HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use Zerto primarily for disaster recovery replication between two sites.

We started to use this solution to help with disaster recovery planning and fast recoverability.

The solution is deployed on-premises. We have two different SANS by EMC, VMware as our DOS network operating system, and we have a mixture of Windows, Linux, Red Hat, and Cisco switches.

We haven't done DR in the cloud because we don't do anything in the cloud.

We haven't used Zerto for immutable data copies because everything is on-premises. We just use it in a VM environment for the VMDK replication.

It's made us feel more secure, and we used it a couple of times for failover, so it's an essential part of the business operations.

Zerto's overall effect on our RPOs has been business critical. It's almost as important as a running production server.

It reduced our downtime. We can recover in five to six minutes versus 12 hours. That amount of downtime would have cost our organization $30,000.

The solution saved us time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware. We got infected, noticed the infection within seven minutes, and restored it to a point in time. We failed over to our disaster site, deleted the infected server, and 24 hours later we replicated back to our corporate site.

It helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. It's easier to plan, and the procedure is the same no matter the operating system or the applications installed.

It reduced the amount of staff involved in data recovery. It also reduced the number of staff involved in overall backup in DR management, but we have not reduced our workforce because of it.

Real-time or near real-time replication is the most valuable feature. Our RTO is generally between six and eight seconds. The impact on our RTO is essential.

The ease of use is great. You just have to be familiar with it, know how to set up your virtually protected groups, and know what fits your environment the best.

I love the solution's near synchronous replication. It's business critical to our organization.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment.

It would be nice to have the option to do automatic failover, but right now the only option is manual.

Zerto hasn't replaced all of our legacy backup solutions.

I have been using this solution for about nine years.

I would rate the stability 10 out of 10.

I haven't had any issues with scalability. We don't have any plans to increase usage and buy more licenses, but we will if we need to.

Technical support is really good. We've used the solution for more than eight years, and we've only needed to call them three or four times.

I would rate technical support 10 out of 10.

We previously used VMware DRS. We made the switch to Zerto because of reporting and ease of use.

There was a learning curve, but the setup was pretty easy. For our deployment model, we have one VPG per server, so it's one-to-one.

For maintenance, there are quarterly patches, and we set up testing of our VPGs every six months.

Deployment was done in-house.

We've seen ROI in active disaster recovery and failover.

I wish it were cheaper, but I would purchase it again at the same price.

We haven't reviewed any other product in the last eight years, but if I can say that I can get six to eight seconds RPO and RTL, that's incredible.

Compared to other solutions, Zerto is just easier to use, it's not as cumbersome, it's straightforward, and training is easy.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

For those who are interested in this solution, my advice is to evaluate it, test it, and buy it.

I have a main data center with a few virtual machines running. I am protecting my mission-critical VMs on a disaster recovery server that I have outside of the data center. This ensures that I have protection. If something happens with my main data center at any moment, I have a copy, and that copy is at a remote and physically separated site for disaster recovery.

By implementing Zerto, I wanted to lower the RTO and RPO. Previously, the time to restore those mission-critical VMs with the traditional backup application took too long which impacted my business. That is why I decided to evaluate and then keep Zerto to protect my mission-critical VMs. It helps to lower the time to recover when something happens with one of my data centers.

Zerto is very easy to use. I did not have to attend a multi-day training. Online training is available from Zerto. It is very easy to use in my opinion as compared to other solutions.

Near-synchronous replication was the reason why I evaluated Zerto. I then decided to use Zerto because it works effectively. It is different from the other solutions in the market. Because I did not know that technology, I evaluated it, and I found out that it effectively works. That is why I decided to use it. I am a fan of Zerto.

We have a faster recovery time. I am lucky that until now, I did not have to use it in production effectively. That means that I did not lose access to my first data center, but it gave me peace of mind. I know that if something happens, at that moment, I know what to do to recover and to fail over to that second data center. There is peace of mind for sure.

We use Zerto to protect virtual machines from VMware to VMware. Our RPOs went from hours to seconds. That is a huge improvement.

Before using Zerto, I had an issue, and we had almost a day of downtime. I had to put a lot of energy and time at that moment, not being able to do my regular job. Since moving to Zerto, I never had a big downtime, but when I evaluated Zerto and ran the tests, failovers always worked. I have not had to use it in production so far because everything has stayed online until now. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Zerto has definitely helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. Previously, the procedure to do the testing took several hours, and now, it is all automated. The nice thing is that the testing is automated. It is a part of the solution itself, and it is very easy to perform.

Zerto has enhanced our IT resiliency a lot.

I do not have many regulations to follow because I am not in finance or health care, but it simplifies my work because it clearly shows me what I have, what is supported, and what is protected. Zerto definitely enhances my visibility.

There are two main things that I like. One is the fact that my recovery time is now much lower effectively. It is also very valuable that I can test it. There is a possibility to test that failover. At a regular moment in time, I can run that test and see if it effectively works when I have a major issue in the future.

