HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use it for continuous data protection on our mission-critical clinical systems. I work for a hospital. We use it to prevent ransomware, malware, or basic recovery for things like our patient data and imaging system. At one point, we used to do recovery once a day. With Zerto, our recovery objective right now is in six seconds.

We had a database failure one night at around 11 o'clock, and it had probably been about 23 hours since it had a hard backup. With Zerto, we brought it up in my DR site within ten minutes, and it controlled all of the hospital's registration features. Without that system, we can't even ingest patients into our system. So we brought up that database within ten minutes, got it back in line, and continued operations.

The live test failover is the most valuable feature because it allows me to validate that my data is protected in the event of a failure.

The near-synchronous replication Zerto provides is awesome. This feature is very important, especially because in today's age of ransomware and everything is so data-centric in a hospital, I need to be able to identify the point in time of infection and recover to the most up-to-date available point in time that I can without having to lose patient data. At one point, we used to do a 24-hour recovery. but in today's day and age, you can't lose a day's worth of data.

We use Zerto to protect our VMs in our environment. It improved our RPOs because before we had 24-hour RPO, and now I'm within ten minutes. 

Zerto's speed of recovery is fast compared to other solutions. We use Zerto and Veeam. Zerto already has the disks, which must be signed into and presented. There's a lot of rescanning involved, but Azure builds the VM, attaches the disks, and powers it up. We're leveraging RTO in under ten minutes.

The price could be improved. It's pretty expensive per server, but in the long run, it's well worth the level of protection it provides.

I have been using Zerto since 2023.

Stability is very good.

Scalability is excellent.

Support is very good.

We used Veeam, which didn't offer any CDP. We use Zerto primarily for continuous protection.

The initial setup was easy. We had a professional services engagement when we bought our first pack of licenses. They came in and worked with us. We had monthly and weekly meetings for three months to set up everything.

We do not use disaster recovery in the cloud. We have an actual on-prem DR site. We have a multisite Zerto environment that I can bring up in multiple locations, but we do primarily on-prem recovery.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten for its ease of use, functionality, and multi-tenant support with ransomware detection.

We use Zerto to replicate critical VMs between data centers. We also use it to do local replication whenever the servers do not have shared storage. We have recently used it to migrate some workloads from Azure down to our on-premises data center.

Zerto has improved our organization by simplifying everything because the storage is agnostic. We used SRM (Site Recovery Manager) from VMware, and it's very tied to the storage, and it has to be the same storage on both sides. The whole replication is at the storage level unless you use vSphere in the middle, which defeats the purpose. This is data storage, and you can use it if you can see it, which is very convenient.

We use the solution for one-to-one replication from data center one to data center two, from server one to server two, or from the cloud to on-premises.

We have used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment, and its overall effect on your RPOs has been fantastic.

The speed of recovery with Zerto is simple and amazing compared to other disaster recovery solutions.

I have previously used Site Recovery Manager.

We chose to use Zerto because of the RPO and because we wanted to eliminate the dependency on storage. Everybody on my team is familiar with the tool, and it's easy to use.

The new licensing model didn't work out for us because we used one-to-one replication. The other problem is that the Linux appliance is not available for everybody, and you must have a certain license. It's very important for us that if, at some point, those servers get compromised, or that server gets patches, I don't want to rely on Windows to protect Windows.

You want this hardened appliance to protect our critical workloads. If they can make that available from version one, it shouldn't matter what license you have. This is the best way to do it, and we are going to deprecate Windows support.

I have been using Zerto for five to six years.

Besides running it on Windows, Zerto is a stable solution.

If they need more space, they grab it. If you move the SLA or want to keep more logs or history for the DVR function, you have to check everything before making your claim.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

The solution's deployment is very easy.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I have a main data center with a few virtual machines running. I am protecting my mission-critical VMs on a disaster recovery server that I have outside of the data center. This ensures that I have protection. If something happens with my main data center at any moment, I have a copy, and that copy is at a remote and physically separated site for disaster recovery.

By implementing Zerto, I wanted to lower the RTO and RPO. Previously, the time to restore those mission-critical VMs with the traditional backup application took too long which impacted my business. That is why I decided to evaluate and then keep Zerto to protect my mission-critical VMs. It helps to lower the time to recover when something happens with one of my data centers.

Zerto is very easy to use. I did not have to attend a multi-day training. Online training is available from Zerto. It is very easy to use in my opinion as compared to other solutions.

