HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use Zerto at our remote locations as a backup solution in environments where we don't have the infrastructure for redundancy. It allows us to use two HPE DL380 servers as stand-alone VMware hosts and replicate the VMs without needing shared storage.

Using Zerto, we are able to replicate / backup our VMs and between servers and locations, without the need for shared storage, which provides redundancy in case of hardware failure.  We are able to fail the VMs over to the secondary host, which also allows us to patch or repair hardware without extended downtime. 

We use to use VMware replication appliances to attempt to replicate our VMs to remote locations and servers, but Zerto's one-to-many replication options with deduplication have made the process much simpler without having to constantly worry about the versions of each driver.

The number one thing we have found we would like changed so far is the cost per VM. It would be great to get that pricing reduced.

The need for a VM to be spun up on every host is challenging. In our remote locations, it's not a big issue, but as we look to use that in our main data center where we have hundreds of hosts, it becomes more daunting.

I have been using this solution for six months.

In the six months that we have used it, we have not had any issues.

So far, it looks like it should scale to our entire environment of over three thousand VMs.

Prior to this solution, we use to use SRM. We were looking to switch because SRM continues to be troublesome and requires a select combination of drivers and versions across the environment to work correctly.

This initial setup was pretty straightforward with the exception of needing a VM on every single host.

The cost per VM is a bit high.

We also looked at RapidDR from HPE but it only works on our HPE SimpliVity servers and not across all of our hardware.

My primary use case is doing demos and testing to make sure that Zerto is going to work for our customers. I test it mainly for disaster recovery and backup.

We've tested with VMware, Zadara, and AWS.

My clients found the DR feature to be the most valuable. It's something they deal with daily from a virtual machine using VMware, Amazon, or Azure.

Zerto absolutely helped to reduce downtime. My customers can bring up their machine somewhere else, and they can test on it.

Zerto's speed of recovery is very fast and efficient whenever I tested it.

Zerto added the backup feature, but it's not quite up to speed yet when you compare it with the backup capabilities of other solutions out there.

I've used Zerto off and on for about a year and a half.

The stability is good, and I have never had any customers say anything bad about it. Some have used it for years and have not had any problems.

Zerto can be scaled to any number of servers that you need.

My customers have used Zerto's technical support and had no problems with it.

My clients loved Commvault from a backup side of things, but Commvault just didn't do the DR right for them. It was not quick real-time DR. They brought in Zerto, and it worked phenomenally for their production systems.

From a backup perspective, Commvault is really good, but from a DR perspective, Zerto is way better. It's much quicker and easier to use, and it works right out of the box.

My customers said that though they had to pay for it, they were glad they bought it because Zerto works. It's got really great ROI coming from that perspective.

The licensing model is good. The price is a little bit expensive, but for what customers get on it, it tends to pay for itself. However, if more and more companies start to improve, then Zerto may need to look at their pricing and make it a little better.

We evaluated Veeam, Cohesity, and RackWare. Zerto is by far the best disaster recovery product out there.

You should set it up, test it on a few machines, and also test it in multiple environments. Most people have multiple clouds, so make sure you try it with VMware, AWS, etc. Also, decide whether you want to do all your critical tasks with Zerto and fully plan your DR as the top-level. Determine what is most important and then scale it down to the least important. You can then implement Zerto from that perspective.

Overall, I would rate Zerto at nine on a scale from one to ten.

For all the most important applications, we are using Zerto as a hot site in case something were to go on with our on-prem data center-based applications. We can immediately resort to Zerto as a failover.

It's deployed for replication from our data center into the public cloud.

The most important thing is the mean time to restoration. When anything goes wrong, we should be able to rely on the failover data that is available, and we should be able to restore it as quickly as possible. We have been able to reduce that mean time to restore the data pretty significantly with Zerto. It's gone from a few hours to a few minutes.

There are two things that are keeping us with the solution:

1. It does a very good job of keeping the data in sync at all times. 
2. In the event of a failover or in the event of a contingency, we are able to retrieve the data very quickly without any issues.

Both of these points are valuable to us because we have application data and it means we keep the data in sync. It is very important for us to know exactly where we left off in the event of any disaster or contingency. We can always rely on, or resort to, the data that we have as a backup or a failover. Also, in the event of a contingency, or even for doing a mock contingency exercise, the speed of retrieval of data and the speed of getting back up and running — minimizing the downtime — is important. That's where the second feature comes into play.

There are two areas which I would recommend for improvement. One is when we are trying to upgrade any virtual machines, we have to stop the virtual machines that have been replicated in Zerto and then upgrade or update to the virtual machines onsite. Instead of having to do it manually, there should be some way of automating that particular function.

And when it comes to AWS failover, the documentation has a lot of scope for improvement. It's come a long way since we implemented it, from the scantiness of documentation that was available to do a failover into AWS or recover from AWS, but they could still do a much better job of providing more details, how-to's, tutorials, etc.

In terms of additional features that I would like to see included in the next releases, if they could provide us some kind of long-term storage option, that would be the best thing. Then it could be a storage and a failover solution combined into one.

I have been using Zerto for two-and-a-half years.

It's a very stable solution.

It scales very well, in terms of the data size and the number of sites that we want to add on. It has scaled very well, at least in the last two releases.

We have plans to increase usage, but as it is we are using it for about 75 percent of the data at this point. The balance of the data will come onboard by early next year.

We have about 25 people using Zerto, and they're mostly database and storage administrators, infrastructure people, and security people. 

We have not used the technical support. One thing I can say is that they have a very friendly team of engineers. If you have a problem, they are at your beck and call. You can call them and get it resolved.

We were using another solution but I don't want to name it. The primary reason we switched was the ability to restore the. Our main goal was not only to have good replication of data, but to be able to restore the data as quickly as possible in the event of any contingency, whether planned or unplanned. 

From that standpoint, when we put Zerto against the existing product, what took us a few hours in that product took us a few minutes with Zerto. That was primarily the goal. Even though this product was a little more expensive than what we had prior to going with Zerto, we still went ahead with Zerto.

The initial setup is very straightforward compared to a lot of others. The user interface is very simple and very intuitive. It goes one step at a time so you can logically follow through the steps to set it up. Whether it's a small site or a big site, it doesn't really matter.

Overall our deployment took about two weeks. We had a detailed project plan, as we always do with any new products or projects that we come up with.

It doesn't require any full-time staff to deploy and maintain the solution. Once you turn on the process, all that somebody needs to do is just monitor the schedule and see whether it's doing things the way it has been programmed.

We have absolutely seen return on our investment with Zerto. We do mock disaster recovery exercises and, in every such exercise since we've gone ahead with Zerto, we've been able to restore the data within a few minutes, very easily, without any business loss. That gives us the confidence to say that, even in the case of a real disaster, we should be able to restore the data.

We didn't evaluate any other options.

Know your use case and then do a thorough proof of concept with your use case to see whether the solution works for your environment and your specific use case. Have a well-defined project plan and negotiate your way with the vendor.

The biggest lesson our organization has learned in using Zerto is that you should understand the product very well. You should understand what the product is capable of doing and leverage the options and features that are available in the product to the optimal extent. 

We use Zerto for replication to a DR site of Windows and Unix machines. We like having a testable solution which does not interfere with the performance on our production machines. It has an included feature allowing assignment of a specific LAN or IP address to segregate the machine while testing. We are replicating 56 machines, totaling more than 30 TB, but compressing at 70 percent for space savings. We use the email alerts as a way to monitor replication status. This helps in off hours alerting for potential problems.

Testing and auditing are required at our organization. Zerto has saved a tremendous amount of time in performing these tasks. I am alerted every six months to retest each protection group. This setting is customizable. All past testing reports are retained and available upon demand. It has also added assurance in recovering servers and/or files. Being able to run tests on a working machine is beneficial. Being able to group virtual machines in order to recover all of them to an exact point in time is a definite benefit.

The mobile application is very useful as a real-time monitoring and reporting tool. When management asks the status of our VM backup and recovery, an easy way to answer is to display the status on the real-time Zerto application on a mobile phone or on a local computer browser.

The Zerto Analytics tool helps predict future storage needs by tracking trends in space, journal size, and I/O rate. These are reportable statistics making quantifiable tracking easy and accurate. It is nice the see developing trends. 

Having a web interface simplifies access by other system administrators.

Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms. Zerto support is very responsive when those questions arise. 

There is a comprehensive online training program which is a good start to using the application. But nothing can take the place of actually using the product in your own environment. 

The online search for solutions is very large. This is good, but also bad, as there are solutions present but you have to be diligent to find the answer you need.

