Unitrends vs Zerto comparison

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Unitrends Logo
1,381 views|991 comparisons
84% willing to recommend
Zerto Logo
Read 235 Zerto reviews
10,524 views|5,722 comparisons
98% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Unitrends and Zerto based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Backup and Recovery solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Unitrends vs. Zerto Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Software replication to remote sites during disaster recovery?
Answer: We have recently implemented Zerto as a disaster recovery solution. Not only does it replicated, it allows you to created boot orders for the VM's. This means you can have your SQL server start and set an automatic delay for the applications servers. It can also be configured to bring a failover test up on an isolated network for DR testing. It can also replicate between different hypervisors. For example, you can replicated from VMware to Hyper-V or AWS. They are adding more hypervisors with newer released.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Iinstant recovery (allows a spin-up of your image as a VM on the appliance).""The ability to diversify jobs within the same server helps break down a large chunk of data into more manageable and concentrated chunks.""The ability to back up both physical and virtual appliances under one roof.""Replication to Forever Cloud.""Unitrends has helped us cut down the time that it takes to restore a server to its original configuration.""What I found most valuable in Unitrends is its simple user interface. It also works reliably.""Stability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten.""The ability to backup both physical and virtual machines, along with having an appliance store the backups locally instead of on a file server, NAS, or SAN."

More Unitrends Pros →

"I like that the failover is simple and that it's a stable platform. It makes it easy for us to do failovers in the event that we have an issue. It also makes it easier to do test failovers because we can test it prior to actually doing a real failover. This means that we can pull things back or commit them over on the other side. Zerto streamlines the process instead of having to have a whole team of people who are dedicated to disaster recovery.""The return to operations is the most valuable feature because it decreases the amount of time it takes us to recover.""It helps us keep our required retention period for specific documents and allows us to recover older documents if we have to compare and recreate those.""You can set the number of days a VM can be rolled back in case of corruption or virus infection.""It's very stable. It doesn't require a lot of intervention.""Another big attraction is the near zero RPO. A lot of other products have minutes, half-hour, or an hour RPO. We have proof indicating that Zerto is near zero, or a matter of minutes, as far as the RTO is concerned. So again, that's another attractive offering where you can actually fail something over and bring that back up in a target location in a matter of minutes. Meaning very little data loss as far as recovery time. It's fantastic.""Since the log files are continuously transmitted, the granularity of restores is amazing.""Zerto is low maintenance, so I can set it and forget it. It has a great process and an excellent solution."

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Cons
"Techs don't see to be well-versed in troubleshooting issues that arise and tickets stay opened for weeks for resolution.""Support is great for small simple issues, but anything more difficult, it is hard to get good resolutions without having to badger them and their management.""Unitrends can be challenging to scale.""The solution’s support and onboarding process needs to be improved.""In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses.""Comparing the features and the working pattern, definitely they have to come down on pricing if they want to compete in the market.""I would like to see the real-time replication process improved, and a zero RPO feature added.""Network-based storage stability could be improved."

