HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We are using Zerto as a DR solution for our environment as well as for migrations. When we do data center migrations, we use it to move our servers over.

We are only on-prem at the moment. We do not do disaster recovery in the cloud.

In the old days, during data center swaps, it used to take days to move our workload environments over, whereas now, it literally takes an hour for hundreds of servers to migrate. Literally, in under a minute, an app stack can move down and up in a new data center. It is reflected in the uptime support to our customers. Our company is very happy with the product.

Essentially, you just tell it to go and pull the trigger. It is all automatic, so you can sit there and watch the shutdown within vCenter, and then on the remote side, you can see it coming up. You can literally have your environment up and running in under a minute. You just have to prioritize what goes first, and that is a business decision.

Its automation and the ability to replicate and keep an RTO of just seconds is valuable. It is all automatic. Everything is pretty transparent on the backend. It is just point-and-go.

Its near-synchronous replication is amazing. It is a lifesaver. You can see it replicating in real-time in seconds. The overall impact on the network is negligible as well. It is a great tool.

From the technical side, there can be a little bit more PowerShell integration. I know it leverages APIs, but people still use PowerShell. Some people would rather use PowerShell if that is an option.

I have used it across several employers. I probably used it for a total of four or five years before it was bought out by HPE.

It is amazing. You just look at the dashboard, and it is pretty much all green unless you have some replication or journaling issues, but that is not the product's fault. 

Scalability has not been an issue. You deploy it, and it just ramps up and goes. It is all in the background and automatic.

We have about 700 servers and 130 VPGs.

I would rate them a ten out of ten. They are very responsive and technical. Even when there is no issue and you are looking for a root cause or just a question, they are very responsive. They exceed their SLAs.

My current employer already had it in place. In my previous role, it was evaluated against a few other competitors, and it ended up being a replacement for VMware's Disaster Recovery, which at that time had a lot of issues. Zerto came in and helped us out. We implemented a few new things that Zerto did not have, and I have not looked back.

Zerto is easy to use. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of ease of use.

Currently, we are still on version 9. We have deployed that. Overall, it is very easy once you get the Windows Server. I am excited about the new version 10 coming out that takes away the Windows server requirement.

We did not use an integrator or a reseller, but we are in contact with our engineer from Zerto. I personally know him from a previous job and as a friend as well. If I have questions, I am sure he will help me out.

Uptime for our customers is important. When we are able to do transitions and not impact customers or minimize that impact, that is a financial gain at the end of the day in terms of the satisfaction that customers get, as well as the overall view of the company. As a whole, the management sees that we are doing this stuff in minutes and hours versus days. So, overall, the company is not looking to move away from Zerto anytime soon.

I know it is per server, but I am not fully aware of the price model. I know for our VDI environment, they are looking at something that is on the lower end and that they can use just for migrations and not so much a disaster recovery.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten. It scales well. It just works. It is amazingly simple. Everything is pretty much automatic. I cannot remember when I had to open a case because Zerto was not working.

We are using it to back up and replicate our critical infrastructure to allow us to replicate back when we are in a disaster recovery situation or a test.

When we were in a disaster recovery (DR) test, we could not pull back the data in a timely manner. Zerto allows us to pull the data back in a timely manner. We also can create better RTOs and RPOs. We wanted an RTO of fifteen minutes and we've managed that.

To be able to replicate back to production is the most useful aspect of the product. It allows us to do a disaster recovery test and recover within eight hours. I couldn't do that before.

I'm also working with near-synchronous replication. It's very important to be able to keep my production and replication in sync.

I like the idea of Zertos being able to block unknown threats and attacks. In fact, one of my machines had a little encryption on it, and it detected that encryption, and I had to go look at it. It was nothing, in that instance, however, it was a neat feature. We could see that it was definitely looking for encryption and malware on our side.

Our disaster recovery testing is a lot easier and is much better with this product. Our RPOs and RTOs are now more in line with our other critical systems. We're now down to five minutes, well below our original 15-minute RTO goal.

Instead of being up all night, trying to get data back, I would no longer need to stay up all night. I've saved about four hours.

The product is easy to use.

I haven't noted any areas of improvement just yet.

I'd like to see a way to do a one-stop shutdown of replication so I know I'm not missing data and can do my DR test. 

I'd like to get better recovery point objectives and get more data back from our DR site faster. 

The pricing could be a little bit lower.

I've been using the solution for about two months now.

The solution is stable. I have never had any issues. 

I have not tried to scale the solution. 

I have the solution for multiple locations in one department. 

I've had two cases resolved via technical support. They helped me resolve issues I had with the installation. It did take me a few tries to resolve the issues.

Positive

We have used Veeam in the past. It's pretty good for certain things. However, it was hard to get continuous replication. Zerto is much easier to get that constant replication that we need. In terms of speed, for Veeam, it's about an hour right now across our secondary data center. It's not as fast. We moved to Zerto to get more data back from our DR site faster.

