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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 (1st), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (1st)
Oracle Data Guard
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
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 October 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 2.6%, down from 2.6% 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

"HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce downtime in our corporate IT environment, and it was a very smooth dry run."
"The replication for DR is really good, and the test failover within the application is really solid, along with the ability to manipulate RDMs or remove them."
"The continuation to the public cloud has been especially helpful where I can pretty much work with things like hosts and clusters as part of the data center."
"The speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions is night and day. We use Veeam for backups and the amount of time that it takes to recover is so much quicker mounting with Zerto. That's why we extended the journal so that we could capture a few more days and make it easier for us to recover files."
"The most valuable features of Zerto are the ease of use and recovery speed."
"The live failover tests and point-in-time recovery options have been exceptionally valuable features of Zerto for our organization."
"It's easy to use. We don't need formal training."
"The main reasons for adopting Zerto are data protection and being able to do disaster recovery for site recovery."
"Oracle Data Guard is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten."
"The solution has been stable so far."
"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."
"It is a top-notch product, super stable, making it our go-to for internal operations."
"You can see how the logs are applied, check the apply time, and how far behind the standby is at any given time."
"The solution can scale as needed."
"The most valuable feature is the flashback standby, which allows us to test without scrapping the database."
"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."
 

Cons

"Customer service and technical support need improvement."
"Now, everything is moving to the cloud and many modern app solutions are based on virtualization and cloud, however, for situations where Unix platforms are used, we'd like them to be able to support that."
"Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."
"The monitoring and alerting functionality need to be improved."
"The version 10 update 4 took really long to deploy, and we had to back off and do update 2 because that seems to deploy much quicker."
"The backup end of this solution could be improved. We tried using it as a full backup solution and it took way too long to complete at least one backup."
"Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses."
"HPE Zerto Software could be improved by including everything in the same package. Currently, I have to administer them separately, which can be more complicated for the infrastructure team."
"Overall, there are some operational issues that need to be dealt with."
"The database administration needs improvement. With Oracle, we have a lot of features for administrating data, but it might be too many. It needs to be simplified. It should be automated. Looking at Enterprise Manager, there are too many KPIs in place."
"It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs."
"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."
"We would like to be able to see the date time stamp when you execute DGMGRL commands."
"The implementation is complex for anyone who's jumping into it without any experience. It's all command-line driven implementations. For some, that's a turn-off."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'd like to see better tiering for Zerto's pricing. We do multi-tier VMs. I don't think I should be paying a penalty and price for a tier-three VM where I don't need a really tight SLA like I do for a tier-one."
"They should adjust the pricing because I feel its price is too much. If they reduce the price, there will be more users and customers."
"Zerto is more cost-effective than Azure."
"Get the Enterprise Cloud license because it's the most flexible, and the pricing should come in around $1,000 per VM."
"At close to $1,000 a license, it makes it very hard to protect all of your environment, especially for a smaller shop."
"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."
"I do not like the current pricing model because the product has been divided into different components and they are charging for them individually."
"Obviously, I wish it were cheaper and more affordable. But I get what I pay for, so I can't complain."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"This is the best solution if you want something similar that's less expensive than Oracle Grid."
"The cost of the Oracle license will depend on the negotiations with Oracle."
"​Oracle Data Guard is a feature available only in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and is available for extra cost."
"The licensing cost is significantly high."
"The cost is expensive."
"It is not a cheap product, but if you look at the price, features, availability, scalability, and maturity, it is a very good product."
"If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
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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
20%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.