Near-synchronous replication was the reason why I evaluated Zerto. I then decided to use Zerto because it works effectively. It is different from the other solutions in the market. Because I did not know that technology, I evaluated it, and I found out that it effectively works. That is why I decided to use it. I am a fan of Zerto.

We have a faster recovery time. I am lucky that until now, I did not have to use it in production effectively. That means that I did not lose access to my first data center, but it gave me peace of mind. I know that if something happens, at that moment, I know what to do to recover and to fail over to that second data center. There is peace of mind for sure.

We use Zerto to protect virtual machines from VMware to VMware. Our RPOs went from hours to seconds. That is a huge improvement.

Before using Zerto, I had an issue, and we had almost a day of downtime. I had to put a lot of energy and time at that moment, not being able to do my regular job. Since moving to Zerto, I never had a big downtime, but when I evaluated Zerto and ran the tests, failovers always worked. I have not had to use it in production so far because everything has stayed online until now. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Zerto has definitely helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. Previously, the procedure to do the testing took several hours, and now, it is all automated. The nice thing is that the testing is automated. It is a part of the solution itself, and it is very easy to perform.

Zerto has enhanced our IT resiliency a lot.

I do not have many regulations to follow because I am not in finance or health care, but it simplifies my work because it clearly shows me what I have, what is supported, and what is protected. Zerto definitely enhances my visibility.

There are two main things that I like. One is the fact that my recovery time is now much lower effectively. It is also very valuable that I can test it. There is a possibility to test that failover. At a regular moment in time, I can run that test and see if it effectively works when I have a major issue in the future.

I am switching to another HPE offering called HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery which is using Zerto technology in the backend but has a lower entry point. The native Zerto implementation is optimal for larger environments. My environment is rather small since I do not have hundreds of virtual machines. The initial Zerto offering was for a larger environment with more than 100 VMs. At that moment, it was not that easy to talk to HPE to get a good price. HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery uses the same technology, so it is a really good technology, but the entry point is much more interesting for me. They have lowered the number of protected VMs. That is why I am now evaluating HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery.

I have been using Zerto for two years.

It is always available. So far, I never had any issues. It is very good. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is definitely scalable, at least in my environment. I do not have the biggest environment, but based on what I saw when HPE initially presented the solution and all the new things that I see in it now, it is a very scalable solution. Why I prefer this solution compared to Veeam, for instance, is its scalability. I am convinced that the way it works with journaling makes it much more scalable than other solutions.

So far, I never had to call support because I never had issues with the platform at all. Until now, everything worked fine, and I never had to contact support. This is through HPE, and I expect the HPE support to work like before and provide the same experience for Zerto.

Positive

I am still using Veeam, but with Veeam, I was never able to go up to a few seconds of RPO. Zerto is much more scalable and flexible as compared to the Veeam solution, so I am using Zerto for the short-term retention and protection of my data, and I am still using Veeam for the mid- and long-term retention of my data.

It is for on-prem to on-prem DR. I am not using the public cloud for DR.

It took less than a day to set it up. It was very easy to deploy. In less than a day, everything was set up in two data centers.

In terms of maintenance, it is self-maintaining, so I do not have to put a lot of time into it. It is part of my testing. Every two or three months, I do a failover test, and at that time, I also check if everything is working fine and if any new updates need to be applied. When there are new updates, which do not happen that often, it is very easy to deploy the updates.

Only one person was involved in its deployment. It was just me. To set up and maintain it, there is just me. I do not need several people because it integrates with my compute and my storage. I can see my hypervisor. Technically, there is one storage person who is responsible for all this.

We are a small company. Zerto is being used by one team, but there are two physical buildings. Here on-site, we have our main data center, which is highly available with multiple servers, and on our DR site, there is just one server. It is one big server where we have copies of the mission-critical VMs that we are protecting.

It is hard to measure because I have not had a real disaster since I have been using Zerto. If I consider the time while testing the procedure, it went down from hours and days to less than an hour. I see large gains, but it is hard to say in the percentage. It is effectively much better.

I think the price is fair for what it is offering. It gives me the peace of mind that my data is protected. It is worth the cost.
It is like insurance for a car. You do not get the value until you have an accident.

I am now evaluating HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery, which is using Zerto in the backend.

I would definitely recommend Zerto. I have really low RPOs of seconds since I started using Zerto, and it works effectively. That is why I love Zerto. It does what it should be doing.

