HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We primarily use Zerto as a disaster recovery tool to handle data transfer between virtual machines. Currently, Zerto is implemented on-premises, as 90 percent of our services reside there. However, we plan to migrate some services to the cloud and utilize Zerto's migration capabilities to move VMs directly from our on-premises environment to the cloud. This is a crucial feature for us, as our virtualization technique relies heavily on VMware, and Zerto allows for straightforward migration of critical VMs to the cloud.

Our multi-campus university faced challenges delivering services hosted in a single location to geographically dispersed users. The extensive data volume and risk of outages due to disasters led us to implement a Disaster Recovery and Continuity setup. This involves hosting primary services in one data center and maintaining a disaster recovery site in another. Zerto's replication technology allows us to continuously update data at the DR site, ensuring data currency and the ability to roll back to a stable version quickly.

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.

One of the most valuable features of Zerto is its straightforward cost model. It's essentially a one-time purchase, meaning you pay once and can use the software indefinitely despite the three-year license. This non-licensing-based approach allows for long-term use with a single purchase. Additionally, Zerto offers excellent technical support with responsive and helpful experts.

Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses. Its structure limits affordability to approximately five to ten virtual machines. To increase accessibility for small and medium businesses, Zerto should consider a competitive pricing strategy, possibly including subscription-based licensing options. This would enable more organizations to utilize Zerto's services.

I want Zerto to add support for Proxmox.

I have been working with Zerto for one year.

Zerto is stable.

Zerto is scalable; however, the primary concern remains the cost, especially if needing to scale to 300 virtual machines. It is more cost-effective to use fewer virtual machines.

Zerto's technical support is superb. Following HP's acquisition of the product, significant improvements have been made.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. We implemented it in two geographically separated campuses, setting up one server and adding another for disaster recovery. Zerto's demo provided a solid understanding and clear strategy for the implementation.

We did not use third parties for deployment; our on-premises engineers handled it. Only two to three staff members were needed.

The return on investment is evident, as Zerto saves more than 60 percent of time in various operations compared to the previous manual processes. The savings extend to hardware and resource allocation, which were reduced by Zerto’s efficient backup solutions.

I rate Zerto ten out of ten.

Our on-premises firewall provides a basic level of security, but it cannot guarantee complete application security. Therefore, the application, including Zerto, must have robust security measures to mitigate any vulnerabilities. Even with a firewall, loopholes can exist, potentially compromising Zerto and other services. To ensure comprehensive security, we can integrate Zerto with our security firewall, enhancing protection and minimizing the risk of software compromise. Ultimately, Zerto remains our primary solution for software recovery in case of a security breach.

Zerto requires minimal maintenance due to its operation on virtual machines. Three people are required for the maintenance.

We have Zerto on 300 virtual machines in our environment.

Zerto's capabilities would greatly benefit organizations with on-premises and on-cloud setups, as it facilitates seamless migrations. It is highly recommended for anyone prioritizing data security and disaster recovery assurance.

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software include multiple applications. Fortunately, I haven't needed to use it for disaster recovery yet. 

We use it to recover from badly developed software that we implement in production. We use it to clone machines to other hypervisors. Additionally, we have it replicated in case we need disaster recovery.

HPE Zerto Software's features have benefited my organization significantly. I can sleep peacefully now. If I encounter a problem in the future, I have a solution since I have two data centers connected to a WAN connection, and all my business-critical machines are replicated on that side. We are also making a plan to include this in a cloud vault to be more secure.

For instance, we had to use it once when a developer put some problematic code into production over a weekend. This broke the entire database and the sales software we had in production. It took us only 1.5 minutes to restore everything.

The feature of HPE Zerto Software that I find most impressive is its ability to work with one connection. This is remarkable. Normally, you need a full fiber connection, such as a dark fiber, to go point-to-point to have low RPO. Currently, we are achieving an eight-second RPO with just a 100 megabit connection.

It's easy to use. We don't need formal training. 

It performs its intended functions effectively. In my country, we often have discussions with people who believe it's a backup system. It isn't. 

The near-synchronous replication is very good. It's amazing. It's important for us in the manufacturing industry, and we cannot lose our systems for more than a few minutes. Every minute means a lot of money wasted.

