HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use Zerto to replicate critical VMs between data centers. We also use it to do local replication whenever the servers do not have shared storage. We have recently used it to migrate some workloads from Azure down to our on-premises data center.

Zerto has improved our organization by simplifying everything because the storage is agnostic. We used SRM (Site Recovery Manager) from VMware, and it's very tied to the storage, and it has to be the same storage on both sides. The whole replication is at the storage level unless you use vSphere in the middle, which defeats the purpose. This is data storage, and you can use it if you can see it, which is very convenient.

We use the solution for one-to-one replication from data center one to data center two, from server one to server two, or from the cloud to on-premises.

We have used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment, and its overall effect on your RPOs has been fantastic.

The speed of recovery with Zerto is simple and amazing compared to other disaster recovery solutions.

I have previously used Site Recovery Manager.

We chose to use Zerto because of the RPO and because we wanted to eliminate the dependency on storage. Everybody on my team is familiar with the tool, and it's easy to use.

The new licensing model didn't work out for us because we used one-to-one replication. The other problem is that the Linux appliance is not available for everybody, and you must have a certain license. It's very important for us that if, at some point, those servers get compromised, or that server gets patches, I don't want to rely on Windows to protect Windows.

You want this hardened appliance to protect our critical workloads. If they can make that available from version one, it shouldn't matter what license you have. This is the best way to do it, and we are going to deprecate Windows support.

I have been using Zerto for five to six years.

Besides running it on Windows, Zerto is a stable solution.

If they need more space, they grab it. If you move the SLA or want to keep more logs or history for the DVR function, you have to check everything before making your claim.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

The solution's deployment is very easy.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We store a lot of raw data for reporting and use Zerto to protect that data.

Before implementing Zerto, we lacked a data protection and recovery solution, resulting in a significant data loss incident of approximately 70 percent during a past event.

Zerto is easy to use.

The near-synchronous replication offers a critical advantage for our customers' multi-platform environments by providing continuous data protection with minimal delay.

The main benefit of Zerto is that it doesn't affect the performance of the cloud platform while protecting the data. We realized the benefits of Zerto within the first three months.

Zerto's implementation has significantly improved our recovery time objective, allowing us to get our systems back online much quicker.

Zerto has significantly improved our disaster recovery capabilities, reducing downtime from days to just two hours.

With Zerto in place, our disaster recovery time has been reduced to a maximum of two days, whereas previously we lacked a recovery solution altogether.

Our disaster recovery testing with Zerto exceeded expectations. We aimed to restore all data within five days, but using Zerto's capabilities, we achieved a full recovery in just two days.

Zerto saved our staff three days of work, freeing them for other tasks.

Zerto's continuous data protection, journal-based recovery, automation, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud support, and non-disruptive testing have significantly improved our IT resilience strategy. These features not only enhance data protection and improve our Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective but also provide the flexibility and scalability needed for a robust IT environment.

It facilitates a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, eliminating the need for a dedicated physical data center to ensure business continuity in the event of an outage.

Zerto was our disaster recovery solution of choice because it offers a cloud-based implementation, which perfectly aligned with our organization's prioritization of cloud-based disaster recovery.

It stands out for its user-friendly approach to data protection and recovery, allowing for quick and efficient backups and restores.

Zerto's pricing structure could be more competitive to better suit the needs of a wider range of businesses.

The setup process could be simpler. A more streamlined installation would improve the user experience.

Zerto's long-term data storage capabilities, specifically how long data can be retained and managed, could benefit from further development.

I have been using Zerto for ten months.

We sometimes face challenges that require multiple hours of downtime but it is rare. I would rate the stability eight out of ten.

Zerto is expensive.

The technical support is quick to respond.

Positive

Integrating the initial deployment into our infrastructure proved to be a complex undertaking.

To ensure a smooth implementation, we prioritized planning and engagement, starting with management and then incorporating other stakeholders. We piloted the project with the operations team for a month before a full organizational rollout.

The deployment took around one week and involved six people.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Zerto provides a return on investment through the peace of mind we get knowing that all of our data is protected.