I like the tool because you can go from anywhere to anywhere. I am currently using it for on-prem to on-prem DR, but it can go from anywhere to anywhere. It shows the flexibility and the scalability of the tool. It is a no-brainer to evaluate Zerto because you can also go perfectly to the public cloud from your on-premises so that the public cloud is your DR site. I did not use it myself, but you can even use it as a migration tool for migration from an old environment to a new environment. It is a very flexible tool. That is why I was impressed with it and how HPE integrated Zerto into its portfolio. It was a smart move to do the acquisition of Zerto.

I recently started looking into the AI insights that was added in the latest version. Need to evaluate further but it looks very promising from what I can see now already.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

We use Zerto for replication.

We implemented Zerto to help with the high bandwidth required for the live application replication.

In my minimal experience with Zerto, the near synchronization replication is good.

Zerto does a good job of blocking unknown threats and attacks.

Its easy-to-use application server has helped our organization improve its bandwidth.

Zerto has made disaster recovery in the cloud much easier for us than in physical data centers.

We've seen significantly faster recovery times compared to other recovery tools we've used, like Carbonite.

Zerto makes it much easier for us to conduct and manage our DR testing.

The replication feature ensures minimal downtime during disaster scenarios.

Zerto's failback capability automatically recovered one of our live applications after it disconnected.

Zerto helps us monitor our disaster recovery.

Zerto's user-friendliness is valuable. It's easy to use.

It would be great if Zerto could automate replication more.

I have been using Zerto for four months. I joined the company when they were already using it.

I would rate the stability of Zerto ten out of ten.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I also use Carbonite but Zerto offers faster speeds.

The deployment of Zerto took a few weeks.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

We have over 300 clients using our web applications.

We rely on Zerto for data recovery and cloud migration as our primary disaster recovery solution, especially since we lack a dedicated backup data center. Zerto's ability to block ransomware attacks and facilitate rapid server recovery provides us with significant peace of mind.

This comprehensive solution extends beyond processor recovery and data center capabilities. It also encompasses application testing and on-site data protection, ensuring comprehensive coverage in the event of any incident, including ransomware attacks.

We implemented Zerto to mitigate concerns about cyberattacks and data breaches. Zerto functions as a robust multi-layered defense, safeguarding our data. Even if an attack breaches the initial layers, Zerto allows for rapid recovery, ensuring minimal downtime and continuous synchronization with the production server.

In terms of data protection, Zerto enhances business continuity by promptly reporting any encountered cyberattacks. This allows for timely notifications and, critically, prevents the disruption of running production VMs. This real-time monitoring and reporting prove invaluable in the event of threats, facilitating swift recovery efforts.

Our recovery time now is less than 30 minutes.

Zerto's CDP has had a positive impact on our overall data recovery.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication operates in near real-time, enabling data replication with minimal to no data loss.

Our repeated use of Zerto's immutable data copies has significantly enhanced our trust in our backup and recovery procedures.

Zerto provides real-time notifications and reports, which help us prevent unknown threats.

While cloud platforms offer their own security and backup features, Zerto provides an additional layer of protection for our data in the cloud.

Google Cloud Platform provides primary security for our virtual machines. Additionally, Zerto provides us with granular reports that help us focus on specific areas to ensure further protection.

While I haven't had extensive experience with other DR solutions, Zerto offers impressive recovery speeds.

The migration is not complex.

Zerto has helped reduce downtime by over 50 percent.

Zerto has sped up our recovery time by over 20 percent.

We have been able to reduce the number of employees involved in data recovery situations by five.

I like the ease of recovery and backup the most.

Disaster recovery is the most valuable for ensuring minimal downtime during a disaster scenario.

The technical support response needs improvement. They need to treat us more as a partner.

I have been using Zerto for seven months.

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

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

We contacted the support team by email and tickets during the data migration but received limited response.

Neutral

Previously, we relied on backups from GCP, AWS, and Azure. We transitioned to Zerto because it offers granular reporting capabilities, which helps us keep our managers and non-technical personnel informed.

The initial deployment took a few weeks.

The pricing is reasonable.

I would rate Zerto eight out of ten.

We have 500 people in our organization that use Zerto and it is used in multiple regions.

Zerto requires moderate maintenance, handled by a team of five.

We use our custom dashboards to manage and monitor our disaster recovery plans. These dashboards receive emails automatically, allowing us to take necessary actions as needed.

I recommend Zerto for data backup and recovery, as it also helps mitigate the impact of data corruption or deletion.

I use Zerto to store and protect my files. Whether I'm working on a project or just need to access old files, Zerto ensures everything is safe. This makes it very convenient, as I can easily access any information I need with just a single click.

