HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use Zerto for disaster recovery automation for our most critical, highest priority, and time-sensitive failovers.

I understand that Zerto can enable disaster recovery in the cloud rather than in a physical data center, but that's not the use case that we have here.

We primarily use Zerto as a disaster recovery product, but we haven't had a disaster. It hasn't allowed us to minimize downtime. However, it helped us avoid the need for downtime during testing scenarios. 

Zerto helps to protect virtual machines in our environment, and that is our primary use case. Zerto provides the most aggressive RPO in the industry, and it really is one of the only products that can give you near real-time recovery.

We use VMware as a hypervisor platform to run all of our virtual workloads. Zerto is the replication service that I use to automate the failovers between my environments without having to have expertise in bringing application replication up, like a SQL cluster would require or an Exchange cluster would require, because the entire VM comes over. It helps us to reduce our overall VM footprint because we don't have to run resources in two different data centers. We can just shift them between the two using Zerto.

The ability to test a failover non-disruptively with Zerto is valuable, as it doesn't create any downtime for the business.

Near-synchronous replication works effectively, and it's important for our databases because that's going to give us the least amount of data loss on the failover.

I run a very dense VM-to-host ratio in my environment. Whenever maintenance is being performed on a host, all the VMs on that host have to be powered down and/or moved off to complete that maintenance cycle. It is frustrating when the protection of VMs doesn't get relocated to another host before the replication appliance powers down. It sometimes works great, but if the host has a lot of VMs on it, there may not always be enough time to relocate all of the VMs from a protection group standpoint to other hosts before the replication appliance that Zerto uses to manage that powers itself down. In such a case, you are breaking replication for the duration of that maintenance, and that can cause some support issues when you bring it back online, where you have to go in and manually recover it. I know they added improvements over the years. It's not as bad as it used to be, but at times, I still end up breaking replication when I do maintenance on my hosts.

I've been using Zerto in my career for about six years.

I've never had any stability issues with Zerto, as the management console has always been reliable, though there are occasional web timeouts. You just have to refresh your browser session to log back in if there's a stale browser window open or something like that, but it has always been easy to log in. I never had to open a support case to use the product. It has been more along the lines of a configuration change or replication. It is very reliable.

Zerto is quite scalable, as they added functionality where if you need to attach more disks and storage, it spins up additional replication appliances automatically. It doesn't require anything from the user to manage those. It happens automatically. I've been able to scale up as needed, with hundreds of VMs without any issues.

I've contacted Zerto's technical support. I've always had a good support experience with Zerto. The engineers are knowledgeable and respond quickly. When I open a ticket, I usually get a call within an hour or two. It's definitely good and better than other vendors that I've worked with.

Positive

I was previously using the VMware Site Recovery Manager, but it was very difficult to keep it functioning. We could not rely on that kind of uncertainty for a disaster recovery product. We needed something that's just going to work and not require a lot of assistance to keep it running, whether it's compatibility or upgrades. We needed something that was going to run when needed. Zerto is very reliable. It has definitely been a very stable product for me.

Zerto is the fastest among the solutions I have used. It usually takes less than five minutes to have a full recovery of the VM.

The initial setup with Zerto was easy. I did a proof of concept and got it running within the same day. Deploying it into production was again a very quick experience. The time required depends on how much of the initial configuration you want to do for the VMs you want to protect.

It was just me handling the setup and implementation of Zerto.

I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove to the business that it was worth the investment. We started with 15 VMs so that I could show the product does what it needs to do, but ultimately, we needed to protect all of our SQL workloads, so we quickly scaled up from there. 

It's cost-prohibitive for non-critical workloads, so we wouldn't put development servers or any non-business-critical systems in there because we wouldn't need the aggressive RPO and RTO that Zerto gives us for those types of workloads. I accomplished those failovers through other replication technologies.

Overall, I would give Zerto a ten out of ten. 

I use Zerto for replications for my DR site.

It allows us to have effective backup and recovery.

It hasn't helped anything directly, however, it does give us peace of mind to have a backup we can rely on.

The ease of use, ease of setup, and the dashboard, which is quite user-friendly, are valuable features. Zerto is very impressive and much more resilient. It's very easy to learn. Within a day a user can get up to speed.

It makes us more resilient overall.

The near-synchronous replication is impressive. We have around seven-second RPO times. Our RPO used to be 24 hours. It's drastically reduced RPO.