Zerto is expensive.

After considering both Commvault and Carbonite, we ultimately decided Zerto was the best fit for our data protection needs.

Zerto emerged as our choice for data protection because its feature set directly addressed the specific needs of our organization.

I would rate Zerto eight out of ten.

Maintaining Zerto is manageable as we have a dedicated team of three people responsible for its upkeep.

Our organization consists of 40 analysts in one site.

Zerto provides robust data protection and excels in disaster recovery for businesses, but its cost may be steeper compared to other solutions.

We use Zerto for replication.

We implemented Zerto to help with the high bandwidth required for the live application replication.

In my minimal experience with Zerto, the near synchronization replication is good.

Zerto does a good job of blocking unknown threats and attacks.

Its easy-to-use application server has helped our organization improve its bandwidth.

Zerto has made disaster recovery in the cloud much easier for us than in physical data centers.

We've seen significantly faster recovery times compared to other recovery tools we've used, like Carbonite.

Zerto makes it much easier for us to conduct and manage our DR testing.

The replication feature ensures minimal downtime during disaster scenarios.

Zerto's failback capability automatically recovered one of our live applications after it disconnected.

Zerto helps us monitor our disaster recovery.

Zerto's user-friendliness is valuable. It's easy to use.

It would be great if Zerto could automate replication more.

I have been using Zerto for four months. I joined the company when they were already using it.

I would rate the stability of Zerto ten out of ten.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I also use Carbonite but Zerto offers faster speeds.

The deployment of Zerto took a few weeks.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

We have over 300 clients using our web applications.

We are using it for disaster recovery of their Tier1 Critical SAP HANA systems and a few other workloads in the lanscape

Zerto provides near-synchronous replication, but more importantly, we can see the status at seven seconds, six seconds, five seconds, and four seconds when we log in to the Zerto console. I found that amazing. There is probably no other disaster recovery solution available in the market that is providing this functionality. It is great and definitely a huge plus point for Zerto.

We do get alerts if suspicious activity is detected on a VPG, but we did not get an actual case where there was ransomware or any other kind of attack and we had to prevent that. I have not come across that with either of my clients, but we do get alerts when Zerto finds something suspicious. We go in and look at it. In some instances, because the application was writing more files, Zerto marked it as suspicious, but we never had to do recovery for security reasons.

We use Zerto with AWS as the target. We do the failover of the on-premises VMware virtual machines to the AWS cloud. I do not deal with the implementation. I only do the administration of the tool, but whatever I did as part of AWS administration in Zerto, it was pretty seamless and straightforward. I did not get any issues there. The documentation is helpful in identifying any issues.

We have about 70 virtual machines that are being protected by using Zerto. Zerto has drastically improved our RPO. It was 15 minutes previously, whereas now, it is in seconds.

Zerto has not had much impact on our RTO. RPO has changed, but RTO has been the same for us.

Zerto has not helped to reduce downtime in any situation. We have only done tests. We have not done any actual production failover because there was no need. Similarly, Zerto has not saved us any recovery time because we never had a requirement to do a recovery since we implemented the tool. It is a pretty new environment for us, so we have not had time.

Zerto has not reduced the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management. It has remained the same for us.

The simplicity of use is valuable. It is easy. We just click Failover and do it. It is pretty straightforward. If someone wants to do a test failover, they log in to the console and do a test failover. 

As a power user, I find the customization lacking. I feel it could be customized a little bit more, but Zerto is simple to use. It is easy to use. That is my main reason for using Zerto.

I would like to request better reporting in Zerto. I can see the data that I need in the console, but if I need to put the data or the history into a report, it is difficult. It is something that auditors might require, so reporting is something that needs to be improved.

The UI does crash a lot, and that is something that can be improved.

It has been about three years. I support multiple clients with multiple backup and disaster recovery products. I was a Storage and Backup engineer, but now, I am covering the solutions for the entire infrastructure. I work on Zerto for multiple clients. We have two clients who are using Zerto as a disaster recovery solution.

