HPE Zerto Software Reviews

Our primary use cases are for disaster recovery, data center movement, long-term recovery, and backup recovery.

Zerto took our disaster recovery practice from sixteen hours down to thirty minutes. 

The most valuable feature is the fully automated failover. The orchestration made the failover very easy for anyone who wasn't necessarily technically knowledgeable to be able to failover a machine.

I love Zerto's near-synchronous replication. I've been using Zerto for three years at my current employer and many years before that. It's been great. Anywhere I've used it, it's made the failover process a lot easier so that pretty much anybody can do it. This feature is our number one priority because we can keep our critical apps running if we have a failure, or even if we have a misconfiguration, it's very easy to recover something quickly.

We've moved some of our workloads to the cloud and back from the cloud using Zerto. The native tools provided by the cloud provider were not as seamless. Having DR in the cloud is very important to us because we trust that the cloud provider will provide a solution, but we also want to make sure that for our business purposes, we have a backup to disaster recoveries so that we're able to recover somewhere else if necessary.

We use Zerto to support DR on the AWS platform. We go between two different clouds. We go from VMware to Azure and also AWS.

Zerto made this quite seamless, especially going between two different clouds. It's just a matter of a couple of clicks. You don't need to understand what's happening on the back end.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It took our RPO from around four hours and now it could be seconds. We can recover the machine in under a minute as far as the boot time. We're between five and ten seconds RPO.

The magnitude of Zerto is much faster. We used to do a disaster recovery failover of our critical systems. It took about sixteen hours and once we had implemented Zerto, it took around thirty minutes to do for the same exact systems.

I would like for them to support additional hypervisor options. They support VMware but if they supported Hyper-V or Nutanix, it would be beneficial.

We have been using Zerto for three years. 

It's been great. We've had it for three years. The only time we reboot the machines is for normal patches. We don't have to do anything else. It just works. We don't have to think about it. We've never had any issues over the three years we've been running.

We started Zerto with a small footprint. We only did a few VMs as a POC with two nodes on each side. Then we've grown it to 34 nodes on each side, including the cloud. It's always the same amount of resources. We're running 150 protected VMs in there. It runs really well. 

The few times we've had to use customer service, it's never been for anything that was really broken. It's more informational or because we didn't understand how the product works. They've been great with communication, they get back to us, and even if they don't get an answer right away in one day, they'll let us know with the ticket updates that they're still working on it. 

It's been really good as far as the little interaction we've had. The one nice thing is that we've never had to use it for anything that's been broken or that it's not working.

They have great communication. They don't just send you links to KB articles. 

We looked at other solutions before we purchased Zerto. We did a bake-off with a couple of other solutions. Zerto blew everything else away. The functionality is the same as everybody else, but the amount of time it takes to implement Zerto is a lot quicker. 

Making changes if you want to add another machine or another workload takes virtually seconds, whereas we found other systems took a planning time and could take hours to get implemented correctly.

The setup was great. We had one of our newest engineers run through it because as part of the POC, the salesperson showed us how to install it. It was very straightforward. We took somebody who knew nothing about Zerto, had them install it and they had it installed and running in about fifteen minutes. It is quite easy to use. 

I can't say it's the same for SRM. There's a lot of documentation, whereas, with Zerto you point to the button, you push, and it works. 

We did the full installation ourselves.

We got the recovery time from sixteen hours to thirty minutes. Prior, when it took sixteen hours, there would be about ten or more people who were waiting for systems to come online to be able to test. 

With Zerto, within an hour, we get the systems up, and then it's thirty minutes to test. Everybody can go home. There's a lot less time for people to be available. Zerto makes it much easier and quicker to get completed.

The licensing model per VM is great. It's a good way to license it because you want to protect only the devices that you're looking to protect. As far as getting the licensing and working with the sales team, they're very responsive. There's a lot of great communication, it's good all around.

We looked at VMware SRM. We also looked at a manual process. We chose Zerto for the simplicity and the cost ratio was phenomenal. It's easy enough that we've had nontechnical people able to failover just by clicking a button. 

For Zerto, you add the VM in the VPG or workload, point it to the target, pick where you want it to land, hit go, and it's done. With SRM, in comparison, you'd have to make sure it's being replicated between the two SANs. You have to go to a different UI, configure all of it, make sure that's working, then go into SRM and configure all the orchestration parts. It takes a lot more planning. You really have to make sure that all the different systems work together, whereas Zerto takes care of all that for you.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten, there is some room for improvement. The drawback for me is that it's not compatible with every single hypervisor. If we wanted to go with another vendor for a hypervisor locally, then we'd have to look for a different solution, and there's nothing really out there that is comparable to what Zerto can do.

I use the Zerto in my company for all of our applications built on it. There are around 1,600 applications.

Zerto has enabled us to move and replicate systems much faster than we ever had before. We could move entire data centers in six months versus what would have taken three years.

The solution's most valuable features are its user interface, ease of implementation, and ease of execution.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication works. I work in the healthcare industry, where systems have to be up and working and are mission-critical, and Zerto is a part of that journey.

I have used Zerto to help protect VMs in your environment.

Zerto is an effective tool for bringing systems back at a pace. The limiting factor in Zerto is sometimes the application, but it has certainly allowed us to deliver more streamlined SLAs to our business.

In terms of comparing the speed of recovery of Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions that I have used, I can say that my company moved from an old Commvault-based solution to a Zerto-based solution since the latter was far superior to the former.