We have our own data center that we replicate to, however, we're actually in the process of changing that to replicate to a cloud environment.

We've reduced downtime by 90%.

We've been able to reduce DR testing time by 75%.

The speed of recovery is 90% faster.

Zerto works great. The pricing could always be lower.

I have been using Zerto for probably about seven years.

The solution is very stable. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

I'd rate scalability nine out of ten.

I use Veeam for backup and replication. With Veeam, I only had the 24-hour replications.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Implementation probably took just a couple of hours. We had two users involved in the setup, and we have it set up in two locations. There are two people who work directly with the solution. There is a bit of maintenance in terms of updating. They are pretty easy and quick.

I haven't saved any costs since I haven't had a disaster.

The setup is somewhat expensive. I'd rate the pricing seven out of ten.

It's way better than anything else on the market. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I would rate the solution to other users. It works very well. 

We implemented Zerto because we wanted a flexible and quick tool that allowed us to recover in different situations. This purpose was successfully fulfilled by Zerto during the proof of concept phase, so we implemented it.

Zerto helps with quick recovery and integration with other processes. Providing as a service approach allows end-users to operate and perform recovery operations on their own assets based on their requirements and schedule preferences. It helps not only with recovery but also with DR tests that need to be executed at specific time frames, such as out-of-business hours. We had a few different requirements during its implementation, and Zerto helped us very well with all these needs.

Zerto has some specific options for replication, but it is mainly for virtual machines. We mainly use it for virtual machines. Zerto is not suitable for physical servers, but it can be used for virtual solutions such as OpenShift, Kubernetes, etc. In terms of its effect on our RPO, as I have not used a similar solution previously, the RPO value that we are getting is very good. It fits the requirements that we have from our customers because what we provide to our customers needs to be proven by the tests that we perform. Usually, their expectations are much lower than what we receive from Zerto. For example, we have application owners for whom 24 hours duration is enough to recover the business as compared to the 10 minutes that I have using Zerto. We use Zerto in real DR exercises and ask our customers to verify the results and the status of the recovered system and answer if the recovery was successful. We provide them the time needed to recover their system, and often, it is much quicker than what they require, so from our perspective, Zerto is very good. However, we cannot verify everything because we have some limitations in our DR test scenario. I can be 100% sure of the results of recovery only in the case of a real disaster on my infrastructure. At this time, based on the DR tests, it meets my customer needs.

We conduct DR exercises at least twice a year to measure the downtime we would have in the case of a real disaster. We simulate the disaster in a controlled environment and perform all related exercises. Once all activities are performed, we measure the time needed to recover systems from the data center that is down due to a natural disaster or technical issue. We get an idea of the downtime but the actual downtime varies depending on the issue type. It might not always be predictable or reduced through tooling as network or server issues can arise. In some specific scenarios, the downtime could be lower by using Zerto, whereas in some cases, Zerto would not help much. Based on the results of disaster recovery exercises and the RTO measured not only for one application but for recovering all of the applications in affected data centers, we can say that the time we need to recover the full data center is much lower than using traditional backup recovery solutions. Recovery with Zerto is much faster because we can recover in parallel many systems.

I am quite familiar with the user interface. It is easy for me to operate and perform different operations because I am an experienced user. In my opinion, the user interface is easy to understand and operate. The user interface is user-friendly.

Another important feature is the tool's automation capabilities, as it provides an external API to integrate with other tools and processes. This allows for a comprehensive IT ecosystem within a single dashboard, tailored to specific needs. Some operations can be limited for end-users. All of this can be provided not only through the GUI but also using the API. You can create your own application, integrate it with Zerto API, and develop features in your own application. You can use the API to integrate with your application and provide only the features that you want to end-users, facilitating custom application development. You can split the responsibilities based on the roles provided as well as based on your requirements. It is very flexible. From my point of view, the end-user experience is very good as an administrator of the tool and as the person responsible for the disaster recovery process.

As a user who used Zerto for eight years, there are specific issues that it cannot address. For instance, recovering physical servers is directly connected to the virtualized solution in use, meaning your infrastructure needs a VMware or Hyper-V solution. It cannot be used for bare metal physical server solutions. One improvement could be addressing the market segment related to physical servers. I understand this is a limitation of Zerto's technology. Still, from a customer's perspective, I would ask the vendor to find a solution to use Zerto for virtualized physical systems, such as physical servers. 

