HPE Zerto Software Reviews

It was a pilot. We did a bake-off between Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. It was to fail over 130 Oracle databases.

We wanted to handle disaster recovery for our data center. Zerto was mainly a failover product. We did not use any security layering.

When we tested it, it had more functions than what we used it for, but it was a very good BCDR product. We liked the reliability and availability.

Zerto enables you to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud, but we did not use that feature. We used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It was strong in that aspect. I would rate it an eight out of ten there.

Zerto's speed of recovery was comparable. There was no synchronous and asynchronous replication. If I had to give it a number, it would be a seven out of ten. It was the same as others. There was not much difference.

It was easy to migrate data. There was some initial configuration in syncing, but it was easy. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of the ease of migration.

Zerto’s ability to keep our users collaborating with one another during a data migration was good. I would rate it a seven out of ten in this aspect as well as in terms of its impact on RTOs.

Zerto helps reduce downtime in any situation. We can bring up a database in minutes. It probably takes five minutes for the final sync. The cost of downtime depends on the database. It may be 50,000 if you have call center people sitting around. Normally, most of our small outages like that ranged in the tens of thousands.

Zerto did save time in a data recovery situation. We did not have ransomware, but there were times we had database corruption where the users would corrupt the database, and the database would not start. It would do snapshotting. It was not necessarily ransomware, but it was testing upgrades or Oracle upgrades. The data recovery happened within five minutes, if not sooner. A normal restore would probably be four to eight hours if we had to restore from a tape and apply logs.

Zerto helps to reduce an organization's DR testing. You can spin off an extra database pretty quickly and have users test against the third or fourth copy. It saves one to three days of testing depending on test cycles. You could do sequential testing. I would probably measure it more in days than hours. All of that time can be used by a DBA to do something else.

Zerto reduces the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. One person could probably orchestrate it now versus one to three people.

It did not reduce the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management because we are pretty thin. We would not have gotten rid of anybody.

Zerto offered a very good front-end GUI for orchestration. The graphic interface was very good.

The replication layer can probably be improved.

We ran the pilot for about nine months. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability.

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of scalability.

In terms of our environment, we had 130 databases, 35 prods, and 2 data centers. In terms of end users, in our call centers, we had probably 10,000 users who accessed the databases.

They are good. 

Neutral

We used VMware SRM. We used Veritas clustering, which was a Veritas/Symantec product. We then went virtual, so we went from physical to virtual infrastructure, and we went from HP-UX to Red Hat infrastructure. Zerto was probably 50% easier than others.

Zerto has not replaced any backup solution.

It is a private cloud deployment. It is all VMware vSphere.

Its initial setup was straightforward. It was not as complicated as any other product. It took two to three weeks.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we wanted to reduce our synchronous synchronization. We wanted a better RTO, so we went to an asynchronous replication on private network infrastructure for faster syncing. There were a few technical aspects, but we took our time to lay out the network infrastructure.

In terms of maintenance, you have to patch it and upgrade it. We have a team of four for backup and storage.

Zerto helped us. They had very good staff. We got great support. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

We had two people working on that project, primary and secondary. We did use some of the networking team, maybe a half-person worth of time, because it is a little network intensive.

It is hard to measure an ROI. It is more like an insurance policy. You may or may not use your insurance policy, but it provides comfort to management. There may also be some soft cost.

It was a little higher. We were in a corporate agreement, and we had a software package that included RP for VM. It is easy to compare pricing when you are already in a corporate agreement. Zerto lost on the pricing scorecard.

We evaluated Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. They were different in replication logic and how they did journaling.

In Zerto, the replication is done through vSphere, and they did not license that product, so at any point, they could have probably lost it. We licensed RP for VM. We felt more comfortable with an EMC replication product because it was Dell and VMware combined or merged. The replication in Zerto was good, but it was using VMware hypervisor replication.

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend doing an architectural design and implementing best practices. Involve your network team early and use Zerto's expertise.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten.

I use HPE Zerto Software for planning disaster recovery and for provisioning the CIs, especially during the exercise phase. We use HPE Zerto Software to protect VMs in our environment. Regarding HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery, minor challenges exist, but it meets the requirement at approximately 80%. We do not look into HPE Zerto Software for incident downtimes; we only use it for crisis situations. HPE Zerto Software is saving time, especially with RTOs and RPOs being reduced for business-level applications, which has brought down recovery time. Most often, support issues are handled internally; if we require anything, we raise a case, and the operational team follows up.

