HPE Zerto Software Reviews

Implementing failover to a secondary data center is crucial for ensuring business continuity in the event of primary data center loss. This strategy involves automatically redirecting operations and services to the secondary data center when the primary one becomes unavailable. This not only minimizes downtime but also enhances overall system reliability. 

The failover process requires robust synchronization mechanisms to ensure data consistency between the primary and secondary data centers. Regular testing and monitoring are essential to validate the effectiveness of the failover mechanism and identify and address any potential issues proactively. 

In summary, failover to a secondary data center is a strategic measure to safeguard against disruptions, offering a resilient solution for maintaining seamless operations in dynamic and challenging environments.

Zerto has significantly enhanced our organization's resilience and data protection capabilities. Its real-time replication and failover features have played a pivotal role in minimizing downtime during unexpected events, ensuring business continuity. 

The platform's automation and orchestration capabilities have streamlined our disaster recovery processes, reducing manual intervention and accelerating recovery times. 

The point-in-time recovery options provided by Zerto have proven invaluable in mitigating the impact of data corruption or accidental deletions. This has bolstered our data integrity and provided a safety net against unforeseen data-related issues.

The live failover tests and point-in-time recovery options have been exceptionally valuable features of Zerto for our organization. Conducting live failover tests allows us to validate the effectiveness of our disaster recovery setup in a controlled environment. This feature ensures that all components are in place and functioning as expected, providing confidence in our ability to respond to real-world disruptions. 

Additionally, the ability to choose a specific point in time for recovery down to the seconds is crucial for data integrity. This granular control allows us to roll back to a precise moment, mitigating the impact of data corruption, accidental deletions, or other unforeseen issues. It adds a layer of precision to our recovery process, minimizing potential data loss and enhancing overall resilience.

The product could benefit from improvements in automation, specifically in the area of failovers. Currently, the process is largely manual, and introducing automated failovers after a certain time threshold would enhance efficiency and responsiveness. Automated failovers can reduce the dependency on manual intervention, allowing for quicker and more proactive responses to disruptions. In the next release, the inclusion of scheduled or automated failovers would be a valuable addition. This feature would empower organizations to set predefined parameters and triggers for failovers, ensuring a timely and automated response to potential issues. It not only streamlines operations but also adds an extra layer of reliability to the overall disaster recovery strategy.

I've been using the solution for six months.

We did not have a solution before.

We had great help from the company in terms of setting up our environment.

We implemented through a vendor; I'd rate the experience ten out of ten.

Anything is the worth the cost for virtually no downtime. Time is money.

We did not evaluate other options.

It is a great solution overall, however, it could use some upgrades with automation.

We use the solution for replicating VMs from our on-site VMWare sites to both Google Cloud and Azure clouds. This allows us to feel confident not only in our disaster recovery capabilities but also in testing applications from our on-site data center to isolated cloud instances where there won't be any IP address or domain name system conflicts.  

The continuous backup gives us a better point in time recovery. It also reduces the amount of bandwidth to move the Zerto VM data from site to site, and we like that.

Zerto has improved our organization in several ways, particularly in the realm of disaster recovery, data protection, and business continuity.  

With Zerto's near-zero recovery time, our critical applications and services can be quickly restored, minimizing the impact on business operations.  

The data replication ensures that there is a consistent and up-to-date copy of the information. This helps protect against data loss and ensures data integrity.  With Zerto's single pane of glass, it's easier for IT administrators to monitor and manage their disaster recovery and data protection strategies. This has led to more efficient operations and reduced administrative overhead.

Zerto supports multi-cloud environments, allowing our organization to replicate and protect our important data across different cloud providers and sites. This flexibility has benefited our businesses with our diverse cloud strategies and our on-site data centers in different locations.  

Zerto helped our organization meet compliance requirements by ensuring data protection and recovery strategies align with our regulatory standards. 

Additionally, Zerto has incorporated security features to safeguard the replicated data.

Zerto needs to improve its documentation. It seems like some documents are copied from other older documentation, with misleading screenshots or incorrect steps.  

This can be confusing when newly introduced to a product or in a crisis situation such as a disaster recovery test or a true disaster recovery. The documentation needs to be revised, reviewed, and registered to be correct. Perhaps Zerto should consider an outside consultant to review and approve any documentation that is released.

I've used the solution for about a year.

It's very stable, and we have had no issues.

it does scan well and does what it claims to do.

Support needs to be more flexible.

Neutral

We have only used vRealize.

The documentation was confusing and, at times, incorrect.

We handled the setup in-house.

I don't any ROI information.

I'd advise others to start small.

We also evaluated Veeam.

We utilize the solution for our primary backup and recovery source. We use VMware for all of our servers. 

With the ease of integrating with our complete virtual infrastructure, it is nice that we can replicate easily between our HQ and DR sites. 

The flexibility in utilizing the test environment to allow production servers to be test restored with no interruption to the actual production server in use is really nice for quick and efficient testing. 

I highly recommend it for companies using virtual infrastructure.