More Unitrends Cons →

"We have had issues with licensing, where the license we've been given by Zerto support doesn't include VSS replication, which was a pain at the time.""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.""Their data backup and restore have some ways to go.""The product could benefit from improvements in automation, specifically in the area of failovers.""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.""Not all of the knowledge required for implementing Zerto is available in their online documentation for non-partners.""I would like to see them continuously improve Zerto's automated functions, such as putting hosts in maintenance mode within vSphere and not having to worry as much about how Zerto is going to react... Sometimes, Zerto almost holds the vSphere environment hostage when it comes to taking certain actions. You really need to be cognizant about what you're about to do. They should further automate that and increase Zerto's ability to handle things like that in a very slick, automated way, without intervention.""When I have a technical question, it sometimes takes a while for tech support to respond."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Make sure you do the homework to size the solution properly. Buy the Enterprise Plus licensing if you can afford it."
  • "When you purchase initially, get into the program which gives replacement hardware for free when you renew your support agreement."
  • "Initial pricing is competitive. Renewal pricing is steep, so make sure to project costs for the lifetime of the appliance(s)."
  • "Talk with the sales guys. They can work with you on the best package."
  • "We found that the cost of Unitrends was about the same as the Dell DR6300. We liked the fact that the Unitrends appliance was all-in-one."
  • "The cost of Unitrends definitely draws you in. The licensing is all included in the appliance, which is a great incentive."
  • "Pricing model constantly changes."
  • "You should be aware how much the monthly costs are to use, what the initial costs for hardware are, and what the options to expand are, if needed."
  • More Unitrends Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing depends on your future growth. Start small and then scale up."
  • "Zerto’s licensing model has changed a bit over the last year and they are in alignment with others. It is pretty simple and more economical."
  • "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."
  • "Licensing is VM based so you can buy packages or single VM. Price is not low but the power of application is high, so you will get your money back."
  • "It's a little bit expensive."
  • "We believe the pricing, setup costs, and licensing are easy to understand. The pricing seems very reasonable."
  • "The solution is very cost-effective and very easy to set-up but does not compromise on features."
  • "While we find the twenty-five VM license somewhat inflexible, the actual setup costs are minimal as the product is so easy to install."
  • More Zerto Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Answers from the Community
    Anonymous User
    it_user136023 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user136023 (Consultant at a tech company with 10,001+ employees)
    Vendor

    So does that mean you want to have a Disaster Recovery solution where data is not on site your bunker site? but yet allows for a fast recovery in case your primary site is down?

    - What virtualization solution do you use?
    - What is the link between the 2 (?) sites?
    - What RPO and RTO are you aiming for?
    - How much data do you need to recover?

    it_user191712 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user191712 (Works)
    Vendor

    If you don't have live backup? Well as per my understanding backup is always a happened at local site (DC) on VTL and or on Tape and they were offloaded to out of DC, but as mentioned correctly it can take 24hours or more depend on the Recovery site location, accessibility & final is data size. Now the correct terminology is Online Replication or Archive/log base replication, and it is completely depend on the RPO & RTO define by business. So, answare to your 1st query : No way you can do a site recovery if you don't have DR site. Many says to take a back on tape, on disk or on storage but if all these product are installed at production site i.e. DC, will not make any sense as your DC is down and not accessible. So, "must to have live back or rather Replication to DR site.
    2nd question" fast recovery without VM in passive or standby mode at DR site. VMware has SRM which does the site recovery in case of disaster. Only condition is that you have to have a Storage with replication between the site. Other option as mentioned by Mr. Smith, is DR as a service model (DRaaS) from any cloud providers. Some of the Cloud service providers also offers CDP solution while not charging for DR site but conditions is DC must be hosted with them.

    it_user474570 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user474570 (CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees)
    Consultant

    Tested used my own little setup for hyper V machines have an offsite server using altaro backup offsite server backup software with windows server
    restored (anywhere) the Virtual machine was up and running within a 10min entire server

    it_user158790 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user158790 (IT & Comm Infrastructure Operations at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees)
    Vendor

    I would also recommend to use Vision DoubleTake at VM level dat has an CDP , continous data protection feature for filesystem replication and SQL integration also. It can be a choice of synchronous replication over DWDM lines if latency it not excceding 0,5 ms round trip, otherwise it will impact disk write ops.
    If zero downtime is a must I would recommend using VPLEX,ViPER from EMC or HDS Global Active Device that will present disk LUN from SAN as a single device to more processing nodes, but thus means app is aware of SW clustering (can run in multiple nodes sharing the same filesystem ir SAN LUN).
    In such approach in VMware ESXi you will present a datastore spread over DWDM like a strech cluster so you won't have to keep in mind where the app node is really running, the hypervisor will see the strech cluster as only one storage device, thus means you can move app with vMotion very fast to a second or DR site, or recover it to a DR site. More if app is SW cluster enabled then the app nodes will run seamlessly over strech cluster.
    The 2 nd option I can see is to go for Hyperconverged infrastructure and application containerization just like Docker tehcnology. How to do it: for ex. Make use of technologies like VxRail appliances and OpenStack + app transformation in Docker (for Windows VM is not so complicate). Such technolgies will apply private Cloud technology for DR.