One advantage of HPE Zerto Software is that it helps in provisioning, becomes easy, much faster, and it also stores historical information. It's good; I won't say it's excellent, but it's meeting some requirements, though for other requirements, I have to rely on other software as well.

There has been a significant impact from using HPE Zerto Software because our provisioning times have reduced drastically. The time to complete the exercises has come down, and we were able to identify and cross-check the RTO and RPO values as well. Using HPE Zerto Software has helped us in reducing the RTO and RPO values.

Overall, it still requires reliance on other software for manual work such as cross-checking and validations, which takes additional time, but the runbook execution is quicker. The 20% challenges relate to reliance on other software for cross-checking the logs. After implementation, the recovery times have improved by approximately 50% to 60%.

The main improvements needed are related to historical data comparison and analytics, and the challenges involve reliance on other software and cross-checking logs. If we could have an end-to-end DR solution in one environment, it would be much easier without relying on multiple tools. The biggest area for improvement in HPE Zerto Software is probably in historical data comparison and enhanced analytics. Future features should reduce reliance on cross-checking logs and other solutions.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for three years now.

I find HPE Zerto Software relatively stable.

HPE Zerto Software is also scalable.

I haven't checked the technical support part for HPE Zerto Software; I need to talk to my team about it. Most often, support issues are handled internally; if we require anything, we raise a case, and the operational team follows up.

Regarding ease of use and recovery speed, I recall IBM being used previously, but I wasn't there then, so I didn't get a chance to compare HPE Zerto Software with that. I think HPE Zerto Software was better compared to IBM, as the RTOs and RPOs are improving continuously, with the ability to execute exercises becoming quicker.

I haven't looked into options apart from HPE Zerto Software yet, but before the license renewal, we shall start that activity within six months. We typically refer to Gartner's quadrant to identify market leaders for comparison, focusing on the leaders part. There are no specific security examples that made me decide to switch solutions; my main concerns are around costing and compatibility with different environments.

Currently, our team has implemented another solution because HPE Zerto Software couldn't be expanded to that environment, so capability is a restricting factor. A unified solution would be a good bet for future comparisons.

HPE Zerto Software helps in provisioning, making it easy and faster, and it also stores historical information. It's good but not excellent, as it meets some requirements while requiring other software for additional functionalities. I use a solution for disaster recovery in the cloud, but that's specific to the cloud environment. I don't get into the pricing layer for HPE Zerto Software and haven't gathered much information from the vendor. I would rate HPE Zerto Software as 8 out of 10.

We use HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery, resiliency, and peace of mind.

It provides peace of mind, it allows us to feel confident knowing that the data protection platform is in-place and allows for rapid recovery in the event of data integrity failures, or platform disruptions.

The contextual help and simulation of HPE Zerto Software are the most valuable features. HPE Zerto Software's continuous data protection or CDP is critical for our organization because it allows us to recover within seconds to minutes, and the journal allows us to pick a point-in-time recovery. The journal allows us to recover from a point in time before an event occurred.

I cannot think of any ways HPE Zerto Software needs improvement, as I have used it at a previous company as well, and it is a reputably reliable platform.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for over several years.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software; it is a reliable platform and it is very well-engineered.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of our organization.

HPE Zerto Software's customer service and technical support have been fantastic.

Positive

We used Veeam as our previous solution and we switched to HPE Zerto Software to ensure that we had a mutable backup, as well as synchronous replication.

I don't perform setup and initial configuration, another team does that.

That amount of downtime would cost our organization in the millions.

I don't operate in this vein of the business.

Veeam, Rubrik, ASR.

HPE Zerto Software's recovery speed is very fast and reliable compared to the disaster recovery solution we used before. I would rate HPE Zerto Software overall as a ten; it is a fantastic product.

We implement Zerto as a part of a Disaster Recovery process for our valuable customers, in various environments. Most of them consist of two sites owned by the same customer, connected with campus or wan link, but both using VMware virtualization platform.

Recently we realized a dedicated infrastructure in our Datacenter, then started to propose to our customers DRaaS using those resources as a recovery site and including dedicated 24x7 support. 

Few customers use the public cloud (Azure) as a recovery site: we could only implement and configure the solution or fully manage it because we are also a Microsoft Gold and Tier-1 partner.

Zerto helps reduce downtime in a wide number of situations because it can bring up an entire environment of 40-50 VMs in minutes. 

Zerto helps to save time in a data recovery situation too. Some customers experienced VM or database corruption: using the solution's checkpoint feature, the data recovery happened within five minutes or less. A normal restore would probably be two to eight hours depending on if we had to restore from disk/tape and need or not need to apply logs.

