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HPE Zerto Software vs Oracle Data Guard comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 11, 2025

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

HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
341
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
Oracle Data Guard
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 3.2%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Data Guard is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Azhagupandi Parthiban - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers near-real-time replication for data consistency and continuously introducing new features through upgrades
There are various advantages. First of all, easy to deploy. The only difficult part is the cost factor, licensing. In other ways, the implementation is very, very important. Like, we have not encountered any major challenges with replication. We were able to achieve near-real-time replication. Also, with the switchover failover, we were not getting any technical issues. It's a pretty stable product. Once you configure it, it goes through the rollback, and then Data Guard introduces this snapshot thing. So once the restoration happens, we can go back to the original thing, and we make that a standard. It's a pretty decent and key function for Oracle. So, enterprise organizations go for Oracle only for features like these.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would give it an eight out of 10, if not a nine out of 10, when it comes to ease of use."
"The ease of use and simplicity in moving things without having to do a cross-v set of V-motions has been most valuable. It saves time and effort and it eliminates mistakes."
"The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario."
"Zerto is an excellent solution for cloud-based environments, but for DIY clients who have another site to recover their systems it also works well."
"The feature of the HPE Zerto Software I appreciate the most is the ease of use of single file restores, which is something we use frequently."
"It enables protection of a virtual workload to be done by the app, whether single or multi-tiered, with a boot time scheduler. It is pretty awesome."
"It's easy to use. We don't need formal training."
"The most valuable feature of Zerto is the quick recovery time."
"Another valuable feature is the possibility of backing up the database from the standby database instead of the primary database, to avoid backup process overhead in the primary system."
"You can see how the logs are applied, check the apply time, and how far behind the standby is at any given time."
"One of the most valuable features is real-time replication. The version we're using is reliable and easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature is the application or promotional code used in the production protocol to transfer data to the secondary database, situated on the DR site."
"Technical support is very good. If at any time we write a ticket, we get the appropriate answer on time."
"The solution is quite stable. We haven't experienced any bugs, glitches, or crashes. We find it to be quite reliable."
"The solution can scale as needed."
"Oracle Data Guard is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"More user support would be best for me because I'm not in the product all the time. So, having strong support is probably the most important decision on any products that we buy."
"We have had some issues with trying to get certain parts of the backup or restore functionality to work."
"While Zerto's current version supports VMware environments, I'd like the added flexibility of using Hypervisors as well."
"I am very pleased with it as is, but the ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially."
"The only thing I really don't like about Zerto is that the ZVM has to be a Windows server. I can spin up any OBA template whenever I want to, but if it has an OS that's tied to it, then I have to involve the OS team from my company. That drives me crazy."
"A slight disadvantage of Zerto is that it requires the Windows Server operating system as the base OS. Over time, I would like to see more offerings in that regard. There should be more deployment options other than just the Windows operating system."
"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."
"I would like to see different reporting options than what is currently available."
"It is a rather complex solution, so it could be more user-friendly."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The usage of block storage devices in the cloud or migration of a type of storage from one site to another site can be improved. Currently, we have to use multi-node to single node because of the lack of storage support on the Azure side. It did not really work. Our DBA had to spend a lot of time tweaking the Data Guard tools, or the underlying Oracle VMs, to make sure that Data Guard would run on top of different types of storage. So, if it can support transporting or getting from one type of storage to another type of storage in a different site or a different technology, it would be very helpful."
"The only difficult part is the cost factor, licensing. Another area of improvement is support."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high. They should do what they can to bring it down so that it is more reasonable for customers like us."
"The product could improve its pricing."
"The predominant issue lies in the communication link between the secondary and primary databases."
"A significant improvement for Oracle Data Guard would be enabling the disaster recovery site to handle read and write operations, not just data storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good. It's affordable."
"Its price is reasonable. I have not worked with other tools, but as compared to its competitors such as VMware, its price is lower. So, in my opinion, its price is good."
"I am not very involved with the pricing, but from my understanding, it is fairly expensive for us. This is why we limit its use to our tier-one customers. We have other disaster recovery solutions for our other customers due to the cost."
"It is not the cheapest product; it is not the most expensive product, but it works. It is a mid-range product, and it is justified in terms of being pretty quick and easy."
"It is less expensive than the full solution that we had previously, but at the same time, it's not an inexpensive product either."
"The pricing seems really good. We're an enterprise customer, so we get all the bells and whistles."
"I would like to see different service levels. They're good, but it still takes a lot of our budget in ops."
"It's a little bit expensive."
"The cost of the Oracle license will depend on the negotiations with Oracle."
"The licensing cost is significantly high."
"If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
"The cost is expensive."
"It is not a cheap product, but if you look at the price, features, availability, scalability, and maturity, it is a very good product."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"​Oracle Data Guard is a feature available only in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and is available for extra cost."
"This is the best solution if you want something similar that's less expensive than Oracle Grid."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I think on the pricing side, I don't generally deal with it, but from what I hear from my finance team, it's somewhat on the higher...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs. I strongly recommend Data Guard. I've been using it for eight years and I would strongly recommend it. I'd rate Oracle Data Guard a se...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
We're Oracle partners. We've worked with databases 11G and 12C. If a company is planning to implement Oracle solutions, I would suggest they also implement Data Guard. I'd rate the solution nine ou...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
This solution is for small to medium-sized businesses, who can't afford to have two data centers or two servers. Oracle Data Guard has many features to ensure that the database is in place. In case...
 

Also Known As

Zerto Virtual Replication
Active Data Guard
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Athenahealth, Discover Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Zerto Software vs. Oracle Data Guard and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.