IT Manager at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Provides near-synchronous replication, and improves our RPO, but the backup functionality needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable aspect of Zerto is the recovery speed."
  • "The recovery processes of large datasets in the Cloud have room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for disaster recovery and backup of our application server.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto's ease of use is moderate.

The near-synchronous replication is good.

We use Zerto to help protect our VMs.

Zerto improved our recovery point objective, but to achieve long-term data retention we had to invest in additional local storage.

From an IT resilience perspective, our UK-wide implementation ensured a swift recovery, solidifying the strategy's effectiveness.

It has enabled disaster recovery in the cloud. This is important from a software recovery perspective to keep things running.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of Zerto is the recovery speed.

What needs improvement?

The recovery processes of large datasets in the Cloud have room for improvement.

The backup functionality can be improved.

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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Zerto is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We used various solutions in the past including Veeam and Quest AppAssure.

We came to the end of what we could do with AppAssure so we moved on to Zerto.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was difficult. The deployment took a couple of weeks and required around four people.

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

While Zerto excels in disaster recovery, its backup capabilities fall short. To ensure proper data protection, we require a separate backup solution alongside Zerto for disaster recovery therefore the price for Zerto is high.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In our search for a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, we considered both Veeam Cloud Connect and Zerto, ultimately choosing the latter.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto seven out of ten. It only works for virtual machines, not physical ones. This means we need separate software for physical machine backup, which adds complexity and cost.

Zerto's recovery speed falls in line with what we've experienced from other disaster recovery solutions.

Disaster recovery testing was prevented due to security restrictions. Our policies don't permit creating a sandbox environment that interacts with Zerto.

Four people are required for the maintenance of Zerto.

I recommend Zerto for disaster recovery purposes.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Giovanni Golinelli. - PeerSpot reviewer
Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A storage software vendor that specializes in enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) in virtual and cloud environments
Pros and Cons
  • "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. Near-synchronous replication is one of the benefits of Zerto that drove us to choose it over some others. With typical backup and recovery solutions, the recovery point typically is about 24 hours. With the near-synchronous replication, recovery point objectives tend to be minutes or a few seconds if the bandwidth is adequate. That's one of the major benefits of Zerto: there's no need to run incremental backups every xx minutes. And the recovery time is fairly quick as well, like a shutdown and reboot of a VM. 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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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. 

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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. 

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

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. 

How was the initial setup?

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.

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

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.

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I work for Quanture Spa, which is a System Integrator HPE Gold Partner in Italy
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Zerto
June 2024
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Richard_Martin - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Support Analyst at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Offers continuous replication for mission-critical applications and near-synchronous replication
Pros and Cons
  • "The continuous replication with a low recovery point objective (RPO) is crucial for us."
  • "Better alerting is something that I feel is critical."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate our VMware VMs. We have two data centers in our company. We use Zerto to make sure these virtual machines which are VMware are replicated in the other data centres.

We also use Zerto as a backup tool for Windows files.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto is already a leader in its field. I have seen the benefit of knowing that everything is protected. We've only started a disaster recovery program in the last year after running Zerto. The business is now understanding that recovering from the traditional backup software does take a long time, and it's very complex. 

Using Zerto, I am the only department that can recover in minutes. The database team takes hours, the IBM platform takes hours as well. So time saving is what we see the most of Zerto.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is very important. It's the reason we're still with Zerto. We collect blood in many hospitals, and some of our data centers are in hospitals with power grids that are not as good as commercial buildings. So, we do have servers that will crash. The servers are in the hospitals for latency reasons. And when a server crashes for any reason, it could be a chipmunk eating wires. We need to have another server with no data loss so that the clinics can keep going without having to do a whole bunch of data entry.

We don't use SAP HANA with Zerto, but we use SAP HANA with an Oracle database. These databases are replicated at the hardware storage level, not with Zerto.

Zerto has very little effect on our RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives). As long as we have the disk space, it works well. We currently have a one-hour to one-day RPO and are extending it to about four days based on recommendations.

What is most valuable?

The continuous replication with a low recovery point objective (RPO) is crucial for us. 

We have mission-critical applications that, if we lose data, we lose a lot of money. Zerto's low RPO ensures minimal data loss in case of a disaster.

What needs improvement?

Zerto has the ability for us to suggest features, which we do often. We do see some of these features come to life. Better alerting is something that I feel is critical. 

If you turn on the alerting of the on-prem appliances, it bombards your inbox over everything. It's too much. We had to turn that off. We use Zerto cloud analytics for alerting, and we just moved the Zerto ten about a month ago.

Some alerts, such as when one of my virtual protection groups does not have at least one day of logs configured. We find that after we do a disaster recovery failover test we recreate the virtual protection groups. Some of our junior systems admins won't specify. We need seven days of journal logs. So an alert for that would be handy.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Zerto for over eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's excellent. The product has been solid for the entire time we've used it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We use Zerto to protect approximately 300 VMware VMs.

We have not grown Zerto in many, many years. We're likely going to double it. It should not be a problem because it's essentially almost agent-based. I feel that it can grow. We're not a very big client, so I don't know how big it can scale, but I feel that it can.

How are customer service and support?

I rarely need to contact the customer service and support. The product is very good. When I have used their support, I've never had to escalate a call.

There's nothing bad about the support. They are responsive and helpful. A 10 would mean having an experience so exceptional that I would have to tell my family about it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Zerto was deployed before my time, so I wasn't involved in the initial deployment. However, I have been involved in upgrades, which are very simple. 

I appreciate the ability to open a case with Zerto support for assistance. For our recent Zerto 10 upgrade, we also had help from Zerto Professional Services, which is a feature that management likes.

Zerto can perform disaster recovery in the cloud, but our company is not cloud-ready yet.  We do not have the governance We are still trying to figure out if we were to fail over an application, is the application team aware that they will have to pay additional funding out of their call centers. So we are at a governance stage right now of planning for recovery in the cloud.

We have two active-active data centers that replicate themselves at the VMware level. We use Microsoft Azure.

What about the implementation team?

We used Zerto Professional Services to assist us with the Zerto 10 upgrade. It was a great experience. The upgrade was done in about 15 minutes for both sites. They were well-prepared and knew exactly what they were doing.

What was our ROI?

We don't see ROI in terms of direct financial ROI, as we only started our disaster recovery testing about a year ago. However, based on client satisfaction and our decision to double our Zerto licenses, we see a return on investment in terms of overall client satisfaction.

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

We have a licensing team that manages it, but it seems to be fairly easy to use.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Veeam and NAKIVO.

The business realized the importance of quick recovery and minimal data loss, which are the main reasons why we chose and continue to use Zerto.

From an end-user interface where you use your mouse to click, Zerto is definitely the easiest. However, for the monitoring piece, where my developers have to use the APIs, Zerto is much harder than the other tools that we've used.

Zerto's recovery is the fastest, hands down. Compared to NetBackup, which takes hours, Zerto's recovery is a matter of minutes. We also use a tool similar to Veeam called NAKIVO for non-mission-critical systems, which has a one-day RPO. Nextiva is close to Zerto in terms of recovery speed, but Zerto's interface, orchestration capabilities, and ability to run scripts make it the top choice for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it a ten out of ten. There's nothing that compares to Zerto, nothing that works as well as it. My only complaint about it is the alerting. There are a lot of alerts that come through, and they are legit alerts. It's excellent.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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RyanSchader - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Easy to use with fast disaster recovery and near synchronous replication
Pros and Cons
  • "We're able to replicate all of our data and be able to bring up an entire data center within a matter of minutes, which has become our go-to for our resiliency within both of our data centers."
  • "Recently, they started forcing everybody to use a Linux-based appliance for their z/VMs. That appliance has been extremely touchy and, in some cases, problematic."

What is our primary use case?

We use it mainly for our disaster recovery, so we replicate our production VMs between our data centers.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution meets our high availability and disaster recovery needs.

What is most valuable?

The disaster recovery reviews itself and it has the ability to fail over within seconds and get new machines up and running on a new data center in a matter of minutes.

It's pretty easy to use. It depends on how detailed you get into the product. If you get real detailed into the product with some of its backup capabilities, it can get a little bit more detailed, for example. However, for the disaster recovery piece itself, it's it's pretty easy to use.

The near synchronous replication is effective. It works really well. The replication and the RTO, RPO times are pretty much the best in the industry.

We saw some benefits right away in that we were understanding that we were now highly available. We also started to see more and more benefits as time went on.

It helps protect virtual machines in our environment.

Our downtime and our ability to replicate happen within seconds. We've seen other products that take about five minutes. Now, we take seconds to get things back up and going. Therefore, the loss of data is virtually nothing. We've been extremely happy with that. 

It's helped reduce downtimes in pretty much any situation. We've had instances where a data center or a cluster in a data center was down or we were having problems with it and being able to have that replicated data being able to be spun up within a matter of minutes. It's significantly helped where if we didn't have that ability, we were probably looking at at least three to four hours, if not a day, of downtime. We're talking about the difference between minutes of downtime versus hours to potentially days.

With Zerto we haven't had any any actual instances where ransomware or anything like that actually comes up. We do yearly testing where we'll fail over an entire data center. While we haven't had any malicious incidents, we've had success with conceptual testing.

Zerto hasn't necessarily reduced the overall testing in our organization. We still have to do the testing. That said, it's reduced the time in which it takes to perform that testing. So, we still have our requirements to do yearly testing. However, it's at least reducing the amount of time it takes. Before, the testing would take an entire weekend and multiple departments in order to complete it. Now we're finishing our testing in a matter of hours. We're knocking off quite a bit of time with Zerto - plus hours of time in order to complete testing.

Zerto is now our resiliency strategy. We're able to replicate all of our data and be able to bring up an entire data center within a matter of minutes, which has become our go-to for our resiliency within both of our data centers.

What needs improvement?

Recently, they started forcing everybody to use a Linux-based appliance for their z/VMs. That appliance has been extremely touchy and, in some cases, problematic. However, there were Windows-based z/VMs prior, and we never really had issues with them. But now we're running into problems where certificates aren't able to be imported for things like LDPAPS and SSL. We've run into actual downtime with the z/VMs recently, which is new to the Linux app appliance. Overall, the appliances had some bugs, and they've not been as reliable as they were in the past.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Zerto for a little over 4.5 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are the no real lag issues, We've only had a couple of instances where the system has been down, and wasnew since our Linux appliance install. Overall, it's been pretty reliable with the caveat that the new Linux appliance has had some downtime. Prior to that, we hadn't had any. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability's been good. There's a couple of instances where they could allow for some more local replication, however, scalability has been good.

How are customer service and support?

I quite frequently contact technical support. On most things, they have been pretty good. The issues that we've had with that z/VM, those tickets can take quite a while. I have one ticket that's been open for about four and a half months now. They're still trying to figure out some of the bugs within their system, which has caused some tickets to take longer than they really should.

The quality of response has been pretty good. Maybe 7  or 8 out of 10 are quality responses. They're they're pretty good, pretty knowledgeable. Again, there are some instances where they're still learning the system as well, or there's something new, and it's a little bit odd; however, other than that, their answers are typically pretty spot on and pretty well documented.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We used to build products by Nutanix. Their RTO times were much higher. That's about the only solution that I've used at least recently.

I wasn't part of that decision making process. Zerto had been onboarded by the time I came on to to the team here.

How was the initial setup?

The deployments have been pretty easy as long as you have your network topology figured out. If you're just starting up a brand new appliance, and you're running through a setup, signing IPs , et cetera, you have to make sure that the z/VMs can talk to each other. It's a pretty easy process.

Usually, for the setup, we have the SME, which is me, and then a backup to be a second pair of eyes, however, a lot of the work is been done just by myself.

In terms of maintenance, there are updates that need to be applied. The certificate imports need to happen depending on expiration dates. There also is their key cloak integration for authentication, and that requires some upkeep as well depending on how you're signing permissions and what you're signing permissions for.

What about the implementation team?

I've done redeployments myself, for example, when we switched over from Windows to Linux to z/VMs. That was all in-house. At the time when they did their very first deployment, they had used a third party vendor to assist with that. We've not needed them since. 

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

I don't have any visibility on the pricing. 

What other advice do I have?

We're a Zerto customer.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

New users need to understand the product prior to deployment and make sure that they're taking the time to whiteboard this out. Your VRAs are going to take up a good amount of space. So users need to understand that when you're replicating data over, you are making a second copy of that data, and understand what your test scenarios are going to be. You need to understand if you need things like a test environment to actually be within Zerto since that will be taking up more space. Overall, people just be aware that the Linux appliances still have to have their bugs worked out. For first-time users, especially, I would keep those deployments as simple as possible to start.

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.
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Global Lead Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Constantly replicates and it is economical and easy to implement
Pros and Cons
  • "The replication feature where it constantly replicates and sees that data is always in sync is valuable."
  • "There should be an automatic installation in a cluster. When I add a virtual client or ESX source to the cluster, it should automatically install that. There should be automatic installation. Currently, I have to do that manually."

What is our primary use case?

I am the global lead for infrastructure for the VMware and Windows Server environments. We are mainly using Zerto for disaster recovery. We have a prime site in Missouri, and we have plants in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, Italy, and Korea. We have 400 to 500 users in the environment. 

We have installed Zerto software on the DR site and the production site. We will be using Zerto for the production site for all the centrally used applications, such as SAP, file servers, and Exchange. Because this is a central site, a lot of other sites come to this site for various things. 

We also have Zerto on the DR site. In manufacturing, there are 60 or 70 tools, and each tool costs around $500,000. When the site goes down, you cannot transfer these tools very easily. It takes time. These are big tools, and it takes time for them to go somewhere else. You have to do a test again and go through the qualifications procedure, which takes time. As the IT department, we are interested in getting the applications that are used by all the sites centrally located, and if anything happens to the primary site, we want all the applications to be already there on the disaster recovery site. We just bring them up, and we are good to go.

Zerto will help to protect VMs in our environment. We have tried that in the test environment. That would be another reason for using Zerto.

How has it helped my organization?

We have used it for VMs. We know that it is a very good product. So far, we have only synced SAP and tested a few things. For SAP, there were two guys doing that, and they like Zerto very well. They have the test databases up there. It was smooth, and they liked it. The part that we still need to test is the Windows VMs where we can spin up a domain controller, change the IP, etc.

We can move data that is needed to keep our users collaborating with one another using Zerto because we are doing a continuous sync of the site. Once it is synced, we do not have to worry because everything happens in the background.

What is most valuable?

The replication feature where it constantly replicates and sees that data is always in sync is valuable. 

The ease of moving all the VMs is valuable. All we have to do is change the IP address and the VMs are all up and running there. There is a passive sync with all the VMs. That is what we like about Zerto. VMware has its own tool, but you need to do a lot of scripting. In manufacturing, we have a one-man team, so we do not have time for all the specialized work. We needed an application that is more GUI-based so that we can pinpoint and easily move VMs. We can bring up all the VMs and make sure the data is in sync, and we are up and running, so the ease of implementation is what attracted us to Zerto.

Zerto is very easy to use. It is very professional. We had no issues at all. Even for bringing up a new ESX host, they have a standard procedure. It is very easy. With a few clicks, you can do the ESX installation. 

What needs improvement?

There should be an automatic installation in a cluster. When I add a virtual client or ESX source to the cluster, it should automatically install that. There should be automatic installation. Currently, I have to do that manually.

They can give us a few training classes.

For how long have I used the solution?

We installed Zerto just three months back. We have not yet started using it properly.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Zerto is a very stable product. We have no issues. So far, it is working as planned. It is very stable. We will soon be working on it full-fledged. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. We buy new licenses, and we just add another ESX or VM. We manually install it, and then we are good to go. It is pretty easy.

How are customer service and support?

We have not contacted support yet. So far, so good. Everything is working as planned.

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

I tried VMware replication, but it was too hectic with all the scripts, so I gave it up. 

How was the initial setup?

We implemented it recently. There was the ease of implementation. It was easy and straightforward. 

In manufacturing, we have to make sure that everything is on-prem. The data has to be on-prem because all the tools write immediately to the servers. There are two types of manufacturing. For the type of manufacturing where your tools are constantly writing, cloud applications are not good. For example, when we scan wafers, there is a set of data, and when we go through another tool, there is another set of data. This has to be instantaneous. There is nothing called a cache or buffer on those tools. It has to be instantaneous. We cannot say that the cloud is down, and we lost the data. We cannot stop the tool because this is a manufacturing facility with 24-hour operations on 365 days. We cannot have any downtime where the full site has gone down because this site is used for central applications.

What about the implementation team?

I am the one who implemented it. Overall, there were just two people involved from our side. There was me and one more person. Because it was a new product, we also had a representative from Zerto as a standby. He would just watch our screen while we were implementing it. When we got stuck somewhere, he would help us. Because this was a DR site and it was a little far off, we wanted to make sure that everything went smoothly.

In terms of maintenance, so far, it did not require any maintenance from our side.

What was our ROI?

Having a solution like this is similar to having insurance. When you have a car accident, that is when you know the value of your insurance. Similarly, you cannot put a definite value on a solution like this till something happens, but there is peace of mind in knowing that the software is there, the VMs are there, and we can test it anytime. That is the true value.

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

It is economical as compared to other brands. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are an HPE shop. Zerto was procured by HPE, and we were looking for a DR solution. We went for Zerto because of its simplicity and ease of installation. We did an on-site proof of concept of Zerto for a year. We liked it and purchased it.

The only other product that we looked at was the VMware one because of the orchestrator. We did not look at any other products. I know that Veeam also has the same features that Zerto has. We had some discussions, but we never looked into it. Once we had a product that was easy to install, we did not feel the need to compare. It was doing what we wanted it to do.

Another factor for going for Zerto was that its price was economical. My boss, who is the CTO, liked its licensing scheme. It was much more economical as compared to VMware, and that is why we went ahead with Zerto.

What other advice do I have?

Before implementing this solution, in terms of preparation for disaster recovery, you have to identify the business applications that are critical to your environment. You have to scope that out and make sure you have your VMs accounted for because licensing depends on the number of VMs. With a product like Zerto, you have to know the number of VMs and the size of data you are going to sync. These are the two factors that you have to look into for disaster recovery. 

Zerto is way better than other products. Installation is done with the click of a button. Everything happens in the background. You do not have to worry about it. As a product, we have not had any issues so far. However, we have not yet done a full-fledged disaster recovery. We have done minor testing, and we want to do major testing. As of now, I am very happy with the product. It does not need any further modifications. It is simple. It is nice. It is easy to execute, so I would keep it that way.

We have not yet used Zerto for immutable data copies. I have been playing around to migrate a VM and see how it works. So far, we have only used it to sync up the SAP side. Our SAP stuff is already synced up, and we have done some testing of it, but we have not done any disaster recovery.  

I have not had a chance to assess Zerto for blocking unknown threats and attacks. We are mainly interested in using it for disaster recovery.

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

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.
PeerSpot user
Director IT at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Continuous replication gives us more checkpoints, improving our RPOs
Pros and Cons
  • "The ease of use is one of the most valuable features when it comes to making changes and configuring. It's very easy to set up and configure. It's a great product."
  • "They just came out with improvements for ransomware protection last week. I haven't used them yet but, overall, security and preventing ransomware is really a hot topic these days. I would like to see it detect when the ransomware occurs and provide more information on it."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for disaster recovery. We were looking for faster recovery time objectives. Our primary use case is protecting virtual machines in our environment.

How has it helped my organization?

It's improved our testing frequency, and that has definitely helped.

And the effect on our RPOs has been very good because of the continuous replication; you get more checkpoints. Compared to other disaster recovery solutions that we've used, it's much more efficient when it comes to recovery. It's much more resilient and provides a better experience. It's a better product than the traditional backup and recovery methods we were using.

Zerto has also helped reduce downtime in some situations. We can recover systems in minutes, versus hours. There has been a significant improvement in our RTOs.

It has also definitely helped us to reduce our DR testing on the order of hours and days.

What is most valuable?

The ease of use is one of the most valuable features when it comes to making changes and configuring. It's very easy to set up and configure. It's a great product.

Another very important feature, because I work in a very high-transaction environment, is the near-synchronous replication, and it works well.

What needs improvement?

They just came out with improvements for ransomware protection last week. I haven't used them yet but, overall, security and preventing ransomware is really a hot topic these days. I would like to see it detect when the ransomware occurs and provide more information on it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. I plan to increase our usage of the solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted their tech support.

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

We were using typical backup recovery from tape or disk. Zerto is far easier to use, simpler, more efficient and reliable, and more effective than traditional disaster recovery tools.

It has not replaced all of our backup solutions. It's another tool to prevent a disaster.

How was the initial setup?

Our deployment is on a private cloud. We have compute, storage, and network that we replicate to. The initial deployment of Zerto was straightforward. It took less than 30 days to get it fully operational.

We used it in our test environment first and, once we validated that everything was functional, we included our production environment.

The maintenance involves keeping the versions up to date and there are agents that have to be updated as well.

What about the implementation team?

We had a managed service provider set it up and deploy it. On our side there were one or two people involved.

What was our ROI?

I can't quantify the ROI because we haven't used it in a disaster. It's more of a cost-avoidance solution, protecting the organization.

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

The pricing is very reasonable. There are no costs in addition to the standard fees.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Symantec, Veritas, CommVault, and Rubrik.

What other advice do I have?

Have clear requirements on what your RTO/RPO requirements are, and which applications will be involved. You need to have clear business requirements and align Zerto with your business continuity plan.

Zerto is very innovative and they're constantly making improvements. It took some time to realize some of the benefits but it's been a great journey.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
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.
PeerSpot user
Mansoor Hanif - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Infrastructure Engineer at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Real User
Top 10
A disaster recovery solution with RTO and RPO features that allow us to restore data with six second intervals
Pros and Cons
  • "We have had many instances where VMs were corrupted by an application owner, where they were installing something and did not create a snapshot in VMware for it. Instead of tapping into our backups, with just two clicks, we were able to restore the VM back to its original state. It helps a lot in the day-to-day running of our business."
  • "The overall management plan could improve. If something happens with the VM on the vSphere side, the error codes are pretty weak. If there was a way to click on something within the UI that takes us to a support page or article, that would be very beneficial."

What is our primary use case?

We purchased Zerto for our business continuity and DR approach to make sure that workloads are available. We have 1,000 servers but are only protecting 250 of them because they are our core servers. The ones we don't currently protect are Tier three applications.

How has it helped my organization?

We have had many instances where VMs were corrupted by an application owner, where they were installing something and did not create a snapshot in VMware for it. Instead of tapping into our backups, with just two clicks, we were able to restore the VM back to its original state. It helps a lot in the day-to-day running of our business.

In some instances, there is data within transactions that I need to recover that might be lost. When using Zerto, I might be losing five seconds worth of data instead of losing ten minutes. That helps a lot. Zerto also helped us reduce downtime and we have been able to recover VMs fairly quickly by just clicking two buttons. Within a minute I would have a VM up and running and ready to go with no issues at all.

What is most valuable?

The RTO and RPO are the most valuable features. I get six-second snapshots for every single time that data gets replicated. I can go back six seconds past whatever happened. The frequency of the snapshots depends on your latency. It could be as frequent as every two seconds.

What needs improvement?

The overall management plan could improve. If something happens with the VM on the vSphere side, the error codes are pretty weak. If there was a way to click on something within the UI that takes us to a support page or article, that would be very beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Zerto for six years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. Most of the time, the issues that we have had with our ZVM going down are caused by us. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. We deployed it in eight different locations. 

How are customer service and support?

The support could be better. Overall they do have the answers for me when I need them but it takes them some time. The Level 1 support team that I contact first when I call in could be more knowledgeable about products and be able to resolve an issue instead of having to wait for a Level 2 or Level 3 person to assist.

I rate their support an eight out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I've seen and looked into the VMware SRM. We also use another company, Cohesity, for our backups. They also have a solution for replication. When comparing these solutions, the RTO and RPO times are fairly reduced when using Zerto to get to a point where we need to be functional right away in an event of disaster recovery.

What was our ROI?

We have experienced ROI using this solution. It helps a lot when we use Zerto to test out certain applications. It offers a lot of value for our upper management to see how this product helps us in the event of a DR.

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

The pricing for this solution could be cheaper. They have two licensing tiers. When we purchased it, they didn't have a license for the cloud model. Certain things that I used to get with the basic licensing are no longer available. They are only available in the Cloud. Overall, the licensing model could be simplified. 

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others to test drive the solution themselves. They should play with it, see how it works themselves and try to break it. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

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
Tam-Nguyen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior system admin at JBS USA
Real User
Synchronizes our VMs and provides reliable backup to our hosts in different plants
Pros and Cons
  • "Zerto's near-synchronous replication is extremely important to our organization."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed the solution through a consultant.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment with Zerto.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

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