Based on my usage or evaluations of other solutions, I would compare the ease of use Zerto provides with a product named Commvault. Compared to Commvault, Zerto is faster and more cost-effective.

Zerto can reduce its price.

In the future, the tool's user interface needs to be refreshed since it seems to be becoming somewhat antiquated.

I have been using Zerto since 2017.

The tool has been 100 percent stable for our company. In reality, the tool has been up since 2017.

I have not seen any problems with the product's scalability, especially since we run 1,600 applications with it. There don't seem to be any problems with scaling up.

The solution's technical support is excellent. The tool's technical support team is responsive, easy to get a hold of, and kind, and the team also listens. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten. For me, to rate the support team ten out of ten, in a perfect world, there are more SLAs at fixed times.

Positive

I have used Commvault. My company chose Zerto because it was modern and easy to implement, and the demonstrations we saw indicated that it should be part of our organization's future.

The product's ease of setup made things straightforward, especially with good customer support, and backup when trying to get it all implemented.

My company uses the hybrid cloud services offered by GCP but hasn't added Zerto to it. My company also uses AWS and Microsoft Azure, but we haven't added Zerto to it.

For the setup phase, my company bought some professional services because, obviously, my team hadn't had training, but now they are trained. My company bought some professional services, and my team got some hands-on training, so we now run the system in-house. I believe that Zerto's team should receive more training about the tool. I rate my experience with the tool's system integrator, WWT, as seven out of ten.

It offers more cost-avoidance than the return on investment, although the return on investment is possible to a certain extent.

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.

I believe that Zerto's team should have more training.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use Zerto for the disaster recovery capabilities that it provides us. It is for our Tier 1 applications. 

Zerto allows us to protect individual VMs. With the other solutions, we are protecting the storage that the VMs live on, which is costly, so Zerto does save us money.

Zerto has near-synchronous replication. It works very well. Our RPO or recovery point objective time was 20 minutes, and we were doing thousands of VMs. We not only met the RPO; we exceeded it. There were many times when it was just seconds behind.

We have used Zerto to help protect thousands of VMs in our environment. Zerto has had a good effect on our RPO. It has helped to exceed our RPO. Our RPO on some of our critical systems is 20 minutes, and we exceed that. Most of the time, we are under 2 to 3 minutes.

It is very easy to migrate data. We ended up migrating from one data center to another data center, and we moved 20,000 virtual machines with Zerto. It was great.

Zerto lowered our RTOs as well. As a part of the solution analysis that we did for the RPO and RTO, Zerto's interface to do a DR test or a DR recovery was the fastest. We had a 24-hour window to recover 5,000 virtual machines, and we were doing them in three to four hours.

Zerto has helped us to reduce downtime multiple times. We had one incident where we used it to do a recovery. The downtime was roughly about 20 minutes. We do not have a value on that because it is customers' health information. I do not know how it affected the end users or customers outside of our company, but it does affect them.

Zerto has saved us time. When files were deleted, we were able to recover the files quickly. While doing OS patching on the servers, when the servers failed on the reboot, we were able to recover all good things when it came to quick recovery on it. As opposed to pulling it from our backup, it has cut our time probably in three quarters.

Zerto has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. A DR test or a recovery used to take us days, whereas now, it takes us hours. The system that we were using before took multiple engineers to do the DR test, whereas today, a single engineer can do the DR test, and then we need just a couple of engineers to do checks on it, so it saves us a lot.

Zerto has reduced the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. Instead of a group of people, we now just need one.

We used Zerto for immutable data copies. It was good, and they were on a course, but they shifted their focus. They were doing DR specifically, and then Zerto started shifting over towards doing backups. We were very excited about their long-term backups, but when HPE bought them, HPE stopped that part of it because they were directly competing against their solution. At the time they were doing it, we were very excited about it.

The DR testing capabilities that it has are valuable. 

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 feature is great.

While going in, we were looking at the backup tool so that we had a DR tool and a backup tool, but they stopped developing their backup solution built into it. That was a bummer for us, so now, we have a DR solution, and we have a backup solution.

For the actual application itself, we have put in our request for certain features, and so far, they seem to be adding those features. In their latest one going to version 10, they did an appliance, which we had asked about 6 years ago. It is great to see that they are doing an appliance. There would be even more savings for us now because we do not have to pay licensing for a Windows VM.

I have been using Zerto for about 7 years. I have used Zerto a few times at different companies.

We have seen very few issues. It is one of the few solutions that actually runs. If you do your leg work and implement it right and go through all the design and other things, you do not have to babysit the solution. Care and feeding is what it amounts to. That is all you have to do, whereas with a lot of the other solutions, you have to babysit them.

Its scalability is very good. It scales very easily.

They could do better in regards to escalating an issue. I would rate them an 8 out of 10. In defense of support, I know it is hard because they are talking to somebody who has got 28 years of IT support. When I get on the call, I am probably dealing with someone who is just starting out. He has to go through his standard process. However, somebody like me is looking for faster support and would like to get to a real smart guy quicker.

Positive

For disaster recovery, we were using VMware Site Recovery Manager, and it was not able to provide the recovery, the RTO, or the RPO that the company required. I went out and did a discovery for different DR solutions, and that is where I came across Zerto. Zerto replaced VMware Site Recovery Manager, and it saved us millions.

