Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer1953303 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of IT Technical Operations at a non-profit with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 10
Easy to set up and use, offers reliable performance
Pros and Cons
  • "It works really well. It's simple to set up and works well. Moreover, disaster recovery to the cloud to our organization is very important. We actually had to use it three years ago, and it worked out well for us."
  • "When we migrated to new virtual infrastructure, we had to set up Zerto all over again. And that took a long time. It would be nice if Zerto had some sort of migration tool where you could migrate all of your virtual machines to a new infrastructure without having to set up Zerto all over again."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate all of our production solutions. We replicate to cloud storage.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto works really well. It's simple to set up and works well. Moreover, disaster recovery to the cloud for our organization is very important. We actually had to use it three years ago, and it worked out well for us.

It replicates a lot quicker than what we were using previously. We did see a reduction in the time it takes to replicate. We were using SAN replication, and Zerto works in about a quarter of the time.

We use Zerto to protect our VM environment. 

What is most valuable?

Zerto works reliably and that is simple to set up and manage.

Moreover, Zerto's Near Synchronous Replication is fast. It lets you recover to a very short point in time, so you don't lose anything. It's really important because we don't want to lose any of our data. We want to be able to recover as much as we can. So this feature helps us do that.

Overall recovery time objective (RTO) with Zerto is really good. It's within seconds for us.

What needs improvement?

When we migrated to a new virtual infrastructure, we had to set up Zerto all over again which took a long time.

It would be nice if Zerto had some sort of migration tool where you could migrate all of your virtual machines to a new infrastructure without having to set up Zerto all over again.

Buyer's Guide
HPE Zerto Software
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE Zerto Software. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Zerto for about four and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It works really well. We rarely have any sort of issue with it. You just set it up and it does its thing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are a smaller environment, but it seems like it would work well for much larger organizations too.

We protect 36 virtual machines right now.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support are really good. They reply quickly and they usually resolve the issue in a very short time frame.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We looked at Veeam, Veritas, and some other storage-level replication solutions. We chose Zerto because it was just simple to set up and had good reviews. It works well and is pretty simple to use.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty simple. We had it set up and replicating in about three hours. It's really quick to set up and works pretty simply.

What was our ROI?

We definitely have seen a return on investment from Zerto. We were able to recover from an incident that would have been a lot more serious without Zerto.

Without Zerto, our organization would have lost several million dollars in financial damages from data loss.

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

The solution is a bit pricey for sure. But the licensing is simple to understand, which is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?


What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Mike Erin - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of IT Infrastructure at Fay Financial
Real User
Top 10
The near-synchronous certification has positively impacted our operations
Pros and Cons
  • "It's very stable. It doesn't require a lot of intervention."
  • "Maybe the reporting for the failover test could be a little better."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for disaster recovery. We replicate up to Azure, and that's essentially disaster recovery as a service.

Overall, the effects of RPO have been great. They are never more than a minute or two, even throughout the production day.

What is most valuable?

If we can replicate from our native VMware environment up to native Azure, it converts the machines for us. We don't have to maintain another VMware environment somewhere. It's really given us the ability to eliminate the entire data center.

Moreover, there are cost savings tied to this. We don't pay for the rack space, power, or hardware; all of that is gone. Because the machines aren't active, all we're paying for is storage in Azure. So it has saved us quite a bit of money.

Zerto's near-synchronous certification has positively impacted our operations. Any recovery point that's too far in the past, we'll lose transactions when we fail over. We really don't want to do that. Real-time replication gives us a much better sense of security for the enterprise. It simplifies things for us and reduces costs.  It makes management feel really good, too.

Using DR in a cloud environment has been a positive experience. We're saving money. We don't have to maintain the hardware. We don't have the rack space at the other data center. It just simplifies things for us and reduces costs. It's been a positive experience overall. It's pretty easy to use. Once it's up and running, it stays running. We have had a few times when we called support and the support has been very, very good.

What needs improvement?

Maybe the reporting for the failover test could be a little better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto since 2020, so it's been three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very good. It's very stable. It doesn't require a lot of intervention. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't had any problems with scalability. We have 75 machines protected by Zerto and it does a fine job.  

How are customer service and support?

Support has been very good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We used to use Site Recovery Manager when we had two data centers, and it was VMware to VMware. We were using EMC storage. Zerto is a lot easier to use than Site Recovery Manager. It requires less care and feeding. 

Site Recovery Manager occasionally would lose virtual machines, and it was kind of a pain, but Zerto just kept running. So overall, we're really happy with the switch to Zerto.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

Since we don't have to maintain all of the hardware and the second data center, one person can manage the entire Azure environment by themselves. As a result,  Zerto has helped us reduce staff. 

What about the implementation team?

We did an assisted setup with Zerto tech on the line, and It was really painless. It was simple and straightforward. The initial process including getting the servers and everything set up, was pretty short. The process included getting the VMs all added to the recovery groups and things like that. 