Zerto is effective at blocking unknown threats and attacks. We might consider using it on the business website as well, but it's important to understand how it might impact our operations. It helps with blocking threats, which is certainly valuable. So, in terms of its effectiveness, I'd say it's close to 99% guaranteed.

Zerto has helped our organization block threats, is user-friendly, is effective in storage, and inspires users.

Zerto's Cloud disaster recovery is impressive, and recovering most of our data can be relatively straightforward. However, it requires careful planning and understanding. Navigating the recovery site is crucial, so ensure we read and comprehend the instructions thoroughly before clicking anything. This way, we'll know which box to choose and where to click to achieve our desired outcome.

It is easy to migrate data using Zerto.

It helps reduce downtime.

It has helped reduce our disaster recovery time. Before Zerto, we needed ten people for disaster recovery and now with Zerto, we are down to three. 

Zerto is truly inspiring. Sometimes, when I provide information and receive it back, it can be remarkably refreshing and motivate me to get the most out of it. There might be instances where I initially think something isn't applicable, but then I try it out and say "wow" as I realize I am getting something positive from it. it becomes quite inspiring and brings out my best creative potential. Witnessing these features makes me naturally want to explore and create more.

The performance was generally good, but occasional lag disrupted the flow, leaving room for improvement.

I have been using Zerto for four months.

While Zerto is stable, it can sometimes be slow to retrieve the data we need.

Zerto is scalable.

We used to complete tasks manually, which consumed a lot of manpower, before adopting Zerto.

Zerto is affordable.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

No matter what we choose to do, there will always be potential positives and negatives. When aiming for the best outcome, focus on visualizing success and avoid dwelling on negativity. However, even while striving for the positive, acknowledge that occasional setbacks like technology issues or unexpected problems might occur. Don't get discouraged in the present; trust that Zerto will ultimately lead to something beneficial and fulfilling.

It was a pilot. We did a bake-off between Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. It was to fail over 130 Oracle databases.

We wanted to handle disaster recovery for our data center. Zerto was mainly a failover product. We did not use any security layering.

When we tested it, it had more functions than what we used it for, but it was a very good BCDR product. We liked the reliability and availability.

Zerto enables you to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud, but we did not use that feature. We used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It was strong in that aspect. I would rate it an eight out of ten there.

Zerto's speed of recovery was comparable. There was no synchronous and asynchronous replication. If I had to give it a number, it would be a seven out of ten. It was the same as others. There was not much difference.

It was easy to migrate data. There was some initial configuration in syncing, but it was easy. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of the ease of migration.

Zerto’s ability to keep our users collaborating with one another during a data migration was good. I would rate it a seven out of ten in this aspect as well as in terms of its impact on RTOs.

Zerto helps reduce downtime in any situation. We can bring up a database in minutes. It probably takes five minutes for the final sync. The cost of downtime depends on the database. It may be 50,000 if you have call center people sitting around. Normally, most of our small outages like that ranged in the tens of thousands.

Zerto did save time in a data recovery situation. We did not have ransomware, but there were times we had database corruption where the users would corrupt the database, and the database would not start. It would do snapshotting. It was not necessarily ransomware, but it was testing upgrades or Oracle upgrades. The data recovery happened within five minutes, if not sooner. A normal restore would probably be four to eight hours if we had to restore from a tape and apply logs.

Zerto helps to reduce an organization's DR testing. You can spin off an extra database pretty quickly and have users test against the third or fourth copy. It saves one to three days of testing depending on test cycles. You could do sequential testing. I would probably measure it more in days than hours. All of that time can be used by a DBA to do something else.

Zerto reduces the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. One person could probably orchestrate it now versus one to three people.

It did not reduce the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management because we are pretty thin. We would not have gotten rid of anybody.

Zerto offered a very good front-end GUI for orchestration. The graphic interface was very good.

The replication layer can probably be improved.

We ran the pilot for about nine months. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability.

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of scalability.

In terms of our environment, we had 130 databases, 35 prods, and 2 data centers. In terms of end users, in our call centers, we had probably 10,000 users who accessed the databases.

They are good. 

Neutral

We used VMware SRM. We used Veritas clustering, which was a Veritas/Symantec product. We then went virtual, so we went from physical to virtual infrastructure, and we went from HP-UX to Red Hat infrastructure. Zerto was probably 50% easier than others.

Zerto has not replaced any backup solution.

It is a private cloud deployment. It is all VMware vSphere.