I am switching to another HPE offering called HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery which is using Zerto technology in the backend but has a lower entry point. The native Zerto implementation is optimal for larger environments. My environment is rather small since I do not have hundreds of virtual machines. The initial Zerto offering was for a larger environment with more than 100 VMs. At that moment, it was not that easy to talk to HPE to get a good price. HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery uses the same technology, so it is a really good technology, but the entry point is much more interesting for me. They have lowered the number of protected VMs. That is why I am now evaluating HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery.

I have been using Zerto for two years.

It is always available. So far, I never had any issues. It is very good. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is definitely scalable, at least in my environment. I do not have the biggest environment, but based on what I saw when HPE initially presented the solution and all the new things that I see in it now, it is a very scalable solution. Why I prefer this solution compared to Veeam, for instance, is its scalability. I am convinced that the way it works with journaling makes it much more scalable than other solutions.

So far, I never had to call support because I never had issues with the platform at all. Until now, everything worked fine, and I never had to contact support. This is through HPE, and I expect the HPE support to work like before and provide the same experience for Zerto.

Positive

I am still using Veeam, but with Veeam, I was never able to go up to a few seconds of RPO. Zerto is much more scalable and flexible as compared to the Veeam solution, so I am using Zerto for the short-term retention and protection of my data, and I am still using Veeam for the mid- and long-term retention of my data.

It is for on-prem to on-prem DR. I am not using the public cloud for DR.

It took less than a day to set it up. It was very easy to deploy. In less than a day, everything was set up in two data centers.

In terms of maintenance, it is self-maintaining, so I do not have to put a lot of time into it. It is part of my testing. Every two or three months, I do a failover test, and at that time, I also check if everything is working fine and if any new updates need to be applied. When there are new updates, which do not happen that often, it is very easy to deploy the updates.

Only one person was involved in its deployment. It was just me. To set up and maintain it, there is just me. I do not need several people because it integrates with my compute and my storage. I can see my hypervisor. Technically, there is one storage person who is responsible for all this.

We are a small company. Zerto is being used by one team, but there are two physical buildings. Here on-site, we have our main data center, which is highly available with multiple servers, and on our DR site, there is just one server. It is one big server where we have copies of the mission-critical VMs that we are protecting.

It is hard to measure because I have not had a real disaster since I have been using Zerto. If I consider the time while testing the procedure, it went down from hours and days to less than an hour. I see large gains, but it is hard to say in the percentage. It is effectively much better.

I think the price is fair for what it is offering. It gives me the peace of mind that my data is protected. It is worth the cost.
It is like insurance for a car. You do not get the value until you have an accident.

I am now evaluating HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery, which is using Zerto in the backend.

I would definitely recommend Zerto. I have really low RPOs of seconds since I started using Zerto, and it works effectively. That is why I love Zerto. It does what it should be doing.

I like the tool because you can go from anywhere to anywhere. I am currently using it for on-prem to on-prem DR, but it can go from anywhere to anywhere. It shows the flexibility and the scalability of the tool. It is a no-brainer to evaluate Zerto because you can also go perfectly to the public cloud from your on-premises so that the public cloud is your DR site. I did not use it myself, but you can even use it as a migration tool for migration from an old environment to a new environment. It is a very flexible tool. That is why I was impressed with it and how HPE integrated Zerto into its portfolio. It was a smart move to do the acquisition of Zerto.

I recently started looking into the AI insights that was added in the latest version. Need to evaluate further but it looks very promising from what I can see now already.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

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.

I use Zerto to store and protect my files. Whether I'm working on a project or just need to access old files, Zerto ensures everything is safe. This makes it very convenient, as I can easily access any information I need with just a single click.

Zerto is effective at blocking unknown threats and attacks. We might consider using it on the business website as well, but it's important to understand how it might impact our operations. It helps with blocking threats, which is certainly valuable. So, in terms of its effectiveness, I'd say it's close to 99% guaranteed.

Zerto has helped our organization block threats, is user-friendly, is effective in storage, and inspires users.

Zerto's Cloud disaster recovery is impressive, and recovering most of our data can be relatively straightforward. However, it requires careful planning and understanding. Navigating the recovery site is crucial, so ensure we read and comprehend the instructions thoroughly before clicking anything. This way, we'll know which box to choose and where to click to achieve our desired outcome.

It is easy to migrate data using Zerto.

It helps reduce downtime.

It has helped reduce our disaster recovery time. Before Zerto, we needed ten people for disaster recovery and now with Zerto, we are down to three. 

Zerto is truly inspiring. Sometimes, when I provide information and receive it back, it can be remarkably refreshing and motivate me to get the most out of it. There might be instances where I initially think something isn't applicable, but then I try it out and say "wow" as I realize I am getting something positive from it. it becomes quite inspiring and brings out my best creative potential. Witnessing these features makes me naturally want to explore and create more.

The performance was generally good, but occasional lag disrupted the flow, leaving room for improvement.

I have been using Zerto for four months.

While Zerto is stable, it can sometimes be slow to retrieve the data we need.

Zerto is scalable.

We used to complete tasks manually, which consumed a lot of manpower, before adopting Zerto.