Zerto is great at DR testing. We can spin off critical VMs or an entire environment pretty quickly and have users test against this copy with no production environment impact.

Its overall impact on our RTO has been great. It took a few hours in a very complex environment. The customer was very impressed with Zerto when we started with the PoC and then put it in production. It is great.

Zerto has reduced our downtime. Customers have minimal downtime. 

We have been enabled to automate tasks with Zerto. Staff can now be dedicated to other tasks.

A great Zerto feature is the non-intrusive failover of the application, similar to an actual disaster recovery test without impacting the services that are currently online. Sometimes customers need to failover to an isolated environment and validate an application without impacting the production environment: we can achieve this goal with Zerto. Again, we can do regular testing in a non-impactful way using isolated testing. For customers of our DRaaS we include once a year, a live test that is more like what would happen if the customer lost the production site.

Eventually, the VPGs (Virtual Protection Groups) allow to grouping of one or more VMs into a single entity, ensuring every point in time inserted into Zerto’s journal (a checkpoint) is from the same point in time for all components within the protection group. This allows easy recovery of an entire application and its dependencies to a consistent point in time.

Zerto is also a very easy product to use.

We started using it a few months ago for immutable data copies for a few customers on multiple repositories like HPE.

Zerto's ability for blocking unknown threats and attacks is key in our disaster recovery process. It's the technical solution where we implement all the data. It is also the recovery plan for our customers.

We have tried experimenting implementing Zerto with the the disaster recovery site on cloud. We use an Azure. It's very useful. Zerto has enables us to do disaster recovery in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center.

We've only used Zerto two or three times to migrate an existing data center to a new one because the hardware under the machine was from a different brand. We used Zerto because the environment is quite complex and the migration using other tools did not fulfill the customers' needs. Zerto is very good at data migration.

One of its best features Zerto is the ability to maintain the data of multiple VMs using Vipro Protection Group. We can aggregate multiple VMs in a workload for specific services. They are protected at the same time. 

It's very easy to manage and monitor our DR plans with Zerto. It's very easy to learn and operate. It's easier than VMware. 

Zerto could be considered as a backup product but this is not true. So if we could consolidate and use Zerto for disaster recovery as well as everyday backup and restore for situations where we need to recover something, that would be helpful. Anyway, we think that Zerto will win with no competition in the Disaster Recovery process, so we stay focused on this.

Now we are testing version 10 which include real-time ransomware detection, a new Cyber Resilience Vault and enhanced cloud capabilities and security: we expect more from these features for superior hybrid cloud security.

Reports could be useful for customers. I would like to have a report that shows the latency for every single internal VM. it would be useful for troubleshooting.

We started to evaluate Zerto about three years ago, then we implemented it for our valuable customers who need affordable solutions in their disaster recovery processes.

We haven't had any issues with any of the builds or the virtual managers, especially with the new "appliance" mode. It just runs.

Zerto is a very scalable solution. We can create as many protection groups as customers need for their environment even as they growth. 

Our customers are mostly medium to small sized enterprises. 

We use Zerto Quick Start service for the first installations and we use it in very complex environments: great. 

We are very satisfied. We had to use it at the beginning to understand the implementation process and what we needed to do. 

They are quick and professional. 

Positive

We previously used Veeam (B&R + DRO) and VMware (Replication + SRM), but they could not offer all the features of Zerto.

We also sometimes still use VMware Disaster Site Recovery Manager in conjunction with VMware Backup and Recovery. 

The implementation is very straightforward.  Must be considered security and lay out the network infrastructure to be more efficient.

But from the standpoint of installing and deploying the product, it's very simple.

Pricing is adequate at the standard of the product, but there could be "always" some improvement. We would like to see a consumption model that would charge in a DR scenario, where you're failing over and consuming those resources, instead of a per-protected-node model.

My advice is to look at what you're trying to accomplish: with Zerto you could combine resilience, mobility, and protection into a single software-only solution. It's hardware and hypervisor agnostic as to whether you're using VMware, Microsoft, or Azure.

We have built a disaster recovery landing zone in our Datacenter and we built an isolated environment so we could do non-intrusive failover tests, and still keep customers' production environment up and running. 

We have recently introduced the immutable data copies feature, because of the issue of cyberattacks and because even backup systems could become corrupted and then this is still a bad situation. The ability to look at the data that is being replicated in real-time and scan it, in conjunction with immutable data, and putting that into a vault, would be a great benefit. 