Our deployment model is hybrid. I was involved in the initial deployment. It was straightforward. It was a lot easier than VMware Site Recovery Manager. It took us a week to deploy it.

In terms of maintenance, other than typical patching and upgrades, it does not require any maintenance. VMware Site Recovery Manager required a lot of ongoing maintenance.

We implemented it in-house. There were just three of us involved in its implementation.

The pricing is based on virtual machines. They need to do better in regards to their tiering pricing rather than one price per VM. A lot of times we have VMs that are lower tier, such as Tier 2 or Tier 3, but we pay the same price as for Tier 1. I know they are developing this out, but it would be nice if they could provide a little better pricing in regards to their tiering protection.

We tested four different solutions, and Zerto was the only one that was able to meet our requirements. We did PoC on Zerto and two other solutions. Zerto was by far the leader when it came to disaster recovery.

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend doing a PoC on it. Deploy it in your environment and test it. Most of the problems you are going to see are due to the replication, and that is the site-to-site connection. One of the problems that I have experienced with Zerto has been related to replication, not the solution itself.

We have not used Zerto for blocking unknown threats and attacks. Thankfully, we have not had that. We do not have experience of that, thankfully.

We have used Zerto to do DR to both AWS and Azure, but the ability to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud is not something critical for us because the health insurance requirements for certification do not allow us to put our Tier 1 data in the cloud. Also, because our applications are multi-tiered where they reach out to the mainframe, Solaris, and other equipment outside of the virtual environment, it did not make sense to go to the cloud with it, but we do have it. We have a development environment there. A lot of times, we will use it to refresh the development environment. So, it is important, but in our case, it is not critical for us. 

We have not had any issues utilizing Zerto to support DR on AWS, but AWS is on the slower side. The reason is that for the connection to AWS, even though it is a direct connection, the speed does vary for us.

I would rate Zerto a 10 out of 10.

In my previous company, I used it for disaster recovery. We protected our critical workloads in another data center where we would replicate our primary workloads.

In my current company, we're in the middle of a data center consolidation project and we're using Zerto in two ways. First, we're migrating the workloads we had in one data center to another, about 250 servers. It took us about three months to complete the migration. We had to schedule all of our moves and work with the business to validate that the services were fine and accessible, once they were moved to the other data center. We've completed the migration and a data center has been shut down, and we're working on building disaster recovery for our primary workloads in Azure.

The main benefit is that we are centralizing our disaster recovery solution. Before, we were doing replication for some services and RecoverPoint for other services. We had a mix of tools for disaster recovery and we're trying to simplify that process with a product we can use for both. We're even contemplating using Zerto for backups as well, because we use other tools for that. But the main focus is having a specific tool, Zerto, that we can use to achieve our disaster recovery goals for on-prem services.

We also have a big push to move our DR solutions into Azure as a result of a decision from our upper levels to use Azure as our primary solution for building applications. That has allowed us to reduce costs and consolidate from three data centers to one, with our disaster recovery solution in Azure. Our focus on one tool has made it simple. We're still working through that process. Whereas the failover solutions in Azure are somewhat the same as any other data center, building out the rules and requirements for firewalls is a little more complex. We have some third-party vendors that are helping us design and build out our security into Azure.

Near-synchronous replication is one of the benefits of Zerto that drove us to choose it over some others. With typical backup and recovery, your recovery point can be 24 hours. With the near-synchronous replication, our recovery point objectives are in the seconds. That's one of the major benefits of Zerto. We don't have to run incremental backups every half hour or 15 minutes. And the recovery time is fairly quick as well. It's essentially just a shutdown and reboot of a VM.

Near-synchronous replication is incredibly important for us because we have transactional applications that work on financial and transactional databases. The fewer the number of transactions that are potentially lost, the better it is for our organization. It means we don't have to go through rebuilding those transactions. It limits the amount of data that we could possibly lose in a disaster recovery situation, amounting to just a few seconds' worth.

The near-synchronous replication with Zerto has enabled us to reduce our RPOs to two seconds instead of hours and, sometimes, days.

And Zerto really improves RTOs for moving applications. You're not waiting for restores to happen. In some cases, if you have large amounts of data on the order of hundreds of terabytes, it could literally take you a week to recover certain applications, especially if you're pulling the data down from Azure or offsite storage. Zerto greatly improves the amount of time that it takes to recover. And you don't have to do one at a time. You can move over a large chunk of servers at once and get those recoveries running and mounting in your disaster recovery environment. It's a lot quicker than running a restore from a restore product.

In addition, the solution reduces the amount of downtime we have in applications during migration. We had a large number of servers, including some critical production applications. But we didn't have to find windows where we could have those systems interrupted for a short period of time. A few minutes of downtime, compared to having the application down for hours, helped move our migration project along. We moved about 250 servers in a three-month period, and we didn't have any issues with any of the applications related to data or the like. We had two instances where there was an issue related to licensing but they were our only issues when moving these applications.

The auto-connect feature is valuable because we can set the amount of time that we delay before committing a move from one location to another, giving application teams time to validate that the move went well and everything is working before we commit those changes. That gives us the ability to roll back to the same point we were at before we shut things down, if needed. 

Another nice aspect of the product is the non-intrusive failover of the application, similar to an actual disaster recovery test without impacting the services that are currently online. We can failover to an isolated environment and validate the application without impacting the production environment. We can do more testing in a non-impactful way using isolated testing. And once or twice a year, we'll do a live test that is more like what would happen if we lost a data center.