It's helped reduce downtime in certain situations. We now have a 1.5-minute recovery time. It's saving us tons of money. For every ten minutes down, we can lose thousands of dollars in production. 

It's positively affected our RTOs and RPOs. I've never seen anything like this. It's almost like magic. It's very good. In the worst case, we might have 11 seconds of RPOs.

HPE Zerto Software could be improved by including everything in the same package. If I had to suggest an improvement, I would want everything in the same package, such as HPE Zerto Software and Veeam together. Currently, I have to administer them separately, which can be more complicated for the infrastructure team. That would be beneficial. 

Regarding critical features, I don't see anything more than what HPE Zerto Software is already providing.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for approximately one year.

I assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as good. I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues. Though it's not perfect, when HPE Zerto Software encounters problems, they provide a notice or email, and the system recovers automatically.

It's easy to scale simply by buying more licenses.

I evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as very good. The service in my country has been excellent. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as ten because the HP team addresses all our problems and questions. They visit our plant and assist with installation and everything else.

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, we are planning to implement Alletra. We need full flash for the next step in our infrastructure planning to make it more resilient and faster. 

I would describe my experience deploying HPE Zerto Software as very easy and efficient. We implemented it into production in just two hours.

I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software, though it's difficult to quantify as our business is not IT-based. The company will certainly see the value if we encounter issues with ransomware or similar problems.

My experience with HPE Zerto Software regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been positive. The pricing is favorable, especially when compared to a metro cluster.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I didn't see another comparable solution. It currently stands unique in the market.

My advice for other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to try it and prepare to be surprised. You will lower your costs. That's the ultimate goal. 

On a scale of one to ten, this solution deserves a rating of ten.

It is part of a new deployment. We have a large deployment for the public sector in the UK, and we are using Zerto to enable disaster recovery by replicating data. This allows us to have a very low recovery point objective for that data.

Zerto is easy to use and fairly straightforward to set up. It reliably keeps the data in sync which is all that we can ask of it. It does what it says on the tin, and that takes away any worries. We know that we will be able to recover as we are contracted to do.

Having Zerto in place takes a headache off my plate. I do not have to worry about it. I check it, or I have my team check that it is up to date and synchronizing. All they have to do is log on, have a look, and confirm that we are okay and have green lights across the board. It is very easy to understand the interface.

It is one of those things that sits and does its job and does it well. Therefore, we do not have to worry about it. That is the biggest thing. We have peace of mind at the end of the day.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is very important. We run an application in the SaaS model for our customers. Our customers sign into our application. It is a purchasing application called PECOS. We do purchasing and inventory management. They sign in to our systems and do their business. We have to ensure that the systems are highly available. In the event of a disaster, we can bring them up with a minimum loss of data. That is where Zerto comes in.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. Our recovery point objective by contract is within four hours, but practically, it is within five minutes. Zerto is very effective. If I look at it during the day, I generally see that we are within nine to ten seconds. It is a very good thing to see.

Zerto recovery is a lot faster than recovery from a tape or a digital backup. We did a test against the old RecoverPoint and found Zerto to be faster. We also do disaster recovery tests. I have a full disaster recovery test coming up at the end of the month. We expect to be able to bring up the entire environment for our customer within 45 minutes, which is very good.

Zerto has not reduced our downtime, but it has made us feel a lot better. In the event we have downtime, we have some protection there.

Zerto has not saved us time in a real-time data recovery situation. In our rehearsals, it definitely has saved time. Hopefully, our systems have been built reliably enough that we would not have to use it for one. It is just an insurance system.

We still do DR testing. We have noticed a speed improvement in our DR testing. It is slightly faster, but we still have to do DR testing. As with any system, you have to make sure it works.

Zerto has given us confidence in our IT resilience strategy. We had similar strategies in place with the previous infrastructure. We completely renewed our entire infrastructure and replaced it with HPE backend and SAN. Zerto is the recovery solution. We have a lot of confidence that it will work if called upon.

Zerto is quite straightforward to use. It is quite easy to set up. Getting it right is a bit more complex, but setting it up is quite straightforward. 