The UI does crash, but it does not affect the functionality of the software.

It is scalable. There could be 10 machines or 100 machines. I did not find any issues. It is pretty scalable.

There were some issues for which we had to get responses from them. They were pretty much on the point. There were no issues. The response time was a bit slow, but their support was pretty good. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

We used to use Azure Site Recovery to protect all of the production instances, SAP databases, some file servers, and some basic application servers. We used to first replicate to Azure and then do a test failover and a production failover. It was a bit slow. The RPOs and RTOs were not that great, and the rate of change that Azure Site Recovery supported was not completely meeting the business requirements. The third part was that Azure Site Recovery was not application-agnostic. What we loved about Zerto was that it was application-agnostic. It did not matter to Zerto what was running behind the application. It will replicate everything across any cloud. That was our main point for going for Zerto.

Zerto was also much easier. Azure Site Recovery was a little bit hard to set up and maintain, but Zerto is pretty straightforward and easy.

I did not find much difference between Zerto and other solutions in terms of the speed of recovery. The RPO is great, but when we do a failover, it is basically the same as any other solution.

Zerto has not replaced our legacy backup solutions. Our legacy backup solution is in the same place. We are only using Zerto for DR.

Our environment is hybrid. We are using Zerto to protect our on-prem as well as the cloud environment, but I was not involved in its deployment. 

In terms of maintenance, I never had any requirements to maintain it.

Evaluation was done by someone else in the organization.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten. Simplicity is an advantage, but customization and reporting can be better.

A lot of our focus area has been around capacity planning that includes virtual machine rightsizing and then construction for failover and resiliency-type models. The other area that is important to us is looking at data in motion, data at rest, and data in transit.

By implementing Zerto, we wanted to be able to go ahead and focus a lot on workload migration and disaster recovery.

I can quickly restore data by reverting anything with more or less a nightly backup. I can pretty much have the data through recovery checkpoints, and each of the checkpoints can only be around five seconds apart.

When I need to work a lot with VPGs, it has a lot of capabilities for that. Monitoring is also very important for us. We do work with Splunk, and I am looking a lot around for logs, metrics, and traces. The capabilities that I get are system throughput, and CPU and RAM input/output.

I have used Zerto for immutable data copies. I have pretty much followed a 3-2-1 strategy. We have three copies of production data and two backup copies. We have two different media and then one off-site copy. It has this offering there.

It's helping very much in terms of the malware. They have a ransomware protection capability.

I have used other solutions jointly with Zerto. What is happening is that they have a focus on isolating and locking with a cyber resiliency vault, and what I have been doing more or less around the vault is working with the Delinea Privileged Access Manager solution. So, some areas have intersections with other tools in our stack. I would love to continue seeing more use cases out of Zerto so that I do not have to defer this anywhere else.

It has enabled us to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center. I think of it as a cloud migration tool. Having DR in the cloud is very important for our organization. I use it with Microsoft Azure.

With Zerto, I have seen five-second near-synchronous replication, so there are thousands of checkpoints in one day, and then afterward, I can have a periodic backup. I can space it out between twelve-hour snapshots. We can have one to three checkpoints per day. I can recover to the state seconds before any sort of attack, and I can utilize Zerto's in-built orchestration and automation. I could easily fail over the entire site without any sort of disruption. Those are the things I see very much in terms of positives. There is a lot of information that it can gather with synchronous replication. The other thing is that I have seen other disaster and backup service offerings, and they very much focus on getting a container image installed or some sort of binary file and then deployment from there afterward.

I find it easy to migrate the data. Once somebody understands how Zerto works, particularly around areas for analytics and automation, with the reference architecture, they will be able to quickly deploy it.

I see a lot of visibility in terms of proactive management with SLA monitoring, run metrics, and other things. We are able to test infrastructure using live and personalized data. It, in turn, becomes very much of a team effort.

Zerto provides complete visibility in terms of storage and consumption data. We get to know the capacity and application volumes. I can also address compliance aspects, such as PCI DSS which is important for us as part of the RPO.