Zerto is also a very easy product to use. Although I've used it before in other environments, we introduced it to some engineers on our team and, after a couple of hours of training to go through the product, it's fairly intuitive. It's not something that takes a five-day training course to understand. You just drive through the checkboxes to build a protection group and that's pretty easy to do. You don't really have to understand coding or the like. It's GUI-driven, so it's fairly easy for an engineer to create protection groups.

You can use Zerto as a backup product, but in the discussions that I have had with them about the product, they don't really sell or talk about that feature as much. So I would be interested in improvements related to using it as a backup. If I could consolidate and use Zerto for disaster recovery as well as everyday backup and restore for situations where I need to recover something, that would be helpful. It has some of that functionality, but it's not something they promote a lot. They should point out the benefits of using Zerto as a backup and recovery product instead of just a DR product.

With Cohesity, we keep a limited amount of backups, about 14 days. That way, we can recover an individual server within the same site or we can restore data or databases that we need, in a non-DR way. We use it for typical day-to-day backup and restore. If we could use Zerto in a similar fashion for everyday backup and recovery scenarios, that would be another area where we could consolidate into a single application.

At my old company, I used it for several years, and at the company I'm now at we've been using it for about a year.

It has been rock-solid. I haven't had any issues with any of the builds or the virtual managers. It just runs.

It's really scalable. You can create as many protection groups as you need, and a lot more than we have in our environment. 

We do have some sites that are very low-bandwidth sites. Zerto is able to set throttling in the solution, but the throttling is set at a site-wide level. In those instances that have very low bandwidth, I can't reduce the throttling on that site. It would be nice if there were a way to control the throttling by the protection group for a specific workload.

Our experience with their tech support has been good. I have never called them with an issue that they couldn't resolve fairly quickly. 

I did call them a few times on some migrations that we were doing off-hours where certain aspects of the migration didn't work, particularly on the reverse protection. I always got a callback within 30 minutes and most of the time it was quicker. The support has always been great.

Positive

One of the main issues was handling large data migrations. It wasn't feasible to do a big-bang move where we could move everything at one time, so we needed to schedule moves. We were able to at least replicate the information and work through a schedule for the migrations quickly. One of the major things we were trying to adjust was having to schedule the migrations and working with the team to validate that everything was functional. We were also looking to minimize the amount of time that that service would be offline during migration.

In addition, we use a combination of tools. We were doing replication with RecoverPoint, and straight backup and restore with Cohesity. While we still use Cohesity, we did get rid of RecoverPoint and we don't use VMware Site Recovery Manager because we're not recovering from VMware to VMware anymore. Cohesity does certain things and Zerto does certain things very well.

The implementation of the migration was very straightforward. The implementation of disaster recovery into Azure was a little more complex. In part, that was because of the way our company built our Azure subscription and the rules we have in place for installation and dividing things and networks within Azure. 

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

We did it in-house, but we did have a Zerto engineer run through the installation into Azure with us because we did run into some issues related to permissions in Azure and some of the custom roles that are defined. We also worked with an engineer from Azure to help us, mainly around the identity portion in Azure.

On our side, it was just me and one of our other engineers involved.

We have seen ROI on the migration project which didn't require a whole bunch of people involved. We rotated two people who were able to facilitate the migrations when we scheduled them in the evenings. Sometimes, we would do up to six or seven migrations in an evening. 

The main thing that held us up a little in that project was the validation process required by the business. If we had been able to just run through it, we probably would have completed it a lot more quickly.

Still, we didn't require a lot of resources to do it. It was just one engineer to handle a migration and the applications teams to validate. We didn't have to go outside the company to hire services to help us with the migration. That was helpful from a cost perspective.

Pricing is one area where there could be 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. Or it could be a model based on the amount of storage space you're protecting.

Others in our organization have raised the issue of how it's licensed, where you need one for every VM you're protecting.

We looked at RecoverPoint and Site Recovery Manager in VMware, but they just didn't fit the type of scenario that we were looking to set up with replication and recovery into Azure. We couldn't really find too many tools that were doing it in a way that was not too intrusive. There are ways you can migrate things into Azure and run them, but there's a technical process that you have to go through to make it happen. 

We were looking for a solution where we wouldn't have to flip all the switches for Azure. We wanted something straightforward that was much simpler to use. Zerto was really the only tool that we could find to do it. Others that we looked at briefly just didn't do what we wanted to do, so we didn't spend too much time on them.

Recovery with Zerto is a little more straightforward compared to other solutions, and the amount of time it takes is fairly short. You can recover with Cohesity fairly quickly, but there are a bunch of other things that you need to do, depending on how the recovery is done. If you're mounting a new virtual machine from a snapshot, which would give you a fairly quick recovery, you would still have to re-synchronize that data to keep it as a replication, and that takes some time. 

Zerto is just a more straightforward solution. You're getting pretty much the same server restored in under a minute, which is the time it takes to reboot, sync, and bring it back online. Other tasks you have to do, when bringing something up in another data center, like re-IP the machine, can be automated in the Zerto replication. It makes things easier.

My advice is to look at what you're trying to accomplish. If you're looking for a migration tool, this is a great migration tool that will help you move workloads between data centers. It's agnostic as to whether you're using VMware, Microsoft, or Azure.