It seems to be very reliable, and it consistently keeps our data synchronized within ten seconds or so, which gives our customers confidence that the data synchronization and replication will allow for a very low recovery point objective.

The onboarding was not very good. It felt like, "Now you have Zerto, good luck. Figure out how to use it." It was not terrible. Their support since having the product has been good when I have had an issue, but there was not much of an onboarding process. The setup of the system, although simple to get working, is a little more tricky to get right. This aspect could have benefitted from a bit more explanation.

It is very easy to simply say, "There are manuals." A little hand-holding upfront instead of trying to get it right by going through a big manual would have saved a lot of time. Once I reported a problem, they were very quick to jump on that and assist us with it. It is not a huge criticism, but it would have saved time. A little bit of upfront help would have stopped us from getting into that cycle. At the end of the day, I am happy with the product. It works.

I have been using Zerto for four months.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I do not know about scalability. We have implemented it for the size that we need. We have not tried to change licenses, add VMs, or grow it at all. From what I understand, it is very good. We will have to increase the usage but not for a good six months or so.

Our environment has about 400 virtual machines. It is not massive. We are an application provider. We provide a purchasing and inventory management application set to our customers mainly in the UK public sector. Our clients are large organizations. They are health care and local government organizations.

I have a team of eight people. They are not daily involved with Zerto. Only four people are daily involved with Zerto.

The only issues we had stemmed from a lack of familiarity. After we submitted the ticket, their technical support got back to us and helped us resolve the issues.

I would rate them an eight out of ten. It has been very good.

Positive

We used another replication system prior to this, which was the old EMC RecoverPoint. It was very good as well, but we had a change in technology. We shifted our technology to HPE for various reasons, and Zerto was the offering that came with their data synchronization.

Overall, it was straightforward. I did it myself in the afternoon by figuring it out myself. It took us a few days to get it right and then another couple of days fiddling with it, but it was under a week.

It requires very little maintenance on a day-to-day basis. It requires monitoring to ensure that you are not running out of space. Once you have got those space parameters right, it pretty much looks after itself unless there are significant changes.

We update Zerto when a new version is available. At that point, we schedule an update.

I managed the deployment initially, but it has now been handed off to a team.

It is too early to say. I think it will eventually prove beneficial by saving us time and eliminating the constant worry of checking these things.

Having seen the product and how it works and its reliability, it seems it will pay for itself.

Nothing is cheap, but Zerto represents decent value.

I would recommend Zerto. It seems to be a very good product. It appears to be stable, and it is a simple product to manage that gives us peace of mind. 

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. The tiny amount of problems we have encountered is reasonably insignificant. It works.

We use the solution for replication.

By implementing the HPE Zerto Software, we're trying to minimize the RTO and the RPO.

This has benefited our organization as we had a catastrophic system failure where we had to bring up a copy of the production environment. We were able to bring up our application in minutes, whereas previously we had to get a six-second transaction. We didn't need to be storing backups or do any rollback. We just brought it up, turning what could potentially be hours of downtime into maybe 10 minutes.

One of the features I appreciate the most about the HPE Zerto Software is the simplicity of the replication, which allows the RPO to be in seconds rather than hours, which is what we were used to. The data loss is never substantial, not reaching minutes or hours.

The way HPE Zerto Software improves our RTOs and RPOs is by being by far the simplest we've used. Prior to HPE Zerto Software, our RTOs were in the hours. We've brought that down to an average of about ten seconds. The RTOs, since we're talking about having to bring a standby site, are in the minutes. We just make the DNS change here and there and we're back online, whereas previously it would require restoring backups to get the data. It's a big difference, going from hours down to minutes and seconds.

It's very easy to use. I have had to oversee rollbacks of infrastructure. We're training all of our IT organization, and I found it very easy. I would say it's getting easier.

This solution has helped to reduce downtime in situations, and we've definitely avoided or minimized downtime. I couldn't put a dollar value to describe that. In our internal operations, there's no financial impact if our entire operation goes offline for a day. However, there's internal staffing that we're paying to do nothing. We have contractors we're paying by the hour to sit idle. It reduces a lot of wasted man-hours.

