Systems architect at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Makes it easier to do failovers, is stable, and is straightforward to set up
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that the failover is simple and that it's a stable platform. It makes it easy for us to do failovers in the event that we have an issue. It also makes it easier to do test failovers because we can test it prior to actually doing a real failover. This means that we can pull things back or commit them over on the other side. Zerto streamlines the process instead of having to have a whole team of people who are dedicated to disaster recovery."
  • "We're an NSX-T shop, and if I could get an NSX-T integration where it could manage the networks a little tighter, that would be an improvement."

What is our primary use case?

Our use case is disaster recovery or failover. It makes it a lot easier for us to actually test DR because of some of the coordination and orchestration that are a part of Zerto. However, our use case is strictly DR, making sure that we have the right RPOs, and Zerto does a good job of handling that.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto improved a lot of the processes that we do for disaster recovery. It makes it a lot easier when we talk to our upper management and letting them know that we have a way of getting data from one data center over to another data center without a whole lot of friction.

What is most valuable?

I like that the failover is simple and that it's a stable platform. It makes it easy for us to do failovers in the event that we have an issue. It also makes it easier to do tests of failovers prior to actually doing a real failover. This means that we can pull things back or commit them over on the other side. Zerto streamlines the process instead of having to have a whole team of people who are dedicated to disaster recovery.

When you compare the ease of use of Zerto versus that of SRM, it's a night-and-day difference. SRM was very kludgy to set up when we implemented it. Zerto was a lot more streamlined from that perspective. SRM wasn't very stable for us, sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't. With Zerto, we rarely have any issues that can't be fixed with a phone call. It doesn't require a full rebuild, and the upgrades are simpler. It's just a better solution all around.

We don't have a whole lot of downtime, to begin with. When we've had issues, Zerto has allowed us to move the workloads quicker. I would say from a configuration perspective, Zerto saved us quite a bit of time over SRM. Zerto is a set-it-and-forget-it type of tool. We get into it only when we need to.

When you compare the speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions its fairly quick. We can failover a workload from our headquarters to our DR facility and have it up and running in 10 or 15 minutes, which is pretty good. A five-minute migration is also a nice feature.

Zerto hasn't reduced the staff involved in a data recovery situation because we're a fairly thin IT assistance team. However, with Zerto, we don't have to plan ahead for additional resources just for an eventual or potential failover.

When we do regular disaster recoveries, where we do a full failover and test in our DR facility for a couple of days, Zerto makes it a lot easier to move it from one place to another and make the VM agnostic to the datacenter.

What needs improvement?

We're an NSX-T shop, and if I could get an NSX-T integration where it could manage the networks a little tighter, that would be an improvement.

The other improvement is working with storage vendors, like Pure Storage for the synchronization of the data similar to what SRM does. Using Zerto for the orchestration, and the hardware vendor for the replication would be beneficial.

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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very good. It's rare that we have a complete outage. Sometimes, we have a VPG that doesn't replicate correctly, but a call to tech support gets it resolved.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Right now, we have about 120 VMs that are being replicated, and we have an eight-second RPO. I consider that good performance for our workloads. I know we could scale out easily using our current configuration.

How are customer service and support?

Zerto's technical support is very strong. When we have an issue, it gets resolved quickly. We have never had an issue with Zerto's support.

We've had good experiences with all of the engineers that we've worked with, so on a scale from one to ten, I would rate them at nine.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used SRM previously, and it wasn't very good. We ended up having to rebuild it a few times.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Everything made sense, and after a couple of days, we were up and running.

What about the implementation team?

We had an engineer from Zerto help us with the implementation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think the cost is reasonable for VM licensing. It's not outside the scope of an enterprise product.