I was involved in the initial setup. The initial setup is easy. Veeam had an easier setup, however, once we got Zerto going, it was easier to scale up and test. It's easier to manage in the long run.

The deployment had a bit of complexity. The problem we had was that the VRAs would not install and we had to turn off some security features. The ESXi server was not well documented. 

We set it up in multiple locations in one department.

It took us about three weeks to deploy the solution. 

The maintenance is simple. I handle the maintenance myself. 

We handled the initial setup in-house internally. I managed the process completely by myself.  

It's just been a few months. We have yet to see a return on investment. 

Zerto is a bit more expensive compared to Acronis or Veeam. That said, for us, the pricing was still reasonable. That said, we couldn't do all of our machines. 

We also evaluated Nutanix and Acronis.

We chose Zerto since it has very good integration with HPE servers. It's also an industry standard. Many people are using it. 

I've never used its immutable copies features. I've just discovered the feature and need to look more into it.

I didn't use the cloud while using this solution. I have used the solution to help me protect VMs in my environment. 

I haven't had to migrate data just yet. The solution has yet to help us reduce downtime. It also has yet to help us save time in data recovery situations due to ransomware. We haven't had an incident as of yet. While it's saved time, we haven't been able to test all of our machines and all of our servers yet.

At this point, the solution has not reduced the staff involved in data recovery.

This product augmented what we have in terms of legacy backup solutions. It did not replace anything. 

My advice to others is to use Zerto for critical servers and things that need to be watched carefully for malware and encryption. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use Zerto to replicate our gold systems. Gold systems refer to those that require recovery in a disaster recovery environment within 24 hours, with a maximum allowable data loss of one hour. Therefore, the Recovery Time Objective is 24 hours, and the Recovery Point Objective is one hour.

I would rate Zerto's ease of use a nine out of ten. The setup of virtual appliances required for data replication is straightforward and effortless. Some of the automation and tooling, such as changing IP addresses or running scripts after a disaster recovery process, is also very user-friendly and simple to configure. 

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is commendable. Usually, the data is only a couple of minutes behind. Hence, we are not employing synchronous replication, but asynchronous replication proves to be sufficient for our needs. It does not appear to deviate too far out of sync or fall too far behind, thereby effectively maintaining up-to-date data. Near synchronous replication holds significant importance as these systems are our critical business assets.

Zerto has helped us improve our organization by enabling disaster recovery both on-premises and in the cloud. We are transitioning towards cloud-based recovery. Our previous solution, before Zerto, only allowed us to replicate data in our on-premises data center, preventing us from migrating to the cloud. Zerto has unblocked us, allowing us to leverage cloud-based recovery now. We were able to realize the benefits within three to four months. The implementation was relatively quick and completed within a couple of months. Everything tested well.

Zerto enables us to perform disaster recovery in the cloud instead of a physical data center, and this is the reason we made the switch to Zerto.

Having the capability to perform disaster recovery in the cloud is of utmost importance to our organization. We are implementing disaster recovery in the cloud to facilitate the shutdown of one of our data centers.

We use Zerto to protect VMs in our environment.

The speed of recovery using Zerto is good. The automation really helps make the recovery quick and easy.

Zerto's overall impact on our recovery time objectives is positive. It is fulfilling exactly what we needed it to do, making it a valuable tool. Additionally, it proves to be fairly cost-effective and easy to set up and use.

Although we have not experienced an actual disaster, Zerto has been instrumental in aiding our disaster recovery testing. Every year, we conduct a DR test to recover systems, conduct assessments, and validate our processes, and for this purpose, we have utilized Zerto. The results have been outstanding, as Zerto has saved us approximately 500 hours of time annually.

Zerto has automated the recovery process by utilizing those playbooks and re-IPing. This has significantly contributed to the reduction of DR testing efforts.

50 percent of the time that Zerto has saved has been allocated to value-added tasks.

Zerto can replicate data rapidly and cost-effectively. We can recover both systems on-premises and in the public cloud. We use Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services for cloud infrastructure, and Zerto can recover data from both of these platforms. Therefore, it is not limited to a specific cloud provider like the Azure Site Recovery Manager. 

Zerto has good role-based access controls. For cloud recovery, it allows replication over the Internet instead of private networking, which is really nice.

I would like Zerto to enhance the continuous backup aspect. If Zerto could replace Veeam from a backup perspective, that would be highly beneficial. Currently, we use Veeam for backup and Zerto for disaster recovery. It would be ideal if we could consolidate both functions into a single product rather than using two separate ones.

I have been using Zerto for three years.

I would rate Zerto's stability an eight out of ten. We encountered a problem once, but it was resolved.

I would rate Zerto's scalability a nine out of ten.

We previously used EMC's Site Recovery Manager and Recover Point. The reason we replaced them is that they utilized sand-based replication, which couldn't be used to replicate data to public clouds. As there are no sands in the public cloud.