They have an intelligent, predictive infrastructure, so I can just pretty much determine the required compute storage and other server networking resources, whether it is on-premises or in the cloud.

It also saves recovery time. We pretty much monitor that information. In terms of time savings, we are able to ensure that we can set up a backup quickly, figure out the integration details with the use of APIs, and meet our requirements around client security. Afterward, there is the cost consideration. Better documentation on the restoration process would be helpful.

Ransomware is one area where we are using Zerto. If we were utilizing another solution, that might have only been AWS-specific, and we might have not gotten much assistance in proceeding with their public cloud vendor as a result. We might have to figure out what we can do around working with an XDR or another mode of ingesting that data for any vulnerabilities and how to focus on encryption thereafter. If we were to consider another vendor, some of them may not have support for Azure. They might be AWS-focused.

Zerto has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. We can create failover tests seamlessly, and we can do this routinely. We are able to save time and look at how we can discern between RTO and RPO.

Zerto has not reduced the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management. Our team size is still roughly the same. We have not seen our headcount change as a result, but we do not need to hire external consultants to support a project.

If I wanted to focus on operational recovery, which may be recovering instances in the database with a 15-second data loss, there are systems administrators designed to take care of that. With Zerto's offering, someone can utilize the Zerto solution as opposed to depending on any sort of manual human intervention.

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.

Zerto has near-synchronous replication. I like it very much. They had an acquisition and are now a part of HPE. I see it very much as a robust solution.

A slight disadvantage of Zerto is that it requires the Windows Server operating system as the base OS. Over time, I would like to see more offerings in that regard. There should be more deployment options other than just the Windows operating system.

The implementation is very quick and painless, but it would be good to have more information that is not case-sensitive. In the server portal, some fields are case-sensitive. It took some time for me to understand initially.

If a VPG goes down and an application host is not responding, I want to have a little bit more flexibility to automatically point the recovery to other hosts. I would like to see a little bit more flexibility to automatically sustain two applications in their most optimal state. If the VPG is going down and any of the recovery hosts are in maintenance mode, there should be a way for maximum flexibility so that it can automatically utilize Zerto to point that recovery to other hosts.

I want some more information about how to work with bare metal drives. I have been doing some work in capacity planning for using MDM and FormFactor cable and then looking at system throughput, App latency, and a lot of scripts in Linux. I would like to have a little bit more information for anybody needing to work with bare metal drives.

I have been using Zerto for several years.

I have not seen any service disruption that impacted us. If anything like that were to occur, they would communicate it ahead of time.

It is scalable. We have more than 20,000 endpoints.

I do reach out to Zerto, and if there are any questions, we have a ticket in-house, so everyone is working on reviewing it at the same time. I would rate their support a nine out of ten. There are no negatives.

Positive

We were not using a similar solution. 

By bringing in Zerto, some legacy work has been discontinued. There is operational recovery, application migration, and application cloning. These are the three areas where Zerto has helped us.

We have a cloud version. It is a public cloud.

Its initial deployment was straightforward. I have been trying to focus on capabilities and encryption and how a long-term retention repository works, at least looking at the data capture. Another thing is utilizing some information with APIs and cloud scaling. I have broken down a lot of my use cases, and we have Zerto on the public cloud. Based on that, I was able to figure out how to work with features like compute as well as storage.

Its implementation took about two to three months. In terms of maintenance, it requires maintenance. We focus a lot on metrics such as RTO and RPO monitoring. Somebody can also put it in maintenance mode operation.

We had Zerto representatives, and we also had work done in-house. 

I work with a team. Other colleagues are also involved in the effort. We have a team of around ten employees.

We did look at a few other vendors' offerings, but we decided on Zerto. Our organization has a partnership with them, and the other thing was that there were a few industry events, and they were able to effectively make a pitch. Their demonstration was very effective. It was also something in which the client was interested in.

To those looking to implement Zerto in their organization, I would advise creating use cases of their own and then trying to see how Zerto effectively helps them. A few areas where they can work are gathering information with the virtual machine rightsizing and being able to go ahead and create resiliency models. Afterward, they can look at compliance. For us, PCI DSS and locating the public cloud environment being used, which in our case was Microsoft Azure, were important. After they have created use cases on their own, they can come to Zerto and see how they are able to effectively handle it. If they are able to think through what they need, they can come up with specific questions and then get Zerto to effectively deliver.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

Implementing failover to a secondary data center is crucial for ensuring business continuity in the event of primary data center loss. This strategy involves automatically redirecting operations and services to the secondary data center when the primary one becomes unavailable. This not only minimizes downtime but also enhances overall system reliability. 

The failover process requires robust synchronization mechanisms to ensure data consistency between the primary and secondary data centers. Regular testing and monitoring are essential to validate the effectiveness of the failover mechanism and identify and address any potential issues proactively. 

In summary, failover to a secondary data center is a strategic measure to safeguard against disruptions, offering a resilient solution for maintaining seamless operations in dynamic and challenging environments.

Zerto has significantly enhanced our organization's resilience and data protection capabilities. Its real-time replication and failover features have played a pivotal role in minimizing downtime during unexpected events, ensuring business continuity. 

The platform's automation and orchestration capabilities have streamlined our disaster recovery processes, reducing manual intervention and accelerating recovery times. 

The point-in-time recovery options provided by Zerto have proven invaluable in mitigating the impact of data corruption or accidental deletions. This has bolstered our data integrity and provided a safety net against unforeseen data-related issues.

The live failover tests and point-in-time recovery options have been exceptionally valuable features of Zerto for our organization. Conducting live failover tests allows us to validate the effectiveness of our disaster recovery setup in a controlled environment. This feature ensures that all components are in place and functioning as expected, providing confidence in our ability to respond to real-world disruptions. 

Additionally, the ability to choose a specific point in time for recovery down to the seconds is crucial for data integrity. This granular control allows us to roll back to a precise moment, mitigating the impact of data corruption, accidental deletions, or other unforeseen issues. It adds a layer of precision to our recovery process, minimizing potential data loss and enhancing overall resilience.

The product could benefit from improvements in automation, specifically in the area of failovers. Currently, the process is largely manual, and introducing automated failovers after a certain time threshold would enhance efficiency and responsiveness. Automated failovers can reduce the dependency on manual intervention, allowing for quicker and more proactive responses to disruptions. In the next release, the inclusion of scheduled or automated failovers would be a valuable addition. This feature would empower organizations to set predefined parameters and triggers for failovers, ensuring a timely and automated response to potential issues. It not only streamlines operations but also adds an extra layer of reliability to the overall disaster recovery strategy.

I've been using the solution for six months.

We did not have a solution before.

We had great help from the company in terms of setting up our environment.

We implemented through a vendor; I'd rate the experience ten out of ten.

Anything is the worth the cost for virtually no downtime. Time is money.

We did not evaluate other options.

It is a great solution overall, however, it could use some upgrades with automation.

We utilize the solution for our primary backup and recovery source. We use VMware for all of our servers. 

With the ease of integrating with our complete virtual infrastructure, it is nice that we can replicate easily between our HQ and DR sites. 

The flexibility in utilizing the test environment to allow production servers to be test restored with no interruption to the actual production server in use is really nice for quick and efficient testing. 

I highly recommend it for companies using virtual infrastructure.

The product allows us to restore to any given point within 15-20 second increments, including just files and whole servers. 

It allows us to efficiently test restore and restore files that were accidentally deleted within seconds of the deletion, giving the option to have the most up-to-date file restored with little to no data loss. 

It also allows reporting on the results of the testing, which can be provided really easily for board reporting, as well as auditing. There are many great features for sure.

The LTR function has by far been the best feature to allow us to retain our backups for at least a year. Also, it allows us to have full monthly and weekly incremental backups for that year, which can be restored or even just files from that period. It has come in handy for those accidentally deleted files. 

It also 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.