    it_user191712 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user191712 (Works)
    Vendor

    Hi there, we are talking about Recovery from DR site, now few suggestions from my side 1) what is the defined RTO & RTO. 2) Visibility of the RPO. 3) connectivity between two or three site to meet replication requirements. 4) DR for physical & virtual, both the environment. 5) how many time in a year do the DR Drill. These point need to think and perform to achieve desire & accurate recovery from DR site.

    it_user459174 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user459174 (Sr. Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees)
    Vendor

    Hi you could try Arcserve UDP -> Instant VM.-

    it_user158790 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user158790 (IT & Comm Infrastructure Operations at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees)
    Vendor

    IfI understand correctly the guy needs a fast recovery solution for the production environment to a remote site, for Windows VM under VMware ESXi (or Hyper-V).
    In my understanding a DR site means an alternate location with hot or cold standby systems, the recovery plan for business continuity is depending on their RTO and RPO.Unless an RPO and RTO are defined for IT services noboby could picture o solution for such cases. In general solutions are dependent of TB of data to be assured on remote site, basically there are many practices for assuring storage space in DR in case you would need to recover:- cold backup with ESXi that sustain test and development environment physically placed in DR, in case fast recover is mandatory, they could destroy the test/develop environment and restore data from scratch with VTL replicated in DR (backup and restore with 4TB/hour or more). The single point to be assured is correct IP addressing (test/develop could be treated as untrust zone and separated with VLAN and/or firewalls). You can use data protect and snapshots for VM, backup to tape, replicate virtual tapes and restore in case of a disaster (full recovery)- hot backup means CPU and storage for backup DR purposes but can be more faster, but cost a lot of money $$$$$$- rent some storage space and CPU from Cloud vendors, use as they need, maybee the DR location can be in the Cloud provider Data Center but data confidentiality can be a showstopper.
    My proposal is to investigate the 1st option with fast backup of data snapshots (space efficiency if dedupe or data compression are available at production site at storage level) and sent them to a restore solution at remote site (virtual backups), restore ops must be tested from time to time to validate business data (not only apps).For fast backups you can try VTL or NFS appliances that include replication services, the bandwidth between sites must accommodate fast delivery to remote site (to assure that RPO and RTO, including restore times are met). I would not recommend a SW solution to replicate VM because if no storage is existing in DR dedicated for this purpose it make no sense to think on such solutions.The 2nd option if to address disk space and CPU needed with Cloud providers, otherwise disk space for VM and user data must be assured always in DR.

    it_user176241 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user176241 (Senior Manager of Engineering at a tech vendor)
    Vendor

    Hello,

    I suggest taking a look at VMware - Actifio, It might be an option for the
    environment you are working at. The minimum data backup for Actifio is
    10TB. If your environment smaller than 10TB it will not work.

    Regards,

    www.actifio.com

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback
    Top Answer:Unitrends is an expensive solution. We've negotiated deals where they've given us the $ 62,000 to $ 64,000 appliance for free but charged $ 90,000 for three years of support.
    Top Answer:In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't… more »
    Top Answer: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 =… more »
    Top Answer: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 feature… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing is based on virtual machines. They need to do better in regards to their tiering pricing rather than one price per VM. A lot of times we have VMs that are lower tier, such as Tier 2 or… more »
    Ranking
    42nd
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    1,381
    Comparisons
    991
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    697
    Rating
    7.3
    2nd
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    10,524
    Comparisons
    5,722
    Reviews
    126
    Average Words per Review
    925
    Rating
    9.0
    Comparisons
    Veeam Backup & Replication logo
    Compared 23% of the time.
    VMware SRM logo
    Compared 15% of the time.
    Rubrik logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    Commvault Cloud logo
    Compared 6% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Zerto Virtual Replication
    Learn More
    Overview
    Unitrends increases uptime, productivity and confidence in a world in which IT professionals must do more with less. Unitrends leverages high-availability hardware and software engineering, cloud economics, enterprise power with consumer-grade design, and customer-obsessed support to natively provide all-in-one enterprise backup and continuity. The result is a “one throat to choke” set of offerings that allow our customers to focus on their business rather than backup.

    Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, specializes in data protection and empowers customers to run a business by simplifying the protection, disaster recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. Zerto uses advanced hybrid cloud IT technologies to recover and protect business-critical applications in on-premises and cloud environments, enabling them to deliver continuous service without compromising security. Zerto’s foundation is based on continual data protection (CDP) technology. Users can benefit from a single, unified, and automated recovery and data management experience across all virtualized or container-based workloads.

    Zerto's native clustering technology creates a resilient, fault-tolerant system that automates recovery of critical virtual machines while supporting software updates, new OS releases, and upgrades. With native clustering, a creation, migration, or deletion of a virtual machine is automatically replicated to all nodes in the cluster. This creates an automated failover and availability solution with the features of high-end dedicated servers running at a fraction of the cost.

    Zerto Features

    Zerto has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Continuous data security
      • Continuous replication
      • The industry's lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs
      • App and database protection and recovery on a granular level
    • Agility across hybrid and multi-cloud
      • Protection between clouds
      • Simple on-premises to cloud migration
      • User-friendly native cloud services
    • Simple to scale
      • Automation and orchestration are built-in
      • Cross-platform, multi-site analytics
      • Unified experience regardless of cloud
    • Software-based
      • Hardware, hypervisor, and cloud are all independent
      • No physical appliances
      • Future-proof

    Zerto Benefits

    • Robust disaster recovery: Continuous data protection enables recovery of entire clusters, multi-VM applications, or even a single server with the lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs. Zerto allows users to safeguard, manage, and recover all of their key digital assets, whether they’re recovering to a secondary location, the public cloud, or a managed service provider.
    • Constant backup: Instead of making backups every 12 or 24 hours, Zerto creates backups every 5-15 seconds. Zerto backup has no impact on production and eliminates the burden of micromanaging backup windows by using CDP instead of snapshots. Its backup provides immediate recovery of data, folders, or virtual machines (VMs) that are only seconds behind the original, which is a simple approach to completely avoid ransomware or erase inadvertent deletions.
    • Strong long-term retention: Send data to the cloud or a purpose-built storage appliance of your choice for months or years of retention. These long-term copies can be made from local backups or DR replicas, and they can be kept wherever is most convenient for your company. Its powerful indexing and search makes discovering and restoring data simple. For data you want to maintain but only use infrequently, use cost-effective cloud tiering to shift LTR copies from hot to cold to deep-freeze storage.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Zerto stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its disaster recovery abilities and its ease of use. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Justin C., Director of IT at Arnott Inc. writes of the solution, “If we had to deal with a ransomware event, Zerto would be one of the first things I would use, because it is going to be the fastest to restore data to a certain point. If there were a fire in our building, Zerto would be a big thing too, because we would shut down everything that's in our building… It's definitely going to be one of our prevalent DRBC layers of protection."

    Brad W., Vice President of Information Technology at a financial services firm, notes, “The file restoration is very helpful. They've improved it over the years to make it a lot more user-friendly and easy to do, which I appreciate. So, we use that quite a bit. The failover process is quite simple and intuitive. Even the configuration and setup are pretty easy to do.”

    Sample Customers
    NHL Players Association, Salvation Army, Sligro Food Group, Mason General Hospital, Tec Group, Saldab IT, Baker Tilly, Clinton Savings Bank, Ennit Magna Bank, Manukau Institute of Technology
    United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Wireless Company11%
    Government11%
    Non Tech Company11%
    Wellness & Fitness Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Government11%
    Real Estate/Law Firm8%
    Educational Organization7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Insurance Company12%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise44%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    Unitrends vs. Zerto
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Unitrends vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Unitrends is ranked 42nd in Backup and Recovery with 34 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 235 reviews. Unitrends is rated 7.8, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Unitrends writes "The solution can be used to back up servers and Hyper-V cluster nodes, but its support is super expensive". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Unitrends is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Acronis Cyber Protect and Commvault Cloud, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines and Commvault Cloud. See our Unitrends vs. Zerto report.

    See our list of best Backup and Recovery vendors.

    We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.