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Converged Infrastructure Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
When a server needs to be moved over in a crisis situation, this solution has been there to help me out
Pros and Cons
  • "It is way faster than just manually moving VMDKs, etc. It saves hours of time and a significant amount of money."
  • "I have had problems with vRAs. When I am trying to restart a host, sometimes the vRAs will hang. I would like it if they wouldn't migrate off or shut themselves down, then I have to manually work with it a lot of the time."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use it for disaster recovery backup. Also, whenever we need to move things between our different environments, e.g., moving it to different vCenters and Azure, that is primarily done through Zerto

How has it helped my organization?

We are in the process of doing a disaster recovery test soon, and Zerto is at the forefront of that. Zerto is really helping out with this. The bigwigs, who don't know anything about technology, come to us and then we explain Zerto to them. Whenever we simulate failures, Zerto has been able to seamlessly and instantly recover. This really gives our team big brownie points.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is Instant Recovery. Especially when a server needs to be moved over in a crisis situation, Zerto has been there to help me out in a pinch. It is really fast and responsive. It is always there when you need it most.

It is great for reliability. 

What needs improvement?

I have had problems with vRAs. When I am trying to restart a host, sometimes the vRAs will hang. I would like it if they wouldn't migrate off or shut themselves down, then I have to manually work with it a lot of the time.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been at the company for about six months and using Zerto the whole time.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is pretty stable. The only problem I have is with the vRAs sometimes freezing up. Other than that, it has been pretty stable and reliable. I feel like we can count on it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. I feel comfortable with it. if we needed to expand in an instant we could.

How are customer service and support?

I have only used our customer support for upgrades, but they have been great and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

If I have networking issues on one vCenter, then I can just Zerto it over to another vCenter. This instantly fixes the problem, saving us time and money. In one case, our phone system was down because we were having a network issue at one of the vCenters. So, I just moved the machine over to the other vCenter through Zerto. It came back online, bringing us back up.

It is way faster than just manually moving VMDKs, etc. It saves hours of time and a significant amount of money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I can compare Zerto to Rubrik's instant VM recovery from our backups. Zerto is faster. Since Zerto is instant, it is always watching while Rubrik has to take time and restore everything.

What other advice do I have?

The solution is really good. I am super happy with Zerto.

I would rate Zerto as 10 out of 10. They are great.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Zerto
June 2024
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Senior Systems Administrator at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Real User
We didn't have the ability to immediately fail over our production environment, and now we can
Pros and Cons
  • "It does what it's purported to do, which is to provide continuous data protection. We have a five-second RPO. It's definitely doing its job."
  • "I would like to see them continuously improve Zerto's automated functions, such as putting hosts in maintenance mode within vSphere and not having to worry as much about how Zerto is going to react... Sometimes, Zerto almost holds the vSphere environment hostage when it comes to taking certain actions. You really need to be cognizant about what you're about to do. They should further automate that and increase Zerto's ability to handle things like that in a very slick, automated way, without intervention."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for a hot DR site for our primary production environment, allowing us to fail over all of our production servers in case of an emergency.

How has it helped my organization?

We are in a much better position as far as our data protection scheme is concerned, with Zerto. Compared to where we were before, it's a night and day difference, because we didn't have the ability to immediately fail over our production environment. The difference is pretty extreme for our organization. We went from just having SAN snapshots to Veeam backups, and now we have replication.

It massively decreases the time needed for us to fail back because, before, we had no way to do so for our workload. It would have been a manual process to move our workload somewhere else. We would have had to get the VMs off of the existing infrastructure and we would have had to create a whole new infrastructure and get them running somewhere else. That could take two to three weeks, in an emergency situation, with our entire team working on it, versus just pushing a button and moving it right now. We're in a whole different realm now.

There would also be massive savings in manpower to do that. We would have to create a whole new infrastructure, whether in AWS, Azure, or even procuring physical equipment and deploying it. Now that we have Zerto in place, it's there waiting and being replicated too.

What is most valuable?

The fact that it just works is important to us. We don't have to do a whole lot to it. It does its thing in the background and it's ready to go. It enables us to execute our DR plan at any time that is required. It doesn't seem to require a lot of time or management or day-to-day maintenance. 