My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's Near-Sync Replication are that it minimizes the loss of data. This solution has saved time and data for recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes, allowing us to go back from hours of data loss to just ten minutes. About five minutes of that was deciding whether to proceed.

With another solution that we used, it would have taken hours to recover. The previous solutions we used were all backup and recovery, requiring us to build new infrastructure, then restore the backups to that infrastructure. This solution has helped reduce our organization's DR testing significantly, making a lot of our testing now just business testing.

We perform a full DR test at the end of the year. It's made the DR testing a shorter exercise. We can test the entire environment in a weekend, failing it all over to the DR site, testing it, and failing it all back again. Prior to HPE Zerto Software, we could never successfully execute a full DR test in a weekend.

As for improvements to the HPE Zerto Software, I can't really think of anything as we have a very specific use case for it and don't use all the functionality. 

Potentially integration into some of our other solutions would be beneficial, as we're using ServiceNow as a platform. If we could integrate our AIOps solutions and incident management capabilities within HPE Zerto Software, that would be beneficial, as it would enable us to automatically bring the DR site online when a major incident is detected, eliminating human involvement and making the process quicker than manual decision-making.

I am familiar with the HPE Zerto Software for a couple of years now.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues, which speaks to the stability and reliability of the HPE Zerto Software.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of our organization as it just sat there quietly in the background and did its job.

I have not had to use customer service or technical support from the provider, so I cannot evaluate that.

Positive

Prior to using the HPE Zerto Software, we were using a Veeam-based disaster recovery solution with cloud, and it was a clunky process.

I have not seen a significant return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. That said, the reduction in man-hours of work is probably the ROI we have. The reduction in downtime and standby equipment in our cloud data center means we don't need to keep the equipment running, so there's a cost savings there.

Before selecting the HPE Zerto Software, the other solution we considered was Veeam.

I am currently using a Cyber Vault solution. We were using Wasabi for immutable storage, however, that changed in the last couple of months. My experience with the pricing, setup, and licensing for the HPE Zerto Software is positive.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a nine.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is ransomware protection, so basically, the entire environment is replicated.

It's helped protect us and give us recovery from ransomware. We're only allowed about an hour of downtime before we need to start making calls. 

Zerto features of HPE Zerto Software benefit my organization by allowing it to be set and forget. Once it's operational, I just check it every once in a while to make sure it's still working. If I make a new machine, I add it to the group to get replicated and that's it. It requires very little maintenance.

What I appreciate the most about HPE Zerto Software is that it works.

I'd rate the ease of use four out of five. It's fairly easy to use. 

The near-sychronous replication is good, even though we don't need that fast of a replication. If I have an application crash, I can step back a week and get back what I need.

Zerto positively impacted our RTOs and RPOS. Before Zerto, it would take us four days to recover. Now, we're looking at a couple of hours. Compared to other solutions, like Veeam, the biggest difference is that, though it is very simple, it doesn't have in-built security.

We haven't DR tested it yet. I'll bring up machines, however, this is a completely different solution than what we had. We build a complete Vault around Zerto. We made our own Cyber Vault. The most important capability for that is the air gap.

HPE Zerto Software can be improved by allowing a system inside my makeshift vault to reach out to the other system and pull backups inside, which would let me punch fewer holes. 

Currently, my understanding is you have to have two systems that are interconnected. Based on how I've built it, if I could have a system inside my makeshift vault reach out to the other system, that would be more secure.

Right now, both systems have to talk to work. We've completely rebuilt our infrastructure inside, including firewalls and everything, inside a basic vault. It has the same concept. For that system to replicate, we have to have holes in the firewall for the outside system to reach in to connect to the HPE Zerto Software inside.

A lot of the wording isn't very clear. If you don't know what you're looking at, it just oesn't make sense when you are setting it up.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for three months.

My assessment of the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software is that I haven't had any issues yet.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization in that it's all about the licenses. I have not yet expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, however, that is actually in my budget for next year.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as awesome. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as nine. The reason for my rating is that they've been very responsive. I think sometimes there's a little bit of a gap in communications, but usually, it's not too significant a deal.