And you have to look at whether you're moving a large amount of data or a large number of servers. Think about how much downtime your business can afford for moving those applications. If you're looking for something that can move an application with minimal downtime, this may be a solution for you. Or if you're moving large amounts of data, but you don't want to be down for the whole time you're restoring or moving, a synchronous product like this may be a solution for you.

We have built a disaster recovery landing zone in our Azure environment and we built an isolated environment so we could do non-intrusive failover tests into Azure, and still keep our production environment up and running. We've tested certain workloads failing over into Azure, including a standard Windows or Linux box, and specific things like SQL Server, Oracle, et cetera. It has been going well so far and we're at the point where we're defining our protection groups and security in Azure for all of our critical workloads.

We have not yet used the immutable data copies feature, but I was just at a conference and had some meetings with Zerto, some of the product professionals and engineers, and that is something that we are strongly looking into. That's because of the issue of cyberattacks and because even backup systems could become corrupted and then you're still in a bad situation. Putting the data into an immutable repository is something that we are definitely looking into. Especially in the industry that we are in, cybersecurity is a big issue.

We have also not used it for blocking threats and attacks. But the ability, in conjunction with immutable data and putting that into a vault, to look at the data that is being replicated in real time and scan it, would be a great benefit. We do use some of the best-in-class tools for that kind of protection, but this would just be another layer to help with that. It's an interesting feature and another tool that would add a layer to our cyber protection.

Zerto hasn't reduced the number of staff involved in backup and DR management. We have a pretty lean team. We try to cross-train our employees on the different products that we use. But Zerto did help to simplify the process because we can get people trained on it. They can assist in covering for other people in the group when they're out. The training only takes a couple of hours to go through the tutorials.

We use Zerto for data and disaster recovery replication. 

From time to time, we have to go look at the DR environment. Every time we go there, Zerto application always works. That's a benefit. 

Zerto's near-synchronous replication works. The value for our business case is okay. 

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is important for healthcare, but not as much because we have time to recover data.

Zerto helped protect VMs in our environment, just for the DR.

Our RPOs are not very aggressive. So, Zerto works just fine for us. 

It's very easy to set up. Up until now, even with an old version, it always worked fine.

There is room for improvement in the upgrades. We are planning an upgrade now, and it seems that it's not straightforward.

In future releases, I look forward to the security feature.

We have been using Zerto for more than five years.

Stability is very good. We have complaints about stability.

We haven't had issues with scalability. When we add VMs, we just buy additional licenses.

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

They're always available and very knowledgeable. 

They need to be on-site. That would make them a ten on ten. 

Positive

We have only used Zerto. 

It was very easy to deploy. There wasn't a lot of configuration needed to get the syncing working.

It is an on-premises deployment.

We used HPE Services. Our experience with them was very good. 

We have seen ROI. Several times, we needed to recover, and we were able to go to Zerto.

The pricing, setup, cost, and licensing are comparable to other solutions. Zerto is not more cost-effective.

We looked at Veeam. They're very similar. We already had the skills for Zerto, so we decided to stay with it.

We decided to stay because we have not had any problems with it, and moving to another solution doesn't make sense for us. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. The version we have doesn't have security yet, so maybe the next version will get a ten.

We plan to use Zerto for migrating our external customers from their private data centers to our data center and Zerto's application services or other cloud services.

Zerto has improved our migration capabilities. Before Zerto, we used other applications, but they had some limitations in terms of platform compatibility. With Zerto, we have platform freedom and can migrate any customer to our data center.

The migration capabilities are very good. The platform flexibility allows us to migrate customer resources and virtual machines from any platform, like Hyper-V or VMware, and it's fast and reliable.

We're in the process of a proof of concept. It's been about three or four months.

The stability is strong and reliable. 

It's scalable.

We will provide support with the help of HPE or Arlanje. We are just preparing that model.

The customer service and support are very helpful. Whenever we ask something, they respond very fast and quick. Their technical knowledge is really good.

Positive

Zerto is faster and more reliable. In the POC process, we compared it with other technologies and brands, and Zerto is very nice.

We compared it to Veeam. 

We still use our previous solution. In fact, we are not replacing that solution. We are just enriching our replication products with Zerto.

Zerto is more user-friendly.

It was easy and fast. The point is, it's really easy.

We used a consultant. The experience was very nice. They were very helpful.

It's very new for us, so we don't have that information yet.

We evaluated Acronis, Veeam, and Commvault. We chose Zerto for two reasons. 

• First, our customers want it. They always ask if we do replications with Zerto. 
• Second, we compared it with other products. 

Zerto is user-friendly, fast, and reliable. We wanted to improve our replication cycle. 

It's also platform-free. I can migrate resources from my customers' on-premises data centers, public clouds, and other cloud service providers' data centers to my data center. That's the biggest advantage for us.

Up to now, I would give it an eight out of ten. It's platform-free, which is the most important thing for us. 

It's also easy to use, fast, reliable, and the replication process is really nice.

We're using Zerto to move services between our on-premises data centers and Azure environment.

Zerto has really helped us streamline migrations to new hardware or other data centers.

We use the solution to move servers and VMs between data centers. Thankfully, we don't have to use it a lot for DR. 

I love Zerto's near-synchronous replication. It's better than other applications that we tried. This near-synchronous replication is super important to our organization because we don't want to lose any data.