It doesn't "complain" a lot and it's ready to go at any time, so you could call it easy to use. It's just me responsible for maintaining it, and there is a network infrastructure person involved as well. But it mostly maintains itself, once it has been deployed.

It does what it's purported to do, which is to provide continuous data protection. We have a five-second RPO. It's definitely doing its job. It's there in the background, replicating constantly.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see them continuously improve Zerto's automated functions, such as putting hosts in maintenance mode within vSphere and not having to worry as much about how Zerto is going to react. Rather, Zerto should be able to handle putting various hosts, within either the source or destination side, into maintenance mode without having to worry about the vRA appliances. Sometimes, Zerto almost holds the vSphere environment hostage when it comes to taking certain actions. You really need to be cognizant about what you're about to do. They should further automate that and increase Zerto's ability to handle things like that in a very slick, automated way, without intervention.

Zerto could also build more canned automation tools within their product, tools that automatically work with DNS updates to AWS or Azure. Maybe they could provide an area for scripting help or canned scripts, a community or a place where people could grab some scripting. Maybe they could reach into Citrix or F5 load balancer APIs.

Also, if you have a host go wrong or you need to put one in maintenance in an emergency situation, especially on the source side, it can require you to fix Zerto and redeploy vRAs or redeploy the little appliances to the host that they're going to be on.

Also, depending on what resources it has available, storage or vSphere-wise, I'd like to see it able to balance itself out within the virtual environment, with its storage usage on the destination side.

I've only run into these things briefly, so I can't speak about them at the deepest technical level, but I have noticed that they're not as perfect as they could be.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for three months at my current company, but I have about two years' experience with it in total.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For the most part, it has been stable. There have been a few points where I have had to delete the VPG group, re-replicate data, and start over, to get things back to a good spot. But overall it has been pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are only protecting 45 VMs. We're not a large, multinational, so I can't really speak about its scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't used the technical support very much.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't have a previous solution, other than SAN snapshots. That's why we looked to put something in place. Previously, we were in a tenuous situation that would make anyone nervous. We went in this direction so that we wouldn't have to be nervous.

How was the initial setup?

It didn't seem that difficult to set up. 

It took a couple of days, but that didn't include setting up the SAN and the secondary sites and all of the infrastructure around having it work directly. But just the Zerto solution itself did not take very long at all to set up.

Everything that we needed to do to facilitate the use of the solution was more involved and took a month or so. At the time, we also deployed a Veeam solution to do the long-term storage, and that was wrapped up in the same project, so it's hard to give an exact amount of time for the deployment. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Everyone knows Zerto is a little on the expensive side, but what else is there on the market that does the same thing? It is more expensive per client, for what it does, compared to a backup product like Veeam.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't really go into a full evaluation of other solutions. We took the recommendation of our VAR. They're a company that provides us with help in implementing projects. They recommended going to Zerto, and I had already used Zerto before at another company, so I was comfortable with that recommendation.

Zerto serves a very specific purpose in our environment, which is to fail over the entire environment in an emergency, very quickly. Veeam claims to be able to do that, but I don't think it does it as quickly or efficiently as Zerto.

What other advice do I have?

The main thing is to make sure your network infrastructure is designed properly. Zerto is only going to be as successful as the network infrastructure and the automation that is created around it to help with a failover situation.

In our particular situation, we have a stretch network situation, which means we don't really have to do a lot of the automated scripting that most people might have to do, surrounding re-IP-ing the environment and DNS updates. We're in a unique situation. Because we are a telco, we own our entire network and we have the ability to stretch our network to a location that's a state away. That scenario doesn't apply to a lot of other business situations. Other institutions may not have that luxury, in which case their scripted automation, and how well that is set up, would be critical.

Because we weren't doing backup and DR management before, Zerto has probably increased the amount of staff we need. You don't need staff in place for things that you aren't doing.