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using another solution to address similar needs, which was StoreEver.

The deployment model for HPE Zerto Software is that we have two data centers that are basically stacked as one in diverse locations. When we rebuilt and built the HPE Zerto Software system, we built it the same way. We have it stretched across two data centers, so we have high availability across two data centers times two, essentially.

My experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software is that we paid for deployment. We paid for the full service and initial setup. Honestly, that was worth it. It cost as much as the licenses, however, having somebody to be there, walk you through it, find all the loopholes and the menus that aren't quite clear was valuable. There are a few of those products. Morpheus was the same way.

I have seen an ROI on HPE Zerto Software based on estimates of what it would cost us to recover from ransomware. That was the whole use case for getting it - determining what it would take if we had to recover, how much it would cost us, and what our man-hours would be. That's what justified this whole project. This project is just to see how it works. If we it, then we'll expand on it.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software is that for what you get, it's pretty cheap. We did 50 VMs as a trial case, and it was a small portion of our overall budget.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered Commvault. We are a Commvault customer and use it for backups. We also have the HP StoreEver tape system, a very large tape system. That was the chosen ransomware protection. When you're going for tape, you're in a difficult situation. Tapes work, but if you're having to rebuild from that, it's going to take literal weeks. We needed something faster.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to think about your use case. For us, it didn't make sense until we had the hardware and the desire in place. We had a solution that was workable, but the cost was justified when the business decided they needed a more guaranteed recovery time.

A little bit better communication stood out in my evaluation process of HPE Zerto Software. We tried to get more information from the sales team and we had to do a lot of research on our own. The implementation has been very good though.

I rate HPE Zerto Software ten out of ten.

We are using Zerto as a DR solution. We also utilize Zerto when we have to migrate any servers from one location to another.

Previously, we were using VMware Site Recovery Manager, and we were not happy with the services we received. There were lots of issues. Since implementing Zerto, we have been happy. We are not seeing any issues with the services. Zerto's support is also excellent. If we encounter any issues, we open a ticket, and they are available all the time.

When we implemented Zerto, we were not sure how things would work. We have a DR test or maintenance window every quarter. During the first window, when we did the DR implementation through Zerto, we found it to be very helpful. Previously, we used to manually take screenshots for DR evidence, whereas now, we can generate a report from Zerto. After the DR, it tells everything in detail such as when a VM was moved, what the procedure was, and how much time it took to consolidate from the primary site to the DR site.

When we had an issue with a legacy application over the weekend and users reported it on Monday, we had to revert the VM to a snapshot from eight hours prior. We could do that easily. This is an excellent feature. Zerto allows us to select a custom recovery time. For instance, if no one checked the server yesterday because it was a holiday and we needed to restore the VM to the day before yesterday, we could do that quickly. Zerto helps address downtime situations effectively.

Zerto has reduced the DR testing time. Previously, it took three to four hours, including app testing, but now it gets completed in one hour. 

Zerto is excellent. It is the primary and only solution we are using in our organization.

The constant replication between the primary and the DR site is valuable. Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent.

Zerto is very easy to use. A new team member can pick up the pace in one or two days. Someone who has never worked with Zerto can understand it in one week. It has a user-friendly graphical user interface. Everything is well described.

I have one recommendation, but I am not sure if it has been addressed in the current or upcoming version. The challenge we faced occurred during a DR for a database server running on SQL Always On. We experienced a database crash and logged a case with Zerto about a year ago. They said that they do not support Always On. As a result, we had to plan accordingly. We deployed another server to that location with Always On and moved all the database servers out of the Zerto application. We are uncertain if Zerto now supports Always On because we have not explored that option. We have a couple of environments on the cloud but have not tested if that feature is available or not.

I have been using Zerto for the last four to five years.

We have experienced no issues at all.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten for scalability.

Zerto's support is excellent. At the time of implementation, the support was slightly delayed because there was only one way to log cases, which was through the portal. They provided us with a few articles to refer to, which helped us address the solution.