We're now trying to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud with Zerto. We haven't had any real use cases, but we're piloting it. It's pretty important to our organization to have DR in the cloud because we're in a very rural area where we don't have a lot of redundancy. So, it's important to have the scalability of Azure where we don't have it.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment, which is our primary use case. Our RPOs are pretty short. We can roll over a data center in 30 to 60 minutes if we have to. It's pretty quick, and we could turn everything around.

We looked at VMware's SRM but decided not to go with it.

We chose to use Zerto because the RTOs and RPOs were a lot faster with it.

Compared to other solutions, Zerto is really easy to use, and its interface is really nice. It's really easy to set up the replication groups in Zerto.

We're struggling a little bit now with the appliance migration with version ten.

Zerto could make some small improvements with some of the newer features. You can back up VMs but can't back up individual objects, like email objects, which could be improved.

I have been using Zerto for about seven years.

The solution's stability is very good. We haven't had any stability issues with Zerto.

Zerto can go bigger than our environment, so I think it has good enough scalability.

The solution's technical support is pretty good. Since we haven't had a lot of issues with the tool, we don't really use the support much. The cases we've opened have been resolved quickly by the support team. The support team seems knowledgeable and quick.

I rate the solution's technical support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

We have Zerto deployed in our on-premises data centers and for Azure VMware and Azure native so that we can switch between them. The solution's deployment is really easy. You just deploy the main tool and then tie it into your virtual environments.

Zerto's pricing was not that bad. I think it's gone up since we went live and added the cloud options now that we are an enterprise. The solution is expensive, but it's worth the price.

We use both public and private clouds to deploy the solution.

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

I use Zerto for ransomware resilience and data recovery.

Zerto has improved my organization by allowing us to replicate individual VMs or groups of VMs. It allows flexible protection and recovery of data. It is also easy to integrate with other solutions.

It has had a positive effect on our recovery time. It is very fast.

Zerto is easy to use. As long as you have the technical know-how, it is easy to use.

The near-synchronous replication is good. It ensures data availability and fast data recovery. I love that. We use Zerto to replicate the VMs from one site to another, ensuring data availability, protection, and disaster recovery.

Zerto has had a good effect on our RPOs. There is continuous protection and availability of data because it is all automated.

It is very fast. It has had an effect on our RTOs. It has reduced our downtime by 20%.

Zerto offers a comprehensive solution for data recovery and protection. It has saved us a lot. It has saved about 30% of the time.

Zerto has a user-friendly interface and intelligent dashboard. It is easy to manage. It has saved about 40% of the time.

We have had a positive impact on our IT resiliency strategy. Continued data protection and automated DR have been very helpful.

Zerto has simplified our compliance with industry regulations.

I love the seamless data integration between on-premises and cloud environments. Fast disaster recovery is also valuable.

I also love that it provides real-time and historical analytics.

It simplified my work. It has a user-friendly interface. It is easy for me to create my views in the dashboard. It makes work easy for me.

I am enjoying it so far, and I am happy with its capabilities, but it is expensive.

Their support can be faster.

I have been using Zerto for three years.

It is stable. I have been using Zerto for three years, and my company had been using it before I joined. It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

Its scalability is good. Zerto can meet the needs of any business.

We use it in multiple departments and at multiple sites. There are ten people who use Zerto. They are strictly admins.

My experience has been positive. They are always trying to help.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten because we sometimes do not get a fast response.

Positive

I have used the Microsoft Azure solution, but I could not get the fastness, scalability, and ease of management that I wanted. I was looking for these capabilities, and that is why I went for Zerto.

Zerto is a better solution, but it is expensive. Zerto is a bit faster than other solutions. Other ones have automated disaster recovery, but Zerto is faster.

It is deployed on the cloud. Its deployment was straightforward. It took about three hours. Three people were involved in its deployment.

Like every other software, it does require some maintenance from time to time, but it is not much.

We have seen an ROI. Whatever we do, we are getting a fast result. It is always an advantage for the business. Zerto has had a positive effect. I do not have the metrics, but it has saved us a substantial amount.

It is expensive.

I would recommend Zerto to anyone who wants fast disaster recovery and protection. It has most of the features that people are looking for. 

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery. That is our main use for it.

Everybody at the top wants to be able to hear about our disaster recovery timelines. The ability to restore our Practice Management systems several states away in a matter of 45 minutes is phenomenal.

I love the near-synchronous replication of Zerto. We are based out of Alabama but we have our off-site disaster recovery in Colorado. Being able to have data very quickly over in Colorado is phenomenal.

Zerto has enabled us to do disaster recovery in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center. Having DR in the cloud is super important for our organization. That is where our business intelligence center lives. Without that data, we do not make money.

We have used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It has been a huge contributor and has made a world of difference in terms of timelines. It helps spin up our Practice Management systems in a very quick time frame.

The ease of adding additional servers is valuable. We have a portal that we can go into to add those new servers, and then outside of that, the overall time that it took for disaster recovery simulation is also good.

They are doing a lot of great things, but I have heard that Zerto is expensive.

I have been using Zerto for two years.

I would rate it nine out of ten for stability because we had one virtual machine that was not backing up properly, but we did work with support. We got phenomenal support. They helped us fix it.

I like the scalability. Because we are in the acquisition space, we wanted adaptability. As new engineers are coming in and adding more to our data center, they can go through and they can just add it to Zerto. That is a part of their process. 