HPE bought Nimble and made Nimble not as good. Hopefully, the HPE acquisition won't have a negative effect on Zerto. That's a deep concern among all people who have had to deal with things that HPE bought. They need to keep to the original intention and vision without diluting it within some other HPE product or some other HPE offering. I have no interest in seeing Zerto losing its functionality or having it rebranded as some other problematic HPE solution. We bought this as a purpose-built solution to do exactly what we want and that's the way we would like it to stay.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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System Administrator at City of Rock Hill, SC
Real User
Reduces downtime, is simple, and easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "In terms of continuous data protection, it's the best product that we've found that does this. It's not snapshot-based. It's continuous, so there are no specific points in time we have to worry about recovering to or from. It's pretty much any time, as long as it's within our replication window."
  • "The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product."

What is our primary use case?

We're using it for site plate replication and fail-over or disaster recovery. We're primarily using it to replicate between the data centers that we own and operate.

How has it helped my organization?

We've had a few disasters where we've had a site go out and we've had outages or hardware failures. However, with a single click, we can have all of the failover and when the other sites come back up, it can auto re-replicate in the reverse direction so there is no extra manpower required. Whereas, normally, we would be spending hours and hours cleaning up from the failover event.

What is most valuable?

We enjoy the simplicity of not only configuring replication but failing over with a single click and then having it automatically reverse replication. We've had other products such as Veeam, and their replication works, however, it's very cumbersome to configure. When you failover, there's a bunch of work you have to do after the fact to reverse the direction and to restore the VM and how it names it and which environment it shows up in.

In terms of continuous data protection, it's the best product that we've found that does this. It's not snapshot-based. It's continuous, so there are no specific points in time we have to worry about recovering to or from. It's pretty much any time, as long as it's within our replication window.

The solution is very easy to use. It's very straightforward. You don't really have to do a lot of reading through the documentation, or things like that. You can basically scroll through the menu and figure it out.

We have not had ransomware, so we haven't had to deal with that, however, we definitely had a disaster recovery issue we had where we had the fail-over site stop unexpectedly. It did save us a bit of data loss, whereas, normally, we would have lost six hours' worth of customer data. In this case, it was seamless. We lost seconds' worth.

The solution has reduced downtime. It has done so a couple of times. There could be some cost savings there. It's just not something we calculate.

What needs improvement?

The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product. Zerto can do backup, and yet it's really a disaster recovery product. It would be great if they could improve upon the backup functionality, or continually improve. We've seen some improvements, however, if they continue improving upon that it may eventually eliminate the need for the other product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues. The only issue we had was a DHCP issue where we didn't static a couple of the DVMs, which is the agent for each ESX host, and we were having a few gaps in replication when the IPs would change, however, we've stacked those and that has resolved that issue.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We find that it's very easily scalable. The resource overhead is very minimal so it's really easy to scale up the environment and the product kind of automates the process for you. You select where you want it, hit install, and it handles it for you.

About five people use the product in our company. We have some system administrators, we have a couple of programmers and we have a DBA.

We have around a quarter of our environment replicated with Zerto. It's mostly our critical infrastructure.

We may possibly increase usage over time.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good. I'd give it an eight out of ten. They're pretty quick to respond. They are almost always able to resolve my issue. I have no complaints. I only had a couple of support tickets, however, the experience was pretty good.

That said, their web portal is a bit clunky to navigate. For example, putting in a request, knowing where to go, or pulling up documentation or upgrading information wasn't quite as intuitive as it could be.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are still using Veeam mostly for backup tasks. We use Zerto for site recovery.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward and easy.

The installation was simple. There are lots of guides and information. There are YouTube videos. They had training classes that were free that you can go to and they have a little lab environment. Even without the assistance offered, the way you install it is very straightforward and very simple. Really anybody can run the installer and have an idea of what they're doing right out of the gate without really any training.