Positive

We had VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which was very difficult to manage. Sometimes, we faced replication issues. When performing a failover, the network was not stable. There were many issues, including dependencies on the storage area, requiring the storage team to be available during DR tests. The network team also had to be available, involving multiple teams. With Zerto, we do not need the involvement of the storage area or network teams.

It was easy. Initially, we took help from Zerto support because we were not sure about the configuration and best practices. We received help from Zerto.

The challenge was not from Zerto's perspective; deploying VMs where we were going to install Zerto took some time. We had dependencies on aspects such as VMs not being ready. The deployment of only Zerto took less than eight hours.

We reached out to Zerto for any support.

One person can handle the implementation, but if that person is not available, it creates challenges. Whenever we undertake projects, it is between team members. One person deploys, but everyone is involved so that everyone is aware of what is being done.

Currently, it is good, but the license we are using is based on VM count. We are only protecting mission-critical servers, so we are using a very low number, about 300. However, we have 3,000 or more servers. If we consider using Zerto for data protection, it would cost us more than what we have for data protection now.

For new users, Zerto used to offer free training and certification. I am not sure if it is still available, but it was available. Anyone planning to deploy Zerto can get support from Zerto and should go through the basic training, which is free on the Zerto website. They can get certification and reach out to Zerto support if needed. Having a basic understanding of how Zerto works is important.

Overall, I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten because we do not have the functionality to protect our database servers that are on Always On.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery between our private data centers.

Near-synchronous replication is the primary reason we chose Zerto, as nobody else is able to meet the same replication times. We have some special contracts, so Zerto is the only one that can meet those contractual requirements.

Zerto has had a significant impact on our RTOs. We have probably reduced our RTOs by 70% to 80%. Previously, we relied on manually replicated backups that we had to restore from, resulting in significant RTO compared to Zerto.

We use Zerto to help protect virtual machines in our environment. When it comes to recovery, if other solutions take five minutes, with Zerto, we can usually get them up in under a minute. Our RTOs are much quicker on Zerto. It is probably 20 seconds on Zerto versus an hour with others.

We have had multiple live disaster recovery events where Zerto saved us a lot of downtime. We have not had any ransomware situations, but it has saved us time in generalized data recovery.

Zerto has helped reduce DR testing. For the customers for whom we use Zerto for disaster recovery, we usually do DR testing once a month, and it takes us probably two minutes to run those DR tests. With other solutions that we use for our wider customer base, it takes us about two days to go through all of our DR testing.

Zerto has had a significant impact on our IT resiliency strategy. The tier-one customers that we use Zerto for have very strict requirements for their disaster recovery capabilities, and Zerto is able to meet those contractual obligations pretty easily.

We were able to realize its benefits immediately after the deployment.

The low SLA times are valuable. It is very easy to use with a straightforward user setup.

The biggest area for improvement is the technical support side. Although it has improved somewhat, after the HPE acquisition, it became apparent that level-one technical support was moved to groups unfamiliar with the Zerto product. As experienced users of Zerto, when we need to open a ticket, dealing with level-one technical support can be tough. We often need to escalate immediately due to our internal skill set surpassing level-one support capabilities. That is the biggest complaint we have with Zerto.

We have used it for roughly five years, possibly six years.

The solution is very stable, especially in the newest version. There were some challenging times shortly after the HPE acquisition, likely due to engineering changes. However, the newest version is incredibly stable, and we have no complaints.

We have not had to worry too much about scalability because we have a fairly limited implementation.

Once past level-one support, the experience improves because we then interact with people familiar with the product. I am assuming that the level-one support is generalized HPE technical support, and they are relying on Zerto Runbooks to be able to help us. They do not have a lot of familiarity with the product.

For the quality of support, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Before Zerto, we primarily used Veeam, but we needed faster RTOs for tier-one customers, who had contractual obligations for RPO and RTO. At that time, Zerto was the only solution that provided the necessary speed. The rest of the industry had not caught up. Currently, we use Cohesity for everything else, but for customers with stringent standards, we rely on Zerto.

Zerto is definitely easier to use from a GUI standpoint and is very straightforward for automation. It is a one-click solution for us to do our disaster recovery events.