They are fantastic. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We had a different platform previously, and we swapped it with Zerto about two years ago. 

We had Commvault. We were not getting consistent backups. We were not getting consistent disaster recovery. Each of our simulations did not match up, and nothing made sense.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten in terms of speed of recovery versus other solutions. 

It was super easy. We did partner with Verinext to come in and help implement it, so the swapover was instantaneous. It was super quick.

Our experience with Verinext was fantastic.

We have seen an ROI. We had an outage in our data center, and we were able to use Zerto to spin up in Colorado to be able to continue to operate, which is multi-million dollars at 450 animal hospitals.

I have heard that it is expensive, but that is not my world.

N-able was a solution we looked at, but it did not fit our needs. We had previously been using Commvault, and then we found Zerto. Our solutions partners were the ones that recommended it to us. After we saw what it was able to do, we made the swap.

If someone is considering Zerto, I would advise them to go ahead and swap to Zerto. I would share my entire experience with it with them and how it has been phenomenal for us.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten because of the recovery time.

We utilize Zerto as part of our disaster recovery toolset. We employ a multi-tiered model, catering to a select group of customers, primarily hospital clusters. These customers maintain on-premise networks with cloud-based disaster recovery. In this managed service offering, we leverage Zerto to facilitate their cloud recovery.

The replication is quick. We encountered some challenges replicating the data during the first full copy. Since we weren't using Zerto, I suspect the bandwidth requirements for replication were a bottleneck for us. However, once the initial copy was complete, the process became seamless. The recovery was near zero after the first replication. Zerto worked perfectly.

We implemented Zerto because it supports a multi-tenant model, which was a critical requirement for us. We have five tenants located on-premises across five different data centers. However, we only have a single disaster recovery site in the cloud. Zerto's solution enabled us to consolidate our disaster recovery needs. Previously, managing five separate data protection solutions for each data center and five different cloud recovery subscriptions would have been incredibly expensive. Zerto significantly reduced our costs. Additionally, Zerto provides a single-pane-of-glass dashboard, allowing us to manage our infrastructure efficiently and effectively. This comprehensive view offers full control over our applications and complete visibility into all our tenants. As an infrastructure manager, I believe these features are the most valuable contributions Zerto has made to our organization.

Zerto has helped save around 30 percent of our time.

Zerto has helped achieve significant cost savings.

In the VMS portal, we had a relatively small amount of data overall. We also had multiple tenants, each with a maximum of 20 to 30 virtual machines on-premises. These VMs weren't particularly large. As a result, recovery was quick, typically taking less than a minute. My Recovery Time Objective would be less than a minute for any VM, even for a complete migration of all on-premises VMs to the cloud.

While I wasn't privy to the details of the client's previous DR solution before implementing Zerto, our discussions revealed significant time savings with Zerto's recovery process. Compared to their prior on-premises DR approach, Zerto offers a substantial reduction in recovery time – at least 15 to 20 minutes faster. This improvement stems from eliminating the need to coordinate with personnel and the time required for on-premises recovery procedures at their dedicated DR site. Previously, they relied on manual, on-premises to on-premises recovery, which inherently took longer. However, a direct comparison between their old solution and Zerto wouldn't be entirely accurate. Zerto offers significant efficiency gains, boasting up to 200 percent improvement.

Migrating data through Zerto is straightforward with careful planning. Our first experience involved Zerto's support throughout the process. While initially challenging due to our lack of experience, we were able to navigate the initial setup. One hurdle we faced was optimizing network traffic for the initial data replication from on-premises to the cloud. However, we embraced the learning curve, documenting everything as we gained control of the environment. This ensured a smooth integration for subsequent tenants. While the first migration presented some difficulties, as is to be expected, Zerto's excellent support made the process manageable. Their responsiveness in explaining and resolving issues made it a positive experience overall.

The RPO was very close to zero, meaning there was minimal data loss between replications. However, this could be impacted by the specific database being hosted and other factors. For application servers or virtual machines replicated on-premises to the cloud, I believe there was negligible lag or delay, assuming no network issues. Bandwidth and network traffic did play a role – we observed instances of slower RPO due to traffic spikes or network events. However, with Zerto providing the recommended data bandwidth, we encountered minimal challenges. In most cases, I'd say 90 percent of the data was synchronized almost constantly. The only exception was when network issues arose.

Our data center experienced an issue, necessitating a disaster recovery procedure. Fortunately, data loss seems minimal, and the impact on our clients appears negligible. This is partly due to the managed service we provide for a tenant, who fortunately didn't perceive any significant data loss. The success of the recovery is also attributed to our user-friendly, always-in-sync system. Upon receiving alerts and notifications, we promptly informed the client, who then quickly authorized the recovery process. From our perspective, the recovery went smoothly with minimal challenges. In the actual scenario, we believe data loss was negligible. While some data loss might have occurred technically, it wasn't significant enough to cause any noticeable impact on the client. It's important to note that our monitoring team maintained complete control of the situation, allowing for swift decision-making and a speedy recovery.

In a data recovery scenario, we'll still have our database administrator, Linux administrator, storage administrator, and Zerto operator available. While Zerto can automate disaster recovery and VM restoration, it's important to remember that it's not a foolproof solution. Even though Zerto streamlines the process, a well-prepared organization will always maintain backups and ensure a dedicated team is in place for data recovery. Zerto doesn't reduce the number of personnel involved; rather, it enhances their productivity by freeing them up for other tasks during a recovery event. During a recovery, it's still recommended to have everyone on call. While Zerto handles most recoveries, there may be situations where manual intervention is necessary. By being fully prepared, our organization can effectively address any data recovery situation.