Deployment took around a day.

We did have a specific deployment plan and we were able to execute that in about a day. Getting all the sites set up and then the VMs replicated was fast.

We have five people on staff that can handle deployment and maintenance.

What about the implementation team?

We didn't use an integrator or consultant. We just did it ourselves.

What was our ROI?

There's not a direct ROI as it's being used as an insurance policy. The only time it really benefits us is when something bad happens.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's reasonably affordable. Obviously, cheaper would always be better, however, it's not out of the expected range. We are just paying by VM. It's my understanding there are no extra fees.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I can't remember the companies off the top of my head as it's been a few years since we've done it, however, we evaluated five or ten different options that were popular at the time. Some of them were integrated with hardware. Some of them were software only.

In the end, it came down to Zerto due to simplicity. It's very simple and straightforward. It removes all the overhead of management and knowing what is active or what's the standby copy. It handles all of those pieces for you.

What other advice do I have?

We're probably on the latest version or one version behind.

We very lightly use the product for very specific things. We have a couple of things that are very high data rate, very high IO, for which we cannot use traditional snapshot-based technology and we are using that to do a long-term backup.

The solution has not reduced the number of staff involved in data recovery situations. We have maintained exactly what we had. It's simplified it so it's possible to have a reduction, however, we haven't done any reduction from that.

The biggest piece of advice I could give is if you want the best-in-class for failover and replication, as well as ease of management, there is no better product that I've seen so far. Whether hardware or software combinations, this has been the simplest deployment and it just works.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Senior IT Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Can be implemented and used in an emergency situation anywhere
Pros and Cons
  • "The RTO and RPO are unparalleled. In the event you do have an issue, you can be back up and running (depending on the size of your infrastructure) within minutes. Your RTO can be 15 minutes and data loss be five minutes. I don't think that's matched by anybody else in the field."
  • "The alerting has room for improvement as it is the biggest pain point with the software. It is so bad. It is just general alerting on or off. There are so many emails all the time. You have no control over it, which is terrible. It is the worst part of the entire application. I have voiced this to Zerto hundreds of times for things like feature changes. Apparently, it's coming, but there is nothing concrete as to when you can do it."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for DR as well as migration. We have four data centers and migrate workloads between them.

We don't use it for backup.

How has it helped my organization?

We had some ransomware that got on and infected the corporate shared drives. It was just one system and one user type of thing. It didn't spread because we had it locked down pretty well. So, I just bumped the server back entirely so we did not have to worry about it.

We have only had one instance, and it wasn't widespread, where we had ransomware. The RPO was approximately 20 minutes. We had an active snapshot from when the incident happened, because we couldn't really iron it down. Therefore, Zerto saved us time in this data recovery situation because I didn't have to rebuild the thing or do a SnapMirror. 

If we had used a different solution, it might have taken a week for our data recovery situation instead of 20 minutes with four or five technical folks (not including management), instead of just me. This is because we didn't have anything documented and just counted on Zerto to do it. I don't know what the company had set up previously since I'm new, but at the previous place that I've experienced malware, you would have to stand everything up from scratch and scrape through all your backups and differentials. 

We use in the data center if there is a live event that could cost the company millions of dollars, which I haven't experienced, e.g., if our data center were to explode or get hit with a meteor, then ceases to exist. We have the option to go in and flip a switch. That has never happened. However, our tests using SRM went from a day to minutes when we switched to Zerto.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is DR. In my opinion, there is nothing better at what it does.

The solution provides fantastic continuous data protection. We do a lot of spin up test environments depending on what happened, then make changes and rip it down. Or, if we got hit with malware, then we use that to do a point-in-time recovery. We custom create software in-house, so we will spin up a test environment to test code deployments or do a copy to do the same thing, if we want it to be around longer than a test recovery. For example, somebody got hit with something, then they infected the server. We were able to restore it back to a point in time before the infection. 