Its initial deployment is very easy. We recently did a deployment of version 10 for our VMware 8 deployment. We completed it in a single day, taking approximately three or four hours.

It requires maintenance but it is very infrequent. We need to make manual changes to our Zerto environment maybe once a quarter.

Just one person handled the implementation.

I am not very involved with the pricing, but from my understanding, it is fairly expensive for us. This is why we limit its use to our tier-one customers. We have other disaster recovery solutions for our other customers due to the cost.

It is pretty straightforward. I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

Our main use case for HPE Zerto Software is for DR purposes—that's disaster recovery—for our separate DR site.

What I appreciate about HPE Zerto Software is that it seems fairly easy to use, and there are a couple of minor challenges that we figured out. We also found ways around those. 

The way HPE Zerto Software specifically benefited us is that when we've had to do some testing to show we can actually bring things up in our disaster recovery site, we're able to do it with relative ease, allowing us to check off boxes on testing for either auditors or some of the other cyber insurance or whomever else that we need to validate that through. It made it a lot easier and gave everybody else a sense of comfort.

HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is great, just based on the small timeline that's there; that's what I found to be most beneficial. Near-synchronous replication is very important to our organization as it gives us that safety and security blanket of knowing that the data is being mirrored or replicated up to another environment, so in case we were to have some kind of disaster locally, we would at least have another copy sitting somewhere else within a very short period of time.

HPE Zerto Software has helped reduce downtime in some situations; we haven't had to use it officially to bring anything back up, but we have tested numerous times throughout the year for different applications to see how long it takes for us to bring things up, and while we haven't had to actually use that in place just yet, we know it's there if certain things happen.

HPE Zerto Software has saved us time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes; we've been able to utilize it just for doing some work with it. But we've also found that certain situations will not work for us since we haven't finalized the air gap vault in place, and we know that using some simulated ransomware attacks would cause problems, so we wouldn't be able to recover. That's why we're looking and trying to see what we can do to mitigate that issue.

In testing, I wouldn't be able to come up with a number right now as we take our time to ensure we don't miss anything. Usually, we can normally do that within a day. HPE Zerto Software has definitely impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively; they have come down considerably.

In comparing it to other disaster recovery solutions that we've used in the past, I would say that since we own and use HPE Zerto Software, it clearly beat out any of the competitors we had looked at previously. We're not yet using a cyber vault solution or immutable data copies. I can't say how HPE Zerto Software can be improved just yet; I want to see us get the vault in place first to test that out, so we're hoping to look at it here sometime soon. Our DR testing will probably save about 50% of the time.

The only thing I could suggest for HPE Zerto Software would be better support for detached drives in a clustered environment, as it's currently not supported very well unless everything's running on a virtualized VMDK file. If it's detached an iSCSI drive, it doesn't work, so that would be about the only thing I would suggest.

We have been using HPE Zerto Software for six to seven years.

HPE Zerto Software has been stable and reliable every time we've had to go through it thus far.

HPE Zerto Software has scaled with us thus far.

The support we've received from HP Zerto has typically been very good, and they normally answer any questions we have; we're looking at a couple of gaps we found, and we'll be testing that out to see how that's going to meet our situation.

Positive

Prior to using HPE Zerto Software, we weren't actually using anyone for a similar type of situation; we were relying on backups.

For the most part, it's very easy to set up, and the time it takes for it to keep things in sync is very small, which has also been a huge benefit. We've seen that work out very well when we've had to test part of our DR situations.

I've seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. I've been able to see that return based on the time it saves us for recovery and testing for DR testing.

I can't say what those competitors are since we've had HPE Zerto Software for about six to seven years now, and I don't remember which ones they were at the time.

Initially, HPE Zerto Software has helped us deal with many challenges. We have had a couple of bouts where it did cause a problem, however, part of this is due to the fact that we haven't implemented the new air gap solution yet, so we run into some difficulties there. We are reevaluating that through our rep and also talking to them now just trying to get more information on that.

Our deployment model for HPE Zerto Software is all on-prem; we keep everything on-prem with our primary data center to a disaster recovery location located out of state.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give the product overall a big nine, probably over nine; it's not perfect. There's always going to be some pieces that are missing.