I have been using this solution for more than three years. My organization utilizes Hyper-V instead of VMware. One big advantage of Zerto is its hardware agnostic. I have used various models of arrays and servers from Dell EMC and HPE with no issues from Zerto.

It picks up nicely where it leaves off (in the case of a reboot).

It easily grows at whatever pace is needed.

In the few cases that I have had, every one was dealt with quickly and by support staff who knew what they were doing.

We still use our previous solution because it creates a backup of both physical and virtual machines. However, there was an impact on performance running a backup on a running machine.

There is a slight learning curve when setting up, but nothing overwhelming for a good administrator.

Work with your local representative on running a live test to see if the solution fulfills your needs.

We use Zerto as a robust failover and replication solution.

Currently we replicate about 50-55 VMs to our DR site. We have run multiple test failovers, and have even done a full-scale, full company REAL failover.  Zerto worked flawlessly. 

We use Zerto to make sure that our primary Server farm is replicated and protected in case of a failover.

Zerto gives us peace of mind. It is also extremely easy to use and very intuitive. We don't have to worry about what would happen if our server room were to be damaged or our building destroyed. We always have that big red button available to failover to our DR site which Zerto does flawlessly and easily. We also have peace of mind with their Technical Support, which has always been nothing but stellar for us!

I love all the features really.

The fact that the interface is so intuitive is wonderful. The setup and customization of VPGs are great too. They allow you to customize all of the IP information and even the MAC (if you wish) for any and all VMs, allowing you to change the IP or Gateway, or whatever for any VM you might failover.

It is incredibly granular and I really appreciate that. Zerto has also caused us to organize our datastores in a better fashion that makes sense so that they are by priority and not just random.

I have brought this up to support before, but it would be really nice to have the option to "roll back" a particular VM to a previous time in the past if it were to become damaged, compromised, or infected. Zerto does not allow this. It's all or nothing, so you must roll back the entire VPG. You cannot roll back a single VM unless that VM is ALONE in a VPG all by itself.

It would also be nice if they could find a way to make it where one VM does not impact the entire journal history of the VPG. I do not understand why a single VM with mass amounts of changes should impact the journal history of the entire VPG. Although this has never caused me problems, it is an annoyance for sure.

We have been using this solution for a little over two and a half years.

Zerto is literally one of the most stable solutions we have. If we have any kind of bounce, drop, or failure on our fiber line to our DR site, Zerto quickly recovers and catches everything up as soon as the failure is remedied. 

It is incredibly scalable and easy to use. I think that's what makes it so valuable and attractive, especially to those who do not have a DR solution. 

Support is VERY important, and Zerto knocks it out of the park!

Every time I have called Zerto support, the person I have spoken with has been well informed and knew their stuff. Even if they couldn't readily solve my issue, they quickly escalated to someone that could. They are probably the best vendor we deal with in our IT Dept.

We had tried other solutions in the past including SRM and RecoverPoint for VMs. I can tell you they all pale in comparison, not only in functionality and user-friendliness but in support as well.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

They assigned us an engineer and we were set up and replicating within two hours.

We used a Zerto engineer, who was assigned by our Zerto sales rep.

The ROI with Zerto can't even be measured. The peace of mind we have gotten from knowing that all of our protected VMs are safely replicated with almost live RPOs is something that you can't even quantify.

I would suggest getting a dedicated, well-informed rep. I'm sure they all have great training but always hold your rep accountable. Ask lots of questions because there are no stupid questions. 

We have evaluated SRM, RecoverPoint for VMs, and other "built-in" Hyperconverged replication solutions.

Zerto is literally the best vendor that we deal with overall as an IT Department. They have always delivered, and have always been top-notch. I highly recommend them to ANYONE, regardless of whether or not they already have a DR solution. Zerto is better.

We use the solution for DR failover/testing on our DR site. We're a Windows/VMware environment and replicate 25 virtual machines from our primary data center to our disaster recovery site. The solution allows us to perform live failovers without shutting down our production systems.

Zerto has made the testing and the actual failover process of our replicated virtual machines seamless. The product has relieved the administrative burden for the IT staff responsible for the disaster recovery implementation of the organization. Adding new virtual machines is quick and easy, and managing the environment is straightforward.  