It is super easy to use. A non-technical user can get it up in a day. I can get it up in 15 minutes. I've brought it to help desk guys and network operations center guys, and it's easily grasped.

What needs improvement?

While I am open to transitioning over to using Zerto for long-term retention, the problem is the alerting function in Zerto is very poor. That makes it a difficult use case to transition over.

The alerting has room for improvement as it is the biggest pain point with the software. It is so bad. It is just general alerting on or off. There are so many emails all the time. You have no control over it, which is terrible. It is the worst part of the entire application. I have voiced this to Zerto hundreds of times for things like feature changes. Apparently, it's coming, but there is nothing concrete as to when you can do it.

For how long have I used the solution?

Four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is fantastic. It has gotten a lot better as far as the maintenance. Initially, it required a lot of prodding and poking. As it sits today, it is really stable, though you sometimes need to mirror the changes in the application to what you have changed in your own infrastructure.

The management once it is already deployed is easy to moderate. Things can get a little goofy with the DRS and if you're shuffling things around. If your infrastructure is pretty static, you're not going to have any problems with Zerto. But, if you move things around or do any updates, you have to come in and make sure everything is good to go. It is not difficult, but sometimes you are required to go in and maintain it. Because we turn off the alerting in most places, you don't know its status without going in and manually looking.

I am the primary Zerto administrator. Therefore, I own the product for my company and use it every day.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is great. It will scale essentially one-to-one with your virtual infrastructure. However, if you have more hosts and VMs, then you have to go in and manage that many more hosts and VMs.

Four people know it and use it to do things. I'm the primary, then there is another guy who is the direct backup on my team. Then I have trained a couple other people who know how to utilize it in the event of an emergency, e.g., "This is how you would failover X environment." Because it won't automatically do failovers, somebody has to pull the trigger. Therefore, we have documentation in order to do that. It is very simple.

We don't use it for everything, not in both instances where I implemented it or been in charge of running it over. However, it definitely has freed people up to do other things in that space. It only takes me to entirely administer Zerto, instead of a backup and recovery operations team with two or three people.

We are at about 60 percent of use. I would like to see more. We don't do persistent long-term backups or use any of the cloud functionality, though I think we will as we're in the midst of looking at AWS to potentially migrate workloads there. I also very interested in using it as cold storage.

How are customer service and technical support?

Initially, years ago, the technical support was very poor. We were promised one thing that was physically impossible with the software. I spent a lot of time fighting everybody in support. Since then, the support has been really good. In my experience, they are all mostly stateside. They understand the product inside and out to help you with your needs or come up with some type of creative solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

At my previous company, we were using SRM and our DR tests would take one to two days. For our primary customer, we switched to Zerto, then it took 15 to 20 minutes instead of days. It was a huge difference. That was from Boise to North Carolina, then back. It was approximately 30 terabytes of data with 19 virtual machines. It was a pretty large orchestration.

SRM was replaced by Zerto due to simplicity. SRM is very complicated. It is also not easy to use and set up. Zerto is better for implementation and ease of use. So, it was a no-brainer.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward, though it could be more straightforward. Now, you just install the software on a Windows system. It would be nice if they had an appliance that autodeployed in VMware. That would make it simple. But if you can install Office or any kind of application on Windows, you can do this. It is super easy to set up with minimal front-end learning required. 

The deployment takes about an hour for an experienced person. If it is your first time, then it will take a couple hours.

You need to know your use case for an instance where you need something to be backed up. Once that need is identified, you need to know where it is and where you want it to go. Once you already have those questions answered, the implementation is simple. Through the installation progress, you just plug in those values of where is it, what is it, and where do you want it to go, then you're done.

What about the implementation team?

At the company I'm with now and at my previous company, I was the architect and implementer. Zerto generally requires one person for the setup.

What was our ROI?

