the latest version so I can move my journals to a particular LUN, saving them with a particular storage altogether, rather than with the virtual machine. This is not available until I upgrade, and I need to upgrade all my hypervisors. This would be something that would be nice to have if it could be used on older versions."
"The native Zerto implementation requires quite a big environment. My environment is rather small. I do not have hundreds of virtual machines."
"We'd like to be able to migrate data without its operating system or any other functionality and without having to go through a virtual machine or server."
"Zerto is too reliant on VMware's vCenter. It's tough to upgrade, move, or do anything related to virtual servers with vCenter."
"The only thing we've noticed that needs improvement is the backend cleanup within VMware. There are some little issues there. I would like to see tighter integration with Vmware... orphan data is an issue within VMware. It doesn't clean up properly when you're moving stuff around."
"I would like for Zerto to improve reporting, provide more data on individual VMs and their performance, and maybe expand into backup with the ability to scan for malware or offline scanning."
"IBM ProtectTIER could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The backup for a large amount of data is slow."
"The configuration wizards are still complex and hard to navigate. These should be easier to manage."
"I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM."
"Setting up the system to work with legacy equipment is a bit complex at times."
"The solution needs to work on disaster recovery integration. Basically, VMware applications to the cloud, for example. There needs to be integration with the storage, and integration with VMware."
"The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement."
"For Spectrum Protect Plus, I would like to see more enhanced reporting features and integration with Spectrum Protect."
"When it comes to virtualization in IBM it's not perfect."
"The stability could be improved."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"The reporting could be better."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-efficient because we have perpetual licenses. We are a small to medium-sized business, so cost is a pretty big important factor."
"Having backup and DR is somewhat moderately important to us. The problem with us, and a lot of companies, is the issue with on-prem Zerto. It utilizes whatever you have for a SAN. Or, if you are like us, we have a vSAN and that storage is not cheap. So, it is cheaper to have a self-contained backup system that is on its own storage rather than utilizing your data center storage, like your vSAN. While it is somewhat important to have both backup and DR, it is not incredibly important to have both. I know Zero is trying to heavily dip their toes in the water of backup and recovery. Once you see what Zerto can do, I don't think anyone will not take Zerto because they don't necessarily specialize in backup and recovery 100 percent. They do replication so well."
"It is expensive."
"My impression is that Zerto is more expensive than other solutions, although I don't have exact numbers."
"I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove to the business that it was worth the investment."
"It is less expensive than the full solution that we had previously, but at the same time, it's not an inexpensive product either."
"From a customer perspective, the price is okay. From an investor's perspective, however, it is a little bit high."
"Staffing may be a little thin at times, but as far as budgeting what we buy, the price for this solution has not been so outrageous that we don't buy it."
"IBM ProtectTIER is an expensive solution."
"The customer can decide how they want to purchase a license. However, the price of the solution is expensive."
"We have a capacity-based license, which is managed centrally for all the sites of my company."
"This solution is very expensive."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."
"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"IBM Storage Protect is not expensive and fits the needs of all business types. The licensing is based on a capacity-based model. You can take a license for one, two, or three terabytes."
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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
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise94
 

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 ...
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...
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...
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What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will contin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost m...
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past....
 

Also Known As

Zerto Virtual Replication
No data available
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Durham Police Department, Re-Store LLC, CenterGrid, pixx.io GmbH, Australian Government Department of Defence, QD, Refresco Gerber
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: August 2025.
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