A second area for improvement relates to the speed of implementation. There should be a more streamlined process for enterprise applications.

I have used Zerto for about eight years.

I did not encounter any issues during the operations, so I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability, so there is room for improvement on the vendor's side.

From my perspective, given the size of my infrastructure and the limitations based on the vendor's requirements and documentation, it fulfills my needs. Therefore, I would rate it a ten out of ten because I have not faced a situation where I needed more than what it provides.

It is being used at multiple locations.

I have the opportunity to use Zerto support, and I have used it many times for various questions and solving different issues or problems I encountered in my infrastructure. I would give them a rating of ten because it represents the highest level of support based on the technical knowledge of the support team, response time, and effectiveness of the provided resolutions.

Positive

Zerto was the first tool I started using once I took on the disaster recovery manager role in my company. I did not have experience with other tools.

The speed of implementation is an area for improvement. While deployment on straightforward infrastructure is easy, an enterprise company with strict access and vulnerability limitations requires manual configurations. This is neither easy nor quick. 

Implementation depends on the environment and customers. From an enterprise perspective, I expect a more streamlined implementation process, as many steps require manual action. This challenge is specific to my company due to limited access and port blockages. Implementing such tools is a one-time task. My intention is to provide feedback related to the installation process, not the operation.

I do not have much experience with different tools, so I cannot directly compare Zerto with other solutions. While conducting our proof of concept, I compared prices with just one other vendor. At the time, the price for Zerto was more favorable. Since I only use this tool and I do not have the need for others, it is difficult to compare the price now.

Zerto is an asynchronous replication solution. It provides what they call near-zero RPO value. There is a delay of a few seconds depending on the parameters of your infrastructure, such as the bandwidth, the workload in your infrastructure, the distance between data center latencies, and the speed of the network connections. There is no one solution that meets all the needs. You need to decide whether you need a synchronous or asynchronous solution. You should be aware of the pros and cons of both and the requirements of your organization. Synchronous replication might be risky in some specific situations. What looks good on paper might not always be good in reality. Zerto meets our needs for flexibility. It mitigates different problems related to infrastructure, even though there is always the possibility of losing some data.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten considering the features, support, feature development roadmap, and the frequency of new features provided to customers.

I use Zerto for continuous data protection.

The solution is very effective at preventing ransomware attacks. 

We have very good security now. It's enhanced our security. It has also massively improved disaster recovery.

The solution offers the shortest RPO time, the five-second RPO time, and continuous replication. The RPO is beyond our expectations. It's improved our RPO rate by 50%. These are great features. We have enhanced our security level after using Zerto, and there is a massive improvement in disaster recovery as well.

It's a straightforward product.

The near-synchronous replication is a great feature.

We've used Zerto to protect our virtual machines. 

It's impacted our RTOs by improving it by 200%.

Zerto has reduced downtime. We now have zero downtime using this product. It's improved overall by 90%.

We've saved a lot of time with Zerto. It's hard to quantify since we don't have any ransomware getting attacks.

It's reduced our disaster recovery testing by 50%.

It's helped our IT resiliency strategy by 100%. Before this solution, we didn't have a solution in place. Now, we are quite resilient. 

I don't see any improvements needed so far; we really enjoy using this product. However, there could be improvements in support. Here, in Malaysia, there is no on-site support.

I have used the solution for between one to two years.

I would rate the stability ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability ten out of ten.

I would rate the customer service five out of ten. There is room for improvement. We need more local support.

Neutral

We only have experience with Zerto. I can't compare it to other products. 

The initial setup took one day. It was easy.

We have Zerto deployed on-prem. We have it deployed in multiple locations. 

The solution does not require any maintenance. 

The implementation was done by just two to four people.

The return on investment has been around 50% to 60%.

Zerto is cost-efficient.

Zerto has fortified and improved the resilience of our IT infrastructure. We currently experience zero downtime and use it to protect our virtual machines. The improvement exceeds our target. However, we desire more local support.

I'd recommend the solution to other users. It offers a short RPO time and will fortify a company's IT infrastructure. 

I rate the product ten out of ten. We're a Zerto customer. 

We use Zerto as a disaster recovery as a service which allows us to bring up our entire network infrastructure and all of our critical resources into the Zerto cloud.

The near-synchronous replication feature is very important to us. In the event of a total disaster, we would be able to maintain our presence in the cloud where all of our critical infrastructure will be moved from our on-premises to the cloud.