Failover testing is the most valuable feature. The fact that we are able to test the failover of live systems during regular hours is invaluable to our organization. No longer do we have to schedule failovers of our systems, which brings down our production environment.

There are a couple of minor areas that could use improvement.

The GUI could be streamlined a bit more to enhance the administrative tasks. I would also like to be able to throttle the email alerts, as sometimes they become a bit noisy, and get tough to keep on top of.

Our company has been using the product for four years.

This is a very stable solution.

It is easy to add new licenses for growth.

Support has always been readily available if there were issues.

We never used a different solution.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and seems to be in line with similar products.

We did not evaluate other products before choosing this solution.

We use Zerto to keep a replica copy of the core servers we have running at our backup site. In the case of an outage, we are able to flip over to our backup location. Zerto keeps these servers up to date within seconds and in the case of an outage at our core data center, we can flip over services with little to no data loss.

Mostly what Zerto gives us is peace of mind. 

We do the normal backups and that data gets stored offsite, but unlike backups, Zerto gives us the ability to be back up and running within minutes on a copy of our servers that is an identical copy of what is no longer accessible.

The features we found most valuable is site-to-site replication. This is what we purchased the product for and what we use it primarily for. We are in the process of switching over our production data center and Zerto has been a true time-saver that has cost us zero downtime.

Some features are not up to what we need, although we have found alternatives and aren't really looking for Zerto to handle those items today.

The setup process is time-consuming.

We have been using Zerto for around four years.

With its built-in notifications and reporting, Zerto will alert you if there is anything wrong before it can become a problem.

Zerto works for one or one thousand machines and scaling out is an easy process. Zerto also seems to better support the major cloud vendors, with updates as well.

Zerto technical support has been very responsive and has always been able to help. They are available 24x7 and always have someone to contact you right away.

Prior to using Zerto, we were using VMware's SRS. It was not keeping a close enough copy of our servers.

The initial setup was very straightforward, but also a lot of information was needed. A fair bit of time was spent setting things up, but it was really just time-consuming. There was nothing that needed to be done by the vendor.

As far as setup and maintenance are concerned, you need to be sure to set it up properly, test it, and occasionally perform updates. For the most part, once it is in place it is pretty hands-off.

We implemented with the help of Zerto, who was very helpful in explaining the process and how everything works.

Zerto is not cheap but is an invaluable asset.

If you have the need for what Zerto can do for you then the cost really isn't a factor.

We only had experience with VMware's product and didn't know of anything other than Zerto. Once we tried the product we were hooked and never had a reason to look at anything else.

When we implemented Zerto, we only utilized some of the features. This was mostly because of our needs at the time and partially because the other parts were not up to what we needed. They have since greatly improved on these parts, like the backups features, but we aren't really looking for Zerto to handle those items today.

We have never regretted implementing Zerto and I would not trade it for any other product.

We primarily use Zerto for our critical applications and infrastructure to allow immediate failover at our DR site. We licensed our critical applications and database servers and standard backup the rest. In order to increase uptime, we replicate our entire Active Directory infrastructure as well.

We are able to pass many financial and IT audits because we have a solid system in place with zero RPO/RTO. Furthermore, we can train almost any tech or engineer on the process of flipping to the offsite primary. The button and some minor DNS changes and we are up and running.

The ease of failover and test environments has proven invaluable. It is literally as easy as pushing a button to flip to a contained test environment for staging roll-outs or verifying backup integrity. The upgrade process initially was tedious, making sure every VM host got updated separately, but now it is streamlined and a breeze.

I would like to see better notifications when the sync is off for an extended length of time.  There is nothing worst then going to do an upgrade or test a restore and realizing some of the VPGs need to be fixed because their journal is too small causing bitmap syncing to be off.

Stability is tied to the latency of your offsite DR.

The scalability is directly correlated to your storage and compute. More licensing as you grow is all you need.

The technical support for this solution is great. Every time I have had an issue, I get a real person, quickly, who remotely takes over and repairs the issue.

We were using RecoverPoint by Dell EMC prior to this solution. We switched because it was extremely cumbersome and far from streamlined during failover.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. It's literally an install button and then next, next, next... 

Zerto assisted us with the deployment.

Have not had to failover often but the ability to test product upgrades has been invaluable.

The cost is not dirt cheap but also is not terrible.

We thought about VMware Orchestration.

If you are looking for an extremely easy solution to implement and is highly effective then this is your baby.