The 3-2-1 rule isn't so important for us when it comes to disaster recovery. We consider the backup process and then the disaster recovery process. We treat them as two different workloads that we could implement to our customers to solve different issues.

The majority of our customers use it in a hybrid environment, but they prefer to use disaster recovery in their own data center. In some cases, we provide disaster recovery as a service, where the disaster recovery site is in our data center.

Doing a proof of concept is the best way to implement and sell Zerto. The customers don't always trust our advice but when I start with a POC in their environment, they see it's benefits. 

We have multiple plans across the US. We use Zerto to transfer VMs from one plant to another plant, from east to west.

Zerto is a really great fallback software that gives us the redundancy we need.

Overall, the solution is really efficient. Zerto really helped us prevent the delay in bringing up the VM once it transfers because we wanted to ensure everything works.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication works great. We've had some issues before trying to synchronize VMs across long territory ranges, but Zerto did everything we needed it to do. Zerto's near-synchronous replication is extremely important to our organization. Our production line to uptime is almost 99.99%, so the near-synchronous replication really helps out.

We use SAP HANA with Zerto.

We use Zerto to protect VMs in our environment. The solution helps with recovery and ensures that we can transfer our VMs when we have a host failure. We have plants all over the US, and Zerto has really helped us keep everything running at almost 100% capacity.

Because of its near-synchronous uptime and recovery, Zerto's speed of recovery is ten times better than that of other disaster recovery solutions like Veeam and Commvault.

Compared to other solutions, Zerto's ease of use is pretty straightforward. I'm really excited to see how GreenLake has integrated Zerto and made it even more seamless.

It would be good if we could store a snapshot of the images coming through so that we can always go back and have a vision history.

I have been using Zerto for four years.

Zerto is pretty stable software, and it's always been up when we needed it.

I don't see any issues with the solution's scalability. We have 100 plants across the US and hundreds of other plants worldwide and have never had an issue adding any hosts or notes to the tool.

We deployed the solution through a consultant.

We have seen a return on investment with Zerto.

Zerto is really good software. It has all the features that I need. I love Zerto's integration with GreenLake, and now that we know more about it, we'll start utilizing it more. Zerto synchronized our VMs and delivered reliability by ensuring our hosts in different plants had a reliable backup.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

It's used for general replication services and recovery. We're actually looking at its more integral use in DR in a business continuity role.

It integrates well with our environment, is very adaptable to our changing requirements, and is fairly easy for our team to use.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is very efficient, very powerful, and very productive for us. It has helped us organize our recovery process a lot more, so it's led to process improvements.

Zerto is preparing us to do disaster recovery in the cloud rather than in a physical data center. But we are not there yet. 

We use it to support disaster recovery on Microsoft, but we are also considering AWS.

We use Zerto to protect our VMs. We're still redefining our RPOs due to Zerto's performance. We're going back and replacing our baseline.

When it comes to speed of recovery, we believe Zerto is above the rest that we know of.

I just learned about Zerto's vault capability, which we're going to learn more about. That will be very valuable to us. We get almost real-time replication services.

Those features are so valuable because we're always prepared to restore if we need to.

The vault feature will be very valuable to us, so that's one feature we'd like to see implemented. 

We're always looking for additional features and value from Zerto. Immutable replication services is one. I heard the vault will be totally protected from any outside influences, so that's another thing we're looking forward to. 

We're always looking to integrate better with our environment.

I have been using Zerto for roughly six years.

So far, it has been stable. No issues.

We haven't tested scalability yet, but we are sure that scalability shouldn't be an issue. We'll find out.

Good. Excellent. Now that Zerto is part of HP, we get greater support from HP's executive team.

We used a variety of solutions in the past. Zerto does the job of two or three of those previous solutions, so we were able to consolidate.

Zerto's team helped a lot. It was fairly straightforward and painless.

We have not come up with the metrics to determine the ROI yet, but we're working on it.

The pricing, licensing, and setup costs are fair at best. It's not the cheapest, but it works for us.

We did evaluate other solutions. Cohesity, Commvault Cloud and Rubrik were the two others we considered.

We liked the resiliency, usability, and use cases of Zerto more.

Overall, I would rate it around a seven out of ten. Once we understand the scalability, it could reach eight.

It's easy to install. Make sure your business requirements align with Zerto's capabilities. Others should study some of the use cases first before making a decision.

We use Zerto for our application data recovery.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication delivers exceptional results. The data at our recovery site is kept nearly identical to production in real-time, minimizing data loss to near zero.

By utilizing Zerto's immutable data copies and adhering to the three-two-one rule, we have established a highly effective recovery strategy.