The RTO and RPO are unparalleled. In the event you do have an issue, you can be back up and running (depending on the size of your infrastructure) within minutes. Your RTO can be 15 minutes and data loss be five minutes. I don't think that's matched by anybody else in the field.

It has helped decrease the number of people involved in data center moves. For the infrastructure pieces, which is my primary responsibility, I am the sole person. Whereas, we use to have an OS guy and a network person before to manually configure the pieces. We also had application teams, but they are still relevant. Previously, it took four people because we were touching each environment and machine. Since we wanted it done fast, we would stack a bunch of people on it. Now, it's just me and it's done faster.

When migrating data centers, we have saved a lot of time on my team. Something that takes an hour or two used to take a week or two.

There is big ROI for ease of use, management, and labor overhead versus other solutions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zerto is more expensive than competitors, making the price difference pretty high. While it is very expensive, it's very powerful and good at what it does. The cost is why we are not leveraging it for everything in the organization. If it was dirt cheap, we would have LTR and DR on everything because it would just make sense to use it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We currently use Veeam and Commvault.

In general, moving VMs through VMware using site-to-site is not as easy than with Zerto because the data has to go on flight, and Zerto just sends it over. I like that aspect of it. During our data center moves, we move from one location to another (San Jose) with a two-hour total downtime from start to finish: From powering the systems down, getting them over, getting a live feed changed, and back up and running to the world. This would be way slower with a different product.

For long-term retention, we do Veeam to spinning disk. While the LTR is something I am interested in, I think Veeam has the upper hand with alerting and job management. Both Veeam and Zerto are easy to use, but Zerto is easier to use.

I am not a big Commvault fan.

It could replace Veeam and Commvault, but not at its current price point.

What other advice do I have?

Most people assume catastrophic failures have a long-term data impact. However, with Zerto, it doesn't have to be that way. If you spend the money to protect everything, you are going to get that low data recovery time. Whereas, if you are cheap and don't buy Zerto, it's going to be hours to days of data loss. With Zerto, it is in the minutes. Thus, how valuable is your data? That is where the cost justification comes in.

If you are thinking about implementing this type of solution:

  • How important is your data? 
  • Would your company go bankrupt if you were unable to do what your company does for a week? 
  • Do you have contract requirements which say you need to have a DR plan up and running? 
  • Do you want to spend a week doing it or 20 minutes doing it? 

It's that value of time, money, and data. I can implement Zerto and use it in an emergency situation anywhere. If you're talking to somebody like me who understands data protection and disaster recovery, the question is how much is your data worth to you and how fast do you need it back?

Currently, we are doing our own storage as the target for protection, but there is interest in enabling DR in the cloud, e.g., to do Glacier or something cheap in Azure.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Platform engineer at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Has enabled us to mature our DR stance quite a bit
Pros and Cons
  • "It protect and provide DR."
  • "Automated protection of workloads from one site to another could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to protect our general workloads, migrating VMs to the cloud and protecting VMs in the cloud. Our primary use case is to protect and provide DR.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto has enabled us to mature our DR stance quite a bit in how we protect functions.

The near-synchronous replication works pretty well. Going from RPOs of an hour to five seconds is pretty interesting.

Zerto enables us to do disaster recovery in the cloud rather than in a physical data center.

Having disaster recovery in the cloud is very important for our organization as we're currently moving our production workloads to the cloud.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. Our RPOs are getting lower.

The speed of recovery in Zerto is much faster than with SRM.

What is most valuable?

The on-prem to Azure, migration, and protection aspects are good. Zerto is one of the few tools that work pretty good and at moving between regions or clouds.

The near-synchronous replication is good. 

What needs improvement?

Automated protection of workloads from one site to another could be improved. For example, with SRM, you can create a VM, and it automatically protects it based on mappings and other factors. Zerto does not do this.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It can throw us for a loop at times and it can be challenging to figure out.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are pretty large-scale. It's been one of the challenges, as it seems pretty simple for smaller scales, but as you get larger, it gets more challenging, which is where the automation piece and lack of that comes in.