We would like the LTR function to be able to retain the past 12 months. Before the update to version 9, we could do this in the GUI. I am hoping that in version 10 (which is on the roadmap to be installed), this feature will return in the GUI to provide an easy way to lengthen our retention. The journaling can also be a problem at times. Also, I'm not sure why, however, retention processes randomly fail and have to be rerun periodically.

We have been utilizing this solution since 2017.

We use Zerto to verify the information being transferred from one data center to another.

When a site is down, we can continue to use the other site thanks to Zerto.

The near-synchronous replication is extremely valuable because it ensures we can continue working.

The move action between the app and data center is great and we can see the benefits in minutes.

Our RPOs are performing well thanks to Zerto.

Migrating data using Zerto is easy.

Zerto helps our users collaborate during data migration.

Our RTO using Zerto is good.

The communication between the VM and the secondary data center is the most valuable feature.

I would like Zerto to provide more detailed information when there is an issue.

I have been using Zerto for five years.

Zerto is extremely stable. 

Zerto is scalable.

I have used the technical support of Zerto several times and they are good.

Positive

Though I wasn't part of the initial deployment, the procedure is relatively simple. Manager rollout is the first step, followed by CPG installation on VMs by the CPG teams and subsequent network configuration verification.

Four people are required for the deployment.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

Zerto is a good solution for transferring data between centers.

We primarily use Zerto for disaster recovery.

Zerto ensures a smooth transition during a disaster when we need to automatically switch from our primary environment to our recovery one. Zerto offers us disaster recovery in the cloud, which is essential because we don't need to pay upfront costs for infrastructure when doing the DR process. Zerto helps to protect our VM-based applications. 

The solution has also reduced our RPO. The RPO during testing was less than 15 minutes. Zerto reduces the amount of work we need to do because some of the steps are automated. It takes about five to 15 minutes to test. Zerto has decreased the number of staff needed for backup and DR. It only requires one or two. 

The core backup and disaster recovery features are the most valuable. The near-synchronous replication ensures we will be able to keep the business running if something happens. 

There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions. 

I rate Zerto nine out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Zerto eight out of 10 for scalability.

I rate Zerto support eight out of 10.

Positive

We are using Zerto and Acronis. 

Our IT team handled the deployment, but I don't think it was complicated. 

Zerto is a little expensive.

I rate Zerto eight out of 10. 

In my previous company, we used it for recovery. We'd use it for annual DR testing. At that point in time, I was doing recovery for a few customers in government, financial, and other institutions.

It's easy to use. It wasn't too difficult to start with. With most vendors, initially, you have a learning curve or configurations. In this case, Zerto was quick to understand. The dashboard was easy and the UI was simple. The experience is comparatively good with Zerto.

The near-synchronous replication has not been used much. That said, it does help when talking about storage layers. The availability of the VMs is good. In terms of resiliency, there are a lot of benefits to it. Most have a recovery of 24 to 48 hours; Zerto has gotten recovery down to four hours. 

We've done a POC with a DR to AWS. It was limited, however, it worked well and there was support. We didn't run into any challenges. 

The effect on the RPOs has been excellent. It's been impacted greatly. Customers enjoy the shorter timeline to recovery. The customer confidence is high. 

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. 

I've used the solution for almost five years. 

The solution is pretty stable. Sometimes there may be bugs, however, so far, I haven't personally found any bugs beyond the initial setup. 

There is a wide range of scalability with different storage solutions. 

We've deployed Zerto with 40 TB of storage layers. 

Technical support is good. 

Positive

We used NetBackup and v-Motion. I'm familiar with Commvault and Veeam, which is also a fast solution.

When we used VMware V-motion or other methodologies, with Zeto, once you have your SAN hooked up well and your networking component set, then you failover to the recovery. With Zerto, the recovery times were less compared to what we witnessed with our previous traditional methods. 

I was involved in the initial deployment. My job was to get Zerto up from scratch and make sure the configuration, network, storage, et cetera were up and running. It's fairly simple. There's a learning process, however, once you know it, it gets easier. 

I'm not involved in the licensing process. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.