The product allows us to restore to any given point within 15-20 second increments, including just files and whole servers. 

It allows us to efficiently test restore and restore files that were accidentally deleted within seconds of the deletion, giving the option to have the most up-to-date file restored with little to no data loss. 

It also allows reporting on the results of the testing, which can be provided really easily for board reporting, as well as auditing. There are many great features for sure.

The LTR function has by far been the best feature to allow us to retain our backups for at least a year. Also, it allows us to have full monthly and weekly incremental backups for that year, which can be restored or even just files from that period. It has come in handy for those accidentally deleted files. 

It also helps us keep our required retention period for specific documents and allows us to recover older documents if we have to compare and recreate those.

We would like the LTR function to be able to retain the past 12 months. Before the update to version 9, we could do this in the GUI. I am hoping that in version 10 (which is on the roadmap to be installed), this feature will return in the GUI to provide an easy way to lengthen our retention. The journaling can also be a problem at times. Also, I'm not sure why, however, retention processes randomly fail and have to be rerun periodically.

We have been utilizing this solution since 2017.

I use Zerto for disaster recovery. 

The time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great. We've seen a reduction in time spent. We can do it in minutes. Being able to go back to certain snapshots, to failover to another location, and then go back to specific snapshots is quite useful. We can roll back easily. 

The off-site replication is excellent. We have workloads that aren't DR-aware. Being able to replicate it to other data centers is great. We don't have another way to do it, currently. 

The near-synchronous replication is good. You get five-second data points. It's not something we advertise to our customers, the developers, however, we've had instances where we needed to go back two hours, prior to a file being deleted, and it's helped. 

We're protecting our VMs with Zerto. It's positively affected our RPOs. It meets the objective. It's the only way we can have a solution for certain applications where we send an entire application to another data server. 

It's a great product. There are a lot of features that it has that we don't use since we are on prem. We strictly use it for DR between our data centers. There are a lot of cloud plugins that they have that we don't use. Our use case is limited. It does everything we need it to.

I've been using the solution for probably four or five years. 

The stability of Zerto is good. We didn't have any issues. Our biggest challenge was trying to get to the clients and I was waiting on an upgrade path - from Windows to Linux. Now there is an upgrade path. Honestly, that has been the biggest challenge we've had for five years. 

The scalability of Zerto is good. You can easily protect other clusters and VRAs. It's very flexible.

Our current environment has 45 VRAs in each cluster. We have two replica pairs, two sites that mirror each other. 

In total, we have 70 ESX hosts.

Technical support is great. They've shown us many things about the manager that we didn't know about. Every time I call, I take notes. They are very knowledgeable and the knowledge-based articles on the site are also helpful. Even if I thought something was broken, they've always managed to fix it. 

Positive

We used to use VMware's SRM. With SRM, for us, it was overly complex. We used an array-based replication with SRM. We had issues where the storage team would go to do work on the array and they would fail the machine over and it wouldn't be right. We would have outages. Every time we did a failover it was a process and we would be missing rules.

This is not array-based and we can test our failover in a sandbox without taking the system down. 

The initial deployment was easy. We deployed VRAs to the host from the manager. It works very well. The amount of VRAs you have to deploy and the amount of time it takes is minimal. It took us about an hour. 

I can't speak to if the company has witnessed any ROI. 

I don't follow the licensing. It was bought for us and we use it. 

We evaluated SRM and a few others. I can't remember which ones we tested. We've been on Zerto since version six. 

The selling point for us, coming from SRM, is that SRM was tied to vCenter. We had to pay attention to versions and there were a lot of ways you had to make sure the versions were correct and it was overly complex for what we needed. We simply needed to replicate a virtual machine and that was it. Zerto stood out as it was easy.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We've used it for disaster recovery. We also use it for file recovery. We extended our journal to more days, so we were able to back up a more detailed timeline. We recently did migrations. 

One of the biggest benefits is the migration. We had to move out of a data center very quickly. We were able to failover to our disaster recovery site and run our full production there for almost two months. We then fail back over to the production site using Zerto. 

The ease of use and the ability to quickly recover our workloads is very simple and easy.

The near-synchronous replication is great. It allows us to failover and run production.

Zerto helps protect VMs in our environment. Zerto's overall effect on our RPOs has been excellent. 

The speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions is night and day. We use Veeam for backups and the amount of time that it takes to recover is so much quicker mounting with Zerto. That's why we extended the journal so that we could capture a few more days and make it easier for us to recover files.

The amount of storage that it takes up for the journals could use improvement. Outside of that, it's been great.

I have been using Zerto for five years. 

They're very stable. We had been with them for a while before HPE acquired them, and they're still going strong now. We haven't seen a lot of big changes in the way they operate, so that's always a good sign.

Support is great. Every time we have an issue, which isn't very often, they're very responsive. We get in touch with somebody very quickly and they help us through it.

Positive

We use Veeam and we've used Datto. We chose Zerto for its ease of use. It was simple, and then we found out once we got it in-house how valuable it was. We just extended it from there.