How are customer service and support?

Level one and level two are excellent. The development team is a challenge sometimes because they work four days a week. Sometimes, when we have to have a Dev escalation or a severe issue, it takes quite a long time to get a response.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use SRM and Commvault. Zerto is better than both of them. Commvault is not great at Orchestration DR, and SRM locks you into VMware.

How was the initial setup?

We were early adopters, so the deployment has been challenging, but it's definitely getting more mature and better as we go. 

What about the implementation team?

We bought it from a reseller but we used Zerto services to get it going.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It has reasonable pricing comparable to VMware and others.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I rate Zerto an eight out of ten because it makes testing easy and provides flexibility between on-premises and various clouds.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Bayu Jayasukma. - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Product Specialist at PT. DATACOMM DIANGRAHA
Real User
Top 5
The RPO during testing can be done under 15 minutes
Pros and Cons
  • "Zerto ensures a smooth transition during a disaster when we need to automatically switch from our primary environment to our recovery one."
  • "There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Zerto for disaster recovery.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto ensures a smooth transition during a disaster when we need to automatically switch from our primary environment to our recovery one. Zerto offers us disaster recovery in the cloud, which is essential because we don't need to pay upfront costs for infrastructure when doing the DR process. Zerto helps to protect our VM-based applications. 

The solution has also reduced our RPO. The RPO during testing was less than 15 minutes. Zerto reduces the amount of work we need to do because some of the steps are automated. It takes about five to 15 minutes to test. Zerto has decreased the number of staff needed for backup and DR. It only requires one or two. 

What is most valuable?

The core backup and disaster recovery features are the most valuable. The near-synchronous replication ensures we will be able to keep the business running if something happens. 

What needs improvement?

There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Zerto nine out of 10 for stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Zerto eight out of 10 for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Zerto support eight out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are using Zerto and Acronis. 

How was the initial setup?

Our IT team handled the deployment, but I don't think it was complicated. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zerto is a little expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Zerto eight out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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Infrastructure Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Reduces the recovery workflow to just a few minutes
Pros and Cons
  • "I've been fortunate enough not to need to rely on Zerto in an actual disaster, but we do testing every year. Sometimes, it's multiple times annually or at the year's end. It takes the recovery workflow, which would normally take a lot of planning, and reduces that to just a few minutes."
  • "I would like Zerto to add support for VMware's lifecycle manager."

What is our primary use case?

I am a system engineer and IT architect. We use Zerto to protect our production -environment and critical applications. Everything is on-prem. We don't do any DR to the cloud. We're protecting around 300 VMs right now.

How has it helped my organization?

I've been fortunate enough not to need to rely on Zerto in an actual disaster, but we do testing every year. Sometimes, it's multiple times annually or at the year's end. It takes the recovery workflow, which would normally take a lot of planning, and reduces that to just a few minutes. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the low RTO that covers our VMs and a secondary data center.

What needs improvement?

I would like Zerto to add support for VMware's lifecycle manager. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Zerto for about eight years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Zerto eight out of 10 for scalability. We have one instance per data center that supports everything that we need, and we haven't had to scale past that.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It's been several years since we've looked at other products. We used VMware SRM in the past, but Zerto is way faster. Zerto is easier to use than other solutions we've tried. 

How was the initial setup?

Zerto is easy to set up. Once you've deployed the appliance and connected it to a  vCenter, your VMs are protected pretty quickly.

What was our ROI?

Zerto costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year, and we haven't needed to use it in a real DR situation, so it's hard to quantify an ROI. However, based on what we know from testing, it will be a huge benefit in the worst-case scenario. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zerto's pricing is pretty competitive. They recently went through a licensing change where you have to buy an enterprise license as an organization. We weren't happy with that just because it forced us to pay for extra features we don't use. We would prefer if we could still have that standard license.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Zerto nine out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
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Updated: June 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zerto Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.