The RTOs and RPOs are both extremely good; we are talking about minutes versus hours and days to practically have a restore done. It is really helpful for us that we know exactly what the RPO times are, and all of those features allow us to do this.

Zerto has had an impact on our IT resiliency strategy. We are a small company; I am basically the CTO, the CSO, and I do desktop stuff. Having this very easy interface and reduced time to do things allows me to focus on other things that I need to focus on. It has me more at ease knowing that it will work the way it is supposed to, and if I need it, it is going to be there.

Zerto helped to reduce downtime to minutes. We have 90% less recovery times. I can go in there and see exactly what those times are to completely spin up the infrastructure.

I appreciate most that we can do quick failover tests without actually going to live failover, which is very helpful because we have to do SOC audits, and they want to see that we do test this. It is extremely easy to test to show whether or not these things boot up in a test environment, which they do.

Zerto is easy to use. There is a dashboard we log in to, and it shows us everything we need in one dashboard.

There can be a bit more logging. It seems a bit harder to find logs for test restores and all that. If they had a way to email the results of a test restore, that would be excellent.

We have been using Zerto for a good two years.

It is very stable.

Scalability is good. We have to pay for more scalability, and we would have to reach out to them if we were to scale up or scale down.

It was good. It took a little bit longer than I would have thought, but they were able to resolve my problem pretty quickly.

Neutral

We used Unitrends for our disaster recovery, as well as our file backups, but mostly for disaster recovery.

Zerto is 100% above and beyond that. Unitrends was very clunky. It was hard to find stuff, hard to navigate, and extremely hard to use.

It was fairly easy. They sent some documentation, and I worked with the deployment team. It took a little bit; there was a learning curve since this is something I have never used before, but they did help with the initial setup and questions I had.

It was just me.

Zerto has reduced our organization's DR testing. Before, it was a huge cost. It was several thousand dollars to do a DR test, whereas now, I click a button.

Pricing is kind of expensive, but for what we get, it is probably worth it. I know they just had a huge price increase due to the VMware stuff getting expensive, which added about a thousand dollars a month to our bill.

I would absolutely recommend Zerto. If you need a good DR solution, I would say go with Zerto. There are a lot of other options that are cheaper, but you are not going to get the functionality that we have.

I would rate Zerto a 10 out of 10.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is disaster recovery.

By implementing HPE Zerto Software, my organization was trying to solve the challenge of achieving multi-zone coverage, as we have two different data centers, and the SRM we had wasn't very useful without HPE Zerto Software.

It allows us to do DR tests seamelssly at this point. 

I appreciate the automated recovery functions of HPE Zerto Software the most. These features benefit my organization by allowing us to perform DR tests seamlessly; before, it was a check-the-box process with hope it worked. 

It's extremely easy to use with one of the shortest setups I've ever done.

The solution has not saved me time in data recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes at this company, but it did at the previous company. At a previous company, HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce downtime, as we were able to fail over to our secondary data center in about 30 minutes for 400 plus VMs.

HPE Zerto Software has impacted my RTOs and RPOs. Its recovery speed compares to other disaster recovery solutions I've used as being hours instead of months. I don't have current examples because we haven't finished the implementation at the current company.

The solution has helped to reduce my organization's DR testing, as it's now a one-day window instead of a few-week activity. IT is always extremely busy, so any saved time from HPE Zerto Software is easily respent on value-add tasks.

My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are excellent, as we typically see targets under five seconds, which no one else is achieving. The near-synchronous replication of HPE Zerto Software is extremely important to my organization because we run different point-of-sale systems, and if we lose transactions, it would take days, if not be impossible, to recover from.

I want to hear more about the Commvault integration that was announced, as I don't know what's included in that one yet.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about a year at the current company, and overall, I have five years of experience with it from my previous job.

I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues. I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as excellent.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization very easily, and we haven't hit any limitations.

I have not expanded usage yet. We probably will in about a year and a half.

We haven't had to use customer service and technical support much yet. I would rate customer service and technical support as a ten out of ten since we haven't had to use it.

Before adopting HPE Zerto Software, I wasn't really using another solution to address similar needs; we had some SRM set up, but it was very limited.

My experience deploying HPE Zerto Software has been easy.

I have not calculated an ROI with HPE Zerto Software at this time.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software seemed reasonable, though the quoting for the Cyber Vault was probably the stickiest part, as it had to be tailored to our size of company. That's probably going to get better as time goes on for other customers.