The whole process from start to finish took less than a week.

What was our ROI?

It has proven to be a cost-effective solution for us. 

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

It could always be less money. 

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. It requires little care and feeding. Not a lot goes wrong with it. It just works.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
HPE Zerto Software
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE Zerto Software. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Shawn Woods - PeerSpot reviewer
US Infrastructure Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Easy to migrate data, great recovery speeds, and helpful support
Pros and Cons
  • "The journaling is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
  • "Their data backup and restore have some ways to go."

What is our primary use case?

We had a specific use case for one of our clients that had a regulatory requirement for backups to be further than what we were already able to give with our current backup structure. We are actually a global company and our global headquarters are in Northern Ireland. We're located in Pennsylvania. We're the North American headquarters. We implemented Zerto, and we replicate on our Northern Ireland site. That got us more business with our clients.

How has it helped my organization?

We needed to meet the requirements of the client, and, previous to this solution, we would not have been able to meet the distance. That's why we implemented it.

What is most valuable?

The journaling is the most valuable aspect of the solution. The near synchronous authentication is great. It's critical for our organization.

We haven't had to use Zerto for blocking threats, however, we like that we have it as an option.

We do not do disaster recovery in the cloud or the AWS platform. It can do it. We just don't opt to use it that way.

We've used the solution to protect virtual machines.

It's had a positive effect on our RPOs. Our RPOs are eight seconds. It blows past RPOs out of the water. It's great.

The speed of recovery is excellent. We've only had to test it and never used it in production. That said, it works better than anything we've used previously. 

It's easy to migrate data. 

Its ability to keep users collaborating during a data migration is good. It goes very quickly, so it's not a disruption.

The impact on our RTOs is great. It far exceeds what we've needed it to do.

It will save us time in a data recovery situation.

It's helped us reduce our DR testing. It has gone from hours to minutes under Zerto.

It enables us to make better use of our staff. We have reduced the number of staff involved in overall DR management. 

What needs improvement?

Their data backup and restore have some ways to go. We looked at replacing our traditional backup system with Zerto and found it was lacking about a year ago. We have Commvault, which is very customizable and feature-rich in comparison. Their offering needs to be more robust.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used the solution for close to six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is great. We haven't had any issues with it. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good. It can scale out to quite a lot of VMs.

How are customer service and support?

I've contacted technical support once or twice. It was for integration and customization and they've been great.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I was involved in the initial setup, which was very straightforward. It took about a day to set up. Two people were involved in the deployment.

The only maintenance is the annual upgrade. It's pretty much set and forget.

What about the implementation team?

We handled the setup with the help of Zerto.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to quantify the ROI. 

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

The pricing is pretty fair. It's competitive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look into VMware. It didn't meet our requirements.

What other advice do I have?

The solution has not replaced any of our legacy backup systems.

It hasn't helped us to reduce downtime, as we haven't had any yet.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The only issue is that someone would move the VMs involved around. If you have a global team, make sure they understand the strategy and everyone is on the same page so that issues like that don't arise. We had silos on our side and once we dealt with that, we were fine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Paul Mickenbecker - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst, IS Infrastructure at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We have centralized and simplified our DR processes, and DR in Azure has enabled us to consolidate DCs
Pros and Cons
  • "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..."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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.

What was our ROI?

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.

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

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Daniel Modrušan - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President & Principal Systems Engineer at Bangor Savings Bank
Real User
Top 20
Took our disaster recovery practice from sixteen hours down to thirty minutes
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Zerto for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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. 

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

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. 

What about the implementation team?

We did the full installation ourselves.

What was our ROI?

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.

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

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2506566 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Server Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Provides continuous data protection with live test failover and has an easy setup
Pros and Cons
  • "With Zerto CDP, we can pull to our recovery objective in six seconds."
  • "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."
  • "It's pretty expensive per server."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto since 2023.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is excellent.

How are customer service and support?

Support is very good.

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

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2506590 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Technology Officer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Always works, is good for our business use case, and is easy to set up
Pros and Cons
  • "The customer service and support are very good. Every time we have problems, they're ready to help us."
  • "There is room for improvement in the upgrades."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for data and disaster recovery replication. 

How has it helped my organization?

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. 

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Zerto for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is very good. We have complaints about stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We have only used Zerto. 

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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

What was our ROI?

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

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

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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. 

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2507004 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good migration capabilities, fast and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The migration capabilities are very good."

    What is our primary use case?

    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.

    How has it helped my organization?

    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.

    What is most valuable?

    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.

    For how long have I used the solution?

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

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is strong and reliable. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's scalable.

    How are customer service and support?

    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.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

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

    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.

    How was the initial setup?

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

    What about the implementation team?

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

    What was our ROI?

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

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    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.

    What other advice do I have?

    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.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Hybrid Cloud
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free HPE Zerto Software Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: August 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free HPE Zerto Software Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.