It is easy to manage and monitor the DR plans using the Zerto GUI. 

Zerto's most valuable features include its user-friendly interface, multi-tenancy capabilities, and near-zero downtime recovery. Zerto is easy to learn and use, even for those with limited technical experience. Additionally, Zerto's failover testing functionality allows us to run tests in real time without impacting production systems.

We encountered some issues during Active Directory recovery. When we implemented Active Directory, we provided feedback to Zerto regarding the challenges of recovering AD from the on-premises environment to the disaster recovery site. Unlike other virtual machines, AD recovery presents unique difficulties due to its active-active nature. It's unclear whether these challenges stem from Zerto itself or limitations within Microsoft Active Directory. However, in our experience using Zerto for AD recovery compared to other technologies, we faced data discrepancies that necessitated workarounds to bring AD online at the DR site.

Certain applications we migrated from production relied on Active Directory authentication. To ensure successful application functionality at the DR site, a functional AD environment was a prerequisite to application migration. Therefore, our initial step involved copying and guaranteeing a running AD instance on the DR side before application recovery.

However, upon attempting application authentication on the DR side, data inconsistencies prevented successful authentication. To address this, we created an isolated clone of the AD environment and conducted tests. Through trial and error, we were able to develop workarounds to resolve the issue. Notably, these challenges were specific to Active Directory; other VMs didn't exhibit similar problems.

I have been using Zerto for over 3 years.

Zerto has been very stable for us. We do apply patch releases and upgrades whenever necessary to ensure continued stability. Fortunately, we haven't encountered any major bugs or issues that would cause significant downtime, unlike what we've experienced with some other tools. Zerto has been a reliable choice for us.

I would rate the stability of Zerto 9 out of 10.

I would rate the scalability of Zerto nine out of ten.

The technical support is fantastic. They offer same-day assistance, and their documentation is clear and comprehensive.

Positive

Before implementing Zerto, the client's disaster recovery relied on an on-premises to on-premises failover strategy. Seeking a cloud-based solution, they chose Zerto to leverage its expertise in this area.

We previously used another tool for DR orchestration. While Zerto can also perform recoveries, it focuses on virtual machines and doesn't extend to the operating system or database level for starting and stopping applications within those VMs. Despite these limitations, Zerto excelled in its support. The Zerto team provided excellent assistance whenever we faced challenges, joined calls to help us troubleshoot, and offered clear timelines for resolving issues. Their documentation was also thorough. In contrast, the previous DR tool lacked comparable support and documentation. This stark difference in support quality is why we favored Zerto and ultimately removed the other tool from our project. Currently, we rely solely on Zerto for our existing tenants, and we plan to continue using it for future ones as well.

We encountered some challenges during the initial setup. Zerto offers several data replication options, I believe 2 or 3. These include copying data to our hard drive or storage box, copying it to the DSR site, and replicating it over the network. However, only network replication worked for us.

The issue might have been related to bandwidth requirements. It's possible that either Zerto itself or our network infrastructure wasn't up to par. We faced some challenges during that initial phase.

However, after the initial setup and the application of delta copying, which happens daily, we rarely experienced any replication issues. Most of the time, network glitches and fluctuations caused brief disconnections, but overall, replication ran smoothly.

We went into the Zerto deployment with a clean slate. Both team members were new to Zerto, so we were all learning as we went. This initial deployment was challenging, but it gave us valuable hands-on experience. Once we had a firm grasp of the environment, onboarding subsequent tenants became seamless. We developed a clear plan and approach, which streamlined the process for future deployments. Technically, the challenges weren't ongoing. The main hurdle was understanding how to integrate Zerto with our existing infrastructure. While that initial learning curve was steep, Zerto's excellent support helped us navigate it successfully.

The deployment time for Zerto varies depending on the complexity of your environment. More complex environments will require a longer replication process. However, on average, we can onboard a new customer within 1 month. This timeframe encompasses the entire process, from the initial planning phase to the deployment of up to 30 VMs within a tenant.

Our project involved 2 separate IT teams at 2 different locations. One team acted as the managed service provider, while the other represented the client side. The client-side team, located on-premises, provided us with essential information about their data centers. This included details on virtual machines, such as their size, quantity, and basic data collection metrics. They also helped us identify their storage requirements. Based on this information, we planned our cloud storage procurement and other necessary actions. The project team comprised approximately 10 to 15 people, including project managers, IT personnel, storage specialists, network engineers, and development experts.

I would rate Zerto 10 out of 10.

Our organization uses Zerto to manage the replication of data centers from 7 on-premises locations to the IBM cloud for our midsize clients.

Our environment consists of VMware, data storage, and a network, with Zerto deployed for disaster recovery. While VCDM and VMware are managed by our cloud provider, we maintain 5 additional technologies with a team of 8 people.

We experienced a brief on-premises outage. Fortunately, we were able to recover quickly using Zerto. The software triggered an alert, notifying our monitoring team. These features proved to be very helpful. Additionally, we were able to promptly contact our clients and explain the situation. They responded quickly and effectively, minimizing the impact on their end. Our clients were pleased with the response.

I recommend Zerto to others.