Zerto is affordable.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

No matter what we choose to do, there will always be potential positives and negatives. When aiming for the best outcome, focus on visualizing success and avoid dwelling on negativity. However, even while striving for the positive, acknowledge that occasional setbacks like technology issues or unexpected problems might occur. Don't get discouraged in the present; trust that Zerto will ultimately lead to something beneficial and fulfilling.

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 use the solution for replicating VMs from our on-site VMWare sites to both Google Cloud and Azure clouds. This allows us to feel confident not only in our disaster recovery capabilities but also in testing applications from our on-site data center to isolated cloud instances where there won't be any IP address or domain name system conflicts.  

The continuous backup gives us a better point in time recovery. It also reduces the amount of bandwidth to move the Zerto VM data from site to site, and we like that.

Zerto has improved our organization in several ways, particularly in the realm of disaster recovery, data protection, and business continuity.  

With Zerto's near-zero recovery time, our critical applications and services can be quickly restored, minimizing the impact on business operations.  

The data replication ensures that there is a consistent and up-to-date copy of the information. This helps protect against data loss and ensures data integrity.  With Zerto's single pane of glass, it's easier for IT administrators to monitor and manage their disaster recovery and data protection strategies. This has led to more efficient operations and reduced administrative overhead.

Zerto supports multi-cloud environments, allowing our organization to replicate and protect our important data across different cloud providers and sites. This flexibility has benefited our businesses with our diverse cloud strategies and our on-site data centers in different locations.  

Zerto helped our organization meet compliance requirements by ensuring data protection and recovery strategies align with our regulatory standards. 

Additionally, Zerto has incorporated security features to safeguard the replicated data.

Zerto needs to improve its documentation. It seems like some documents are copied from other older documentation, with misleading screenshots or incorrect steps.  

This can be confusing when newly introduced to a product or in a crisis situation such as a disaster recovery test or a true disaster recovery. The documentation needs to be revised, reviewed, and registered to be correct. Perhaps Zerto should consider an outside consultant to review and approve any documentation that is released.

I've used the solution for about a year.

It's very stable, and we have had no issues.

it does scan well and does what it claims to do.

Support needs to be more flexible.

Neutral

We have only used vRealize.

The documentation was confusing and, at times, incorrect.

We handled the setup in-house.

I don't any ROI information.

I'd advise others to start small.

We also evaluated Veeam.

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.

I use Zerto for disaster recovery. 

The time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great. We've seen a reduction in time spent. We can do it in minutes. Being able to go back to certain snapshots, to failover to another location, and then go back to specific snapshots is quite useful. We can roll back easily. 

The off-site replication is excellent. We have workloads that aren't DR-aware. Being able to replicate it to other data centers is great. We don't have another way to do it, currently. 

The near-synchronous replication is good. You get five-second data points. It's not something we advertise to our customers, the developers, however, we've had instances where we needed to go back two hours, prior to a file being deleted, and it's helped. 

We're protecting our VMs with Zerto. It's positively affected our RPOs. It meets the objective. It's the only way we can have a solution for certain applications where we send an entire application to another data server. 

It's a great product. There are a lot of features that it has that we don't use since we are on prem. We strictly use it for DR between our data centers. There are a lot of cloud plugins that they have that we don't use. Our use case is limited. It does everything we need it to.

I've been using the solution for probably four or five years. 

The stability of Zerto is good. We didn't have any issues. Our biggest challenge was trying to get to the clients and I was waiting on an upgrade path - from Windows to Linux. Now there is an upgrade path. Honestly, that has been the biggest challenge we've had for five years. 

The scalability of Zerto is good. You can easily protect other clusters and VRAs. It's very flexible.

Our current environment has 45 VRAs in each cluster. We have two replica pairs, two sites that mirror each other. 

In total, we have 70 ESX hosts.

Technical support is great. They've shown us many things about the manager that we didn't know about. Every time I call, I take notes. They are very knowledgeable and the knowledge-based articles on the site are also helpful. Even if I thought something was broken, they've always managed to fix it. 

Positive

We used to use VMware's SRM. With SRM, for us, it was overly complex. We used an array-based replication with SRM. We had issues where the storage team would go to do work on the array and they would fail the machine over and it wouldn't be right. We would have outages. Every time we did a failover it was a process and we would be missing rules.

This is not array-based and we can test our failover in a sandbox without taking the system down. 

The initial deployment was easy. We deployed VRAs to the host from the manager. It works very well. The amount of VRAs you have to deploy and the amount of time it takes is minimal. It took us about an hour. 

I can't speak to if the company has witnessed any ROI. 

I don't follow the licensing. It was bought for us and we use it. 

We evaluated SRM and a few others. I can't remember which ones we tested. We've been on Zerto since version six. 

The selling point for us, coming from SRM, is that SRM was tied to vCenter. We had to pay attention to versions and there were a lot of ways you had to make sure the versions were correct and it was overly complex for what we needed. We simply needed to replicate a virtual machine and that was it. Zerto stood out as it was easy.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.