Its initial setup was straightforward. It was not as complicated as any other product. It took two to three weeks.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we wanted to reduce our synchronous synchronization. We wanted a better RTO, so we went to an asynchronous replication on private network infrastructure for faster syncing. There were a few technical aspects, but we took our time to lay out the network infrastructure.

In terms of maintenance, you have to patch it and upgrade it. We have a team of four for backup and storage.

Zerto helped us. They had very good staff. We got great support. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

We had two people working on that project, primary and secondary. We did use some of the networking team, maybe a half-person worth of time, because it is a little network intensive.

It is hard to measure an ROI. It is more like an insurance policy. You may or may not use your insurance policy, but it provides comfort to management. There may also be some soft cost.

It was a little higher. We were in a corporate agreement, and we had a software package that included RP for VM. It is easy to compare pricing when you are already in a corporate agreement. Zerto lost on the pricing scorecard.

We evaluated Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. They were different in replication logic and how they did journaling.

In Zerto, the replication is done through vSphere, and they did not license that product, so at any point, they could have probably lost it. We licensed RP for VM. We felt more comfortable with an EMC replication product because it was Dell and VMware combined or merged. The replication in Zerto was good, but it was using VMware hypervisor replication.

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend doing an architectural design and implementing best practices. Involve your network team early and use Zerto's expertise.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for DR purposes. 

It provided an easier way to set up everything regarding DR. We had a small team. There were only four people and one of them was a manager, so we had just three people with one desktop guy. We were looking for a solution that was easy to set up, did not require too much maintenance, and something we didn't have to constantly keep an eye on. Zerto provided that. 

The setup is easy and very comfortable. There are not too many issues doing the upgrades. Maintenance is easy and configuration is easy as well. It's all just GUI-based. You just select the server that you want on the DR and it starts the application. 

Transfers between the data center are good as well. They do the compressions and also the encryption. That way, you are protected and it doesn't consume too much bandwidth.

The interface is very good. It's not too complicated. The interface is way easier than Veeam. You can do everything from the interface - including authorization of DR. 

Its near-synchronous replication is good. We get an RTO of five seconds. They also provide different checkpoints. They maintain a lot of checkpoints, so you can go back in time on the DR side if you want to. Of course, there is a limitation based on how much space you have. 

We noted the benefits of Zerto immediately. Before I joined, the company used to do a very manual process. We started doing a POC with Zerto, Veeam, and Pure Storage. I found that Zerto was easier to manage - and it's cheaper than the rest of them. That, coupled with the limitation of the human resources, we wanted to have less maintenance, less interface, and I found Zerto very, very useful in that process. 

Zerto covers our entire production environment. If something goes wrong, you can use Zerto to recover the server if you want. Mainly, we started Zerto just for protection.

The recovery time objective is good. We've had no issues. If the line goes down, it recovers very quickly since it provides a lot of compression in the data. It doesn't consume much bandwidth.

If we have issues in our database, we can recover the data. We can go back and time and pull out whatever is lost. 

Zerto has helped us reduce overall DR testing in our company. What used to take a month I can do in less than two days. 

It's impacted our IT resiliency strategy. It provides, in terms of DR and data protection, peace of mind. We can get our data back quickly.

They have moved to appliances, and the configuration of appliances is a bit complicated. The appliance is is very complicated to configure by proxy as they move everything to containers, and each container needs to be configured. It's a little bit complicated.

I've used the solution for almost eight years. 

The stability of the solution is very good. I'd rate stability nine out of ten. 

It's easy to scale Zerto. I'd rate scalability nine out of ten. 

I've contacted technical support. I've had no issues with them. They are well-versed and know the answers. 

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. 

The initial deployment is easy. We create a server and deploy. You just answer a few questions, and you are done. 

Even if a person is new to Zerto, it would still be very easy. As a very small team, we are always searching for products that aren't too complicated. 

The deployment itself might take half a day. It's a one-person job. 

If you add new servers, there will be maintenance. You can also set up reporting if you like. 

When we first deployed eight years ago, we may have used somebody from Zerto. They provided us with help as they were new at the time. If I had to do it again, I could handle it on my own. It's not too complicated. 

The pricing is reasonable and very affordable. 

We did look at the Veeam. We also look at the Pure Storage. Pure Storage also had some sort of replication, however, the RTO was too big. The RTO was around 15 minutes with Pure, and Zerto was providing an RTO of five seconds.

We are end-users. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

When using this with VMware, I'd say it is very easy to set up. I haven't used it with Hyper-V, however, I've heard that Zerto may not develop a version for Hyper-V.