We used Veeam, and we switched because Zerto was a lot easier. From implementation to actually protecting our VMs, it was so much easier.

Zerto is on top. Zerto is the best out there. 

The initial setup was easy. 

We worked with Zerto on the deployment. 

We have definitely seen ROI.

We had to move out of a data center very quickly. The data center we were in filed for bankruptcy, and we had two months to move out. The ability to flip over to our recovery site in one day, and then being able to ride that until the next time we came back up, then move all of our data back to the new data center was huge for us. That would have cost us a lot.

The initial pricing seemed a little high, but once we got into it and found out what it could do and how it benefited us, it proved itself. We didn't feel that it was too far out of the ordinary. We've increased our licensing to cover our entire environment whereas before we're only covering critical servers. 

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten. When we started using it, it was very easy to use. It was easy to implement. Throughout the years, it's continued to be that same way. They've proven themselves. We've had the data center move, we've had failures, we've had different issues that happened in our environment, and they were able to meet all of our needs. 

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.

We use Zerto to verify the information being transferred from one data center to another.

When a site is down, we can continue to use the other site thanks to Zerto.

The near-synchronous replication is extremely valuable because it ensures we can continue working.

The move action between the app and data center is great and we can see the benefits in minutes.

Our RPOs are performing well thanks to Zerto.

Migrating data using Zerto is easy.

Zerto helps our users collaborate during data migration.

Our RTO using Zerto is good.

The communication between the VM and the secondary data center is the most valuable feature.

I would like Zerto to provide more detailed information when there is an issue.

I have been using Zerto for five years.

Zerto is extremely stable. 

Zerto is scalable.

I have used the technical support of Zerto several times and they are good.

Positive

Though I wasn't part of the initial deployment, the procedure is relatively simple. Manager rollout is the first step, followed by CPG installation on VMs by the CPG teams and subsequent network configuration verification.

Four people are required for the deployment.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

Zerto is a good solution for transferring data between centers.

We use the solution mostly for disaster recovery, however, we use it a lot for VM migrations and data center relocations.

The ease of setting up replication, the speed, and the ease with which I can fail over and fail back are all excellent aspects of the solution. 

We've used Zerto for failing over and moving a lot of workloads from one location to another during v-center upgrades, during data center relocations, et cetera. We even had a case where we had a need to move over to our DR data center, however, in the middle of running there, our DR data center started having thermal issues, so we had to bring everything back. Zerto made that super easy.

Previously, we were using SRM. In the case of the thermal event, SRM would probably have taken, I'm guessing, an hour or two to do the failover. With Zerto, we were able to get everything moved over in about 15 minutes, and it was roughly 150 or 200 VMs that we did in that time period. 

The near-synchronous replication works. It's very quick. I like that I can fail something over and not lose any data. That's pretty important. We want to not lose data. As a healthcare organization, losing patient records would be a very bad thing. 

It's important to have DR in the cloud right now. We're looking at leveraging AVS for our DR site for the sake of not having to run our own data center. Leveraging the cloud is super important. It will help us to get away from on-prem and not even have to deal with a co-location facility. The reliability will be important. There is also the impression that there is going to be money savings around that.

It's had a positive effect on our RPOs. Overall, the RPOs have gotten better. Every aspect compared to where we were with SRM or prior to that, Zerto has improved. It's a lot easier to manage Zerto as it is hardware agnostic. It helps get things failed over and protected quickly. Every aspect has improved with Zerto.  

Some of the ability to automate selections and automate VPG creations could be better. We've been building out a lot of new V-centers lately, and new data centers. Whenever we create a VPG, we generally set some very specific settings. If there was a way to set a template or a blueprint, to say that if I'm replicating to a data center from here, these are always going to be my default settings. That would be ideal, instead of having to manually set everything every time. 

There are a few issues we've had with Zerto where it doesn't behave the way we want it to. I'm being told it's by design. Therefore, it's not an issue per se, it's by design. 

I've been using Zerto for three or four years.

I've had no problems with the stability. There have been a few bugs along the way, however, Zerto has been very quick to work through them. 

We have 1500 to 1600 VMs protected with Zerto and most of our DR strategy is being built around Zerto.

I can't speak to scalability. We've been steady-state since we implemented it. It's been protected by the same workloads since then. 

Zerto support has gone downhill recently. When we first started, they were great. However, after the HP acquisition, the quality of support is not as good. The knowledge has dropped and the time to respond is slower. I seem to now get people who ask basic questions that I already answered when I opened the ticket. 

Neutral

Previously, we were using SRM. SRM was a nightmare. Zeerto has been drastically better. 

The pricing is expensive. However, I definitely see the value and my corporation sees the value. 

We did look at Veeam and were using SRM in the past and Zerto seems to be the most full-featured and the easiest to implement. It's also the most powerful overall. Veeam isn't even close to what Zerto can handle right now. 

We're mostly on-prem, however, we've started doing DR into AVS - Azure VMware Service.

I'd rate Zerto eight out of ten.