While Zerto doesn't inherently block unknown threats or attacks, its detailed history logs enable us to revert to a pre-attack state, essentially restoring a clean system.

Our production machine experienced changes that caused the application to crash. To resolve this quickly, we restored the machine to its previous state using a recovery copy located at the recovery site that was made by Zerto. After powering on the restored machine, we changed its IP address, making it accessible again.

Zerto has a positive effect on our RPOs.

It boasts impressive recovery speed. As a customer, all we need to do is power on the machines at the recovery site - that's how simple and fast it is. Even if the recovered state isn't ideal, we can easily rewind to a specific point in time and power up another instance of the machine at that moment.

Zerto makes it easy to migrate data. The total configuration is user-friendly.

While our current RTO is three hours, Zerto can significantly reduce it to just five minutes.

Zerto helps us significantly reduce downtime during hardware failures, software updates, and natural disasters.

While we haven't experienced a ransomware attack, we have a recovery plan in place. If one were to occur, we could quickly restore production to a previous point in time, minimizing downtime and data loss.

Zerto helps us reduce the amount of disaster recovery testing we need to perform, which also allows us to reduce the number of staff required for the testing down to two.

The Zerto application is licensed per VM. However, the amount of data stored on each VM does not affect the licensing cost. Whether we have terabytes or just a few bytes on each VM, the licensing fee remains the same. This means we only pay for the machines we are replicating, which can lead to significant cost savings.

Real-time replication is a valuable feature, ensuring that changes made to the production site are immediately reflected at the recovery site.

Another feature I appreciate in Zerto is its detailed logging. This functionality allows us to easily access past data and reconstruct the machine's state at any given point in time.

We can recover the replicated machine at the recovery site by simply clicking it back up from the replicated machine. This allows us to keep the original machine running while the recovered machine is active. It's also vendor-agnostic, meaning it works with different hardware vendors like HP or NetApp. In other words, Zerto adapts to the specific hardware we have regardless of the vendor.

Zerto's solution could benefit from additional security features, such as malware scanning tools at the recovery site.

I have been using Zerto for five years.

Zerto is stable.

Zerto is scalable. We just need to add a license and they provide a new key.

The technical support team offers an excellent service. They empower customers by providing comprehensive documentation and guidance, helping them resolve future issues independently.

Positive

The initial deployment was straightforward, and I handled it independently. My only reference was the provided documentation; I required no further assistance.

Zerto's pricing doesn't depend on the number of virtual applications. Even if we have a server with 200 terabytes of data, we'll only pay for protecting that single server, not for the total size of the replicated data. This simplifies our cost structure.

The licensing cost is fair.

I evaluated Veeam and SIM before choosing Zerto. Zerto's interface is much easier to use than the other solutions I tested. Integrating into our environment is also seamless.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten.

No maintenance is required.

You can save a lot of time researching solutions by choosing Zerto. It's efficient, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain. Additionally, Zerto offers excellent support, including comprehensive documentation, breach and RCM coverage information, and a knowledgeable customer support team.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery and cloud migration.

The near-synchronous replication is valuable to our organization.

Zerto's immutable data copies three-two-one rule is great.

The ability to block ransomware attacks and help recover our servers is great.

Since we don't have a backup data center, Zerto's cloud disaster recovery is of the utmost importance.

The recovery point objective for our virtual machines is good. We haven't encountered any significant issues. However, there have been some delays due to the substantial volume of data being written to the SQL server.

Migrating data using Zerto is easy.

Our RTO went from three days to a few minutes after implementing Zerto.

In the event of a ransomware attack necessitating data recovery, Zerto would undoubtedly prove invaluable in expediting the process.

Zerto has helped reduce our recovery time from days to minutes.

Zerto has reduced the time our staff spends on data recovery by 25 percent.

The RPO for our SQL server has room for improvement.

On-premises to cloud migration lacks certain features, such as the ability to directly rename virtual machines. In the cloud, renaming resources often requires cumbersome workarounds like cloning and manual renaming.

I have been using Zerto for four years.

Initially, we had stability issues with the older versions but now I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

Zerto is scalable.

The level one technical support is slow to respond and we usually need to escalate our issue to get a resolution.

Neutral

We previously used Azure Site Recovery and switched to Zerto because it is more user-friendly with more features.

While the initial deployment presented some challenges and took approximately two weeks to finalize, subsequent deployments have been significantly more streamlined.

In the event of a disaster, we will certainly see a return on investment.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten.

Deploying Zerto in the cloud saves us costs on maintaining on-prem hardware.