Since I had past experience, HPE Zerto Software was the de facto option I considered before selecting it.

In my previous role, when we evaluated HPE Zerto Software, the evaluation was sufficient to prove it worked; we set up critical systems and were able to test fail them over in hours, and it speaks for itself.

We are deploying HPE Zerto Software's Cyber Vault in this new deployment; we haven't used it yet. The type of solution I am using is HPE Zerto Software's Cyber Vault, as it comes. The capabilities that were most important when choosing a Cyber Vault solution were the offline copy, which was the real decision-maker when we brought it up for management.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate HPE Zerto Software a ten.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is to move VMs from one place to another. We implemented HPE Zerto Software to solve the challenge of moving workloads from on-premises to the cloud.

I would assess the ease of use of HPE Zerto Software as straightforward. It is easy to use, and the user interface is excellent. When using HPE Zerto Software for VM migrations from on-premises to the cloud, it provides valuable features and transfers them quickly, so users do not need to spend much time on it.

My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are that it is seamless. Near-synchronous replication is important to my organization because it takes less time to migrate the workload, which is what we are looking for, along with it being faster and having no complexity, making the migration 100% successful.

HPE Zerto Software has improved our RPO and RTO. Earlier, our RPO and RTO were based on the application tier, but now they have been reduced significantly, so we appreciate this product.

I think HPE Zerto Software is excellent, and I don't see any issues with it, so I don't know if anything needs to be improved. I don't have any suggestions for additional features I would to see included in the next release of HPE Zerto Software.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for almost five years now.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as good, and I cannot say anything negative about it. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software, as we have high availability.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively, and I cannot complain about anything. We have expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, and the process was smooth, as we have a descriptive runbook on how to use it, so the team uses it efficiently.

I evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as excellent, as whenever we have any issues, we reach out to customer support, and they provide the support we need. 

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate customer service for HPE Zerto Software as nine because the response time is quick, and the technical knowledge of the associates is excellent.

Positive

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was not using another solution to address similar needs. Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were doing it manually, so there was no other product we evaluated.

HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce our organization's DR testing.

I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I think on the pricing side, I don't generally deal with it, but from what I hear from my finance team, it's somewhat on the higher side. If licensing could be reduced, that would be beneficial.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is that they should try it first and evaluate it based on the feature set before making a decision, as I think they will appreciate HPE Zerto Software. I rate HPE Zerto Software 10 out of 10.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is the replication of data to a DR site.

HPE Zerto Software has helped tremendously with my organization's RTO and RPO, bringing it down to an hour rather than taking 12 hours to restore data the traditional way. 

When we were trying to bring the disaster recovery side up, we had an issue with the VMs not coming up. We had to go back and restore. The solution has saved me time in data recovery situations. During DR tests, we were bringing the site up within the first couple of hours. With a different solution I previously used, it would have taken 24 hours to 4 hours to recover.

HPE Zerto Software has helped me reduce my organization's DR testing. Instead of three times, we do it once. Rather than spending time preparing for the test configuration to do a full restore, with HPE Zerto Software replication, it's automatically up within an hour, and then we can start our testing.

The feature of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate the most is its ease of use. This feature has helped tremendously in getting our DR plan easy to implement. 

My impressions of HPE Zerto's near-synchronous replication are very good. Near-synchronous replication is very important to my organization, and we are using it every day. It works consistently.

HPE Zerto Software could be improved in the future with easier upgrades. I am not aware of any additional features I would like to see included in the next release.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for a long time.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as very stable. I have experienced some issues sometimes during upgrades. Other than that, it runs smoothly.

I have expanded usage, and the process was smooth.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as second-hand support since I am not the primary customer for HPE Zerto. I use them through my DR services. I would rate the customer service and technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using regular recovery and backup restore systems to address similar needs.

Deployment of HPE Zerto Software was streamlined. It worked quickly and sufficiently.

I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. Fast restores are a notable example. It saves us a lot of time and gives us the ability to perform other DR plans for other systems.

It's provided by the DR replication vendor, so it's not a direct cost to us.

We are considering a cyber vault solution as part of our infrastructure. When choosing a cyber vault solution, the capabilities that are most important to us are fast recovery against ransomware and the ability to do multiple checkpoints. 

My advice to another organization considering HPE Zerto Software is to go for it.

I would rate HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten.