Dell Data Protection Advisor vs Zerto comparison

Dell Data Protection Advisor

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98% willing to recommend

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Zerto and Dell Data Protection Advisor serve in the data protection and disaster recovery category. Zerto has the upper hand in user satisfaction due to its features, while Dell Data Protection Advisor is favored for its broader functionality despite the higher price.

Features: Zerto users highlight its strong replication, disaster recovery capabilities, and simplicity. Dell Data Protection Advisor users value its extensive reporting tools, integration capabilities, and detailed analysis.

Room for Improvement: Zerto users need improved support, faster updates, and better customer service. Dell Data Protection Advisor users suggest better documentation, more user-friendly features, and enhanced usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zerto is noted for quick and straightforward deployment with reliable customer service. Dell Data Protection Advisor has a more complex deployment process but benefits from detailed documentation and responsive support.

Pricing and ROI: Zerto offers cost-effective pricing with a good return on investment. Dell Data Protection Advisor is more expensive but provides value through advanced features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Data Protection Advisor vs. Zerto Report (Updated: March 2025).

Dell Data Protection Advisor vs. Zerto

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Dell Data Protection Advisor

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

24th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zerto

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

299

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Data Protection Advisor is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

ErmiasGirma

System and Cloud Deployment Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Proactive support with predictive insights and seamless integration

As a system engineer, I am deploying Dell Data Protection Advisor solutions, especially in the areas of protection like Avamar, NetWorker, and Data Domain. Our team has deployed these solutions for three organizations in Africa and India Dell Data Protection Advisor provides proactive support by…

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Sachin Vinay

Assistant Manager-Networks at Amrita

Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features

Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It generates very detailed reports, which makes things easier when it comes to IT auditing."

"I can increase the tool's licensing as per my requirement with no conditions applied."

"The initial setup is very straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour. You just need one person to handle the deployment process."

"The deduplication is probably the most valuable feature of that requirement."

"The platform's most valuable features are data protection and retention."

"It supports our chargeback process by identifying resource users, which helps ensure that departments are billed accurately for data protection services rather than receiving them for free."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the compression and the duplication."

"It has a lot of stock reports. I believe over 300 canned reports, which for the most part meet a lot of generic needs."

More Dell Data Protection Advisor pros

"The feature I've found most valuable so far has been the ability to migrate the VMs from Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. It's made our migration seamless. In the beginning, we were looking at freeware tools, and it was just a massive headache. Zerto solved a lot of the roadblocks that we'd run into in the past."

"The customer service and support are very good. Every time we have problems, they're ready to help us."

"The initial setup was very straightforward and easy. We were able to start replication within minutes of the initial setup."

"Another big attraction is the near zero RPO. A lot of other products have minutes, half-hour, or an hour RPO. We have proof indicating that Zerto is near zero, or a matter of minutes, as far as the RTO is concerned. So again, that's another attractive offering where you can actually fail something over and bring that back up in a target location in a matter of minutes. Meaning very little data loss as far as recovery time. It's fantastic."

"What I like most about Zerto is that it just works at the end of the day. It is almost a set-it-and-forget-it solution in relation to its capability of keeping the DR environment in sync."

"Zerto is easy to use and the interface is very intuitive."

"I give Zerto's stability a nine out of ten."

"There are two things that are keeping us with the solution: 1. It does a very good job of keeping the data in sync at all times. 2. In the event of a failover or in the event of a contingency, we are able to retrieve the data very quickly without any issues."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"They should empower their customers with the ability to upgrade this solution as long as it's in the same major release."

"Dell Data Protection Advisor's feature for data domain protection needs enhancement."

"There is a steep learning curve to use the interface and to create new reports, this could be made easier. If the solution could provide more drag and drop functionality to build more advanced reports that would be very helpful."

"It is difficult to manage the solution with the available tools. You need to know exactly what are you are doing."

"Some minor adjustments could be made regarding the graphical interface and customization options."

"The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy."

"The solution requires more integration with our other solutions. I know that they have full integration with VMware because it is also from EMC. However, we have to have better integration with Microsoft and Nutanix as well."

"The functionality of the Data Protection Advisor is limited and is something that is lacking in this solution. Other solutions like CloudIQ and DDMC provide a much better outlook on how data protection should be done."

More Dell Data Protection Advisor cons

"The only negative I would give is that with the latest version of the appliance, setting up authentication was a bit of a challenge, but that is just a matter of using Keycloak and how things have changed."

"I would like to see some improvements with APIs going into the cloud so that they can more natively orchestrate the migration point-to-point without special hands-on configuration. Azure does some of that natively by having an agent on the VM, but Zerto could improve on its APIs into Azure or Google so that spinning up works more natively in that environment. It would make things smoother."

"One thing I would like to see in their roadmap is introducing long-term storage in the cloud such as Azure or AWS. They can make it more seamless."

"Increased granularity in how long to keep the journal would be nice."

"In newer versions, the success rate compared to older versions is quite low. I have tried to implement Zerto version ten in my environment, but for some reason, multiple errors occur, forcing me to revert to the previous version."

"While Zerto's current version supports VMware environments, I'd like the added flexibility of using Hypervisors as well."

"It has some quirks. We have quirks with appliances. Some things don't really work as expected, but it is minor."

"Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not very expensive — I think the price is fair."

"If the customer has huge lineup of Dell Products then they receive discount on the pricing."

"You need to make an upfront payment for three, five, or seven years and renew the licenses for support. We can do an annual maintenance contract with Dell. I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten."

"For pricing, I would rate Dell 2 out of 5. It's affordable."

"The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement."

"The product is affordable."

"You have to procure the license when you are ordering or quoting for Dell Data Protection Suite (DPS). DPS is bundled with the suite and comes with a license. However, if you purchase NetWorker separately then you will have to procure the license for DPS separately."

"At the time I had purchased the product, the pricing was fair and reasonable. Over the years, costs have certainly gone up, which makes it hard for healthcare companies to use the solution."

"In a world where others are catching up, e.g., VMware High Availability, there needs to be a less expensive option as well. When a customer has approximately 100 VMs, if you multiply by 40, we aren't charging a very high margin on it at all since the license is so expensive. We feel their pain. That is the most expensive part of it. The storage, CPU, and RAM are a lot less. It is the licensing that is really expensive. Whereas, with an option like VMware High Availability, it is a couple dollars per month. That is our spend that we are charged by VMware, then our margin is higher on those VMs. Giving us some ability to have higher margins, as an MSP, would be a good thing."

"The pricing is top tier but offers good value."

"While we find the twenty-five VM license somewhat inflexible, the actual setup costs are minimal as the product is so easy to install."

"I would like to see different service levels. They're good, but it still takes a lot of our budget in ops."

"Zerto is expensive but offers many features that make it competitive."

"One of Zerto's main disadvantages is its pricing structure, which involves significant upfront costs and limited options for startups with minimal initial funding."

"The pricing is a little more expensive in comparison to other tools."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user159711

Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 9, 2014

VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto

Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell Data Protection Advisor?

The platform's most valuable features are data protection and retention.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell Data Protection Advisor?

The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement.

What needs improvement with Dell Data Protection Advisor?

The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy. Additionally, enhancing bulk update capabilities for items like cost centers would be...

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?

Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...

What do you like most about Zerto?

Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?

Zerto is definitely more costly compared to its competitors, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager. It may not be suitable for small and medium-sized industries.

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Data Protection Advisor

Comparisons

Compared 27% of the time

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell Data Protection Advisor

Compared 20% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs Dell Data Protection Advisor

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Data Protection Advisor

Compared 14% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell Data Protection Advisor

Compared 12% of the time

More Dell Data Protection Advisor Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 13% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

More Zerto Competitors

Product Reports

Dell Data Protection Advisor

Download Dell Data Protection Advisor product report

Download Zerto product report

Also Known As

DPA

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

Effectively managing your data protection environment can be labor intensive and complex. It requires knowledge of backup applications, replication technologies, and the entire supporting infrastructure, yet it is critical in keeping your data secure.

With Dell Data Protection Advisor, you can automate and centralize the collection, monitoring and reporting of this data and get a single, comprehensive view of your environment, no matter where your data resides. This includes monitoring data on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

With clear visibility, you can gain actionable insight and effectively manage service levels while reducing costs and complexity. You can also collect and report on that data to help other stakeholders make the best decisions for your organization.

Data Protection Advisor is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite.

Dell Technologies

Zerto is used for disaster recovery, business continuity, data migration, and ransomware recovery, providing continuous data protection and near real-time replication. Valued for ease of use, efficient failover processes, and versatile integration, it enhances organizational efficiency, reduces errors, and boosts productivity.

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Trek Bicycle, Cal-Israel Credit Cards

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies

Dell Data Protection Advisor vs. Zerto