Zerto's ease of use, when compared to EMC's Site Recovery Manager and Recover Point, is slightly better. For instance, during the setup process, we didn't require expertise in storage area networks, unlike our previous products. Therefore, it takes fewer skilled resources to set up, configure, and start using Zerto.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment took two months. We identified the core machines that we were previously replicating and gradually migrated applications one set at a time. An application could consist of two servers or even five servers. We can perform these migrations in waves.

For the deployment, we had two engineers, one support person, and one architect.

The Zerto team assisted with the implementation.

We have seen a return on investment.

Zerto is slightly expensive, but we do see the value in it.

We evaluated Veeam, Commvault, and Rubrik. Among them, Zerto had the best feature set for near real-time asynchronous replication.

I rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

The speed of the RPO using Zerto is the same as our previous solution. We haven't lost anything, but we haven't gained much from an RPO perspective either. We had good technology; it was just limited by the cloud because there hasn't been any significant change.

We use Veeam as our backup product to perform some of the point-in-time recoveries.

We have only around six end users who log in to the console in total. Zerto is deployed in our primary data center and is also replicating to a secondary data center where it is deployed.

We have people who monitor whether the synchronization is proceeding well, but there is very little day-to-day overhead in terms of maintenance.

Zerto is a solid industry-recognized quality product.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery, backup, and ransomware protection. The 3-2-1 backup strategy requires us to have two backups of our production data on different media. One copy is on disk and tape backup, and the other is hosted off-site for disaster recovery. With journaling and the persistent backups we take nightly, it almost obviates 3-2-1 because it renders some unnecessary aspects. 

We adopted Zerto, hoping to speed up our recovery time and improve the overall security of our environment and data. We haven't realized the full benefits, but I expect we will improve our security posture and disaster recovery speed.  

Zerto would enable us to do cloud-based DR instead of a physical data center, but we are based in a very rural area of Colorado. We're deep in the mountains, so leveraging the cloud is challenging. We have little-to-no cloud presence, but Zerto can enable us to move our disaster recovery into the cloud because it is agnostic to the backup target. That could easily be a cloud provider. We only need redundant and reliable circuits to the cloud.

The impact on our RTO is theoretical because we haven't had to do any critical recovery. Based on our testing, it should significantly improve our RTO because the backup technology is more efficient than our previous solution. RTO is one of Zerto's strengths. Zerto enabled us to test our DR plan. Our disaster recovery needed a lot of help when I joined two years ago, and it's one of the projects I have been working on. Zerto is central to our DR plan. It's the primary cog in that machine. Zerto cut our hardware and maintenance costs by about 50 percent.

I like the fact that Zerto is target agnostic. It doesn't care what type of storage it writes to. The journaling is also excellent. You can easily and quickly restore to seconds before an event. The immutable data copies feature is one reason we adopted Zerto. That's one of its selling points.

Zerto is easy enough to use. It's as usable as any other backup solution. We're accustomed to dealing with complex options and everything available to us in the suite. 

I tried a file-level recovery, which should work on any server. However, the server we need to protect the most is the one giving us problems. We couldn't do a file recovery without restoring the entire server to a recovery partition that isn't part of the production and pulling the files off it that way.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent when it works. I'm trying to be nice to them because I like the product a lot, but we're having a lot of difficulty with it in our environment.

There is a disconnect between the sales pitch and what we can do with Zerto in practice. We've been trying to reconcile that for most of the year. There should be more continuity between sales and implementation to ensure the solution is implemented how our presales engineer pitched it to us. 

They need to have some accountability. Maybe the implementation engineer should be on the line so that they know what is presented and agreed upon regarding the implementation in our environment. The implementation should have been precisely what we were expecting. 

I was part of the pre-purchase team as the information security manager. I handed it off to my infrastructure team to implement, and they practically had to start from scratch. Zerto handed it off to their professional services to implement, and I assigned the job to my team. 

There were a lot of questions and things Zerto couldn't do on its end. HP purchased Zerto as we were engaging with them. I don't know if that was related to our frustrations, but I know that acquisitions can make a product messy for a bit. I don't want to blast Zerto. It's an excellent product, and I would love it if it could work as advertised. I've seen it do some of that for us. We've had a rough start, and we're still trying to find that sweet spot.

I have used Zerto for nearly a year.

Zerto isn't reliable in our current environment. We keep running into these weird little issues. At one point, we didn't have complete backups on a couple of key servers for more than a week because of this issue. If we had gone down that week, it would have been ugly.

Zerto seems pretty scalable. We bought something that we can add on to and increase the horsepower. Every change we've made has been smooth.

Their support and account management teams have been pretty amazing. They are bending over backward to make it right with us, so they deserve a lot of credit for that.

We used Avamar. Zerto's recovery is faster, and it's a little more straightforward. Zerto is an improvement in RPO, RTO, ransomware protection, immutability, and cost. Avamar costs nearly 75 percent more. There's no significant difference in ease of use. 

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. After the deployment, there is a lot of maintenance. It throws out lots of errors, and we sometimes need to rebuild some of its components. Our backup guy is a little frustrated at times. 

We haven't seen a return aside from saving money on the annual license because we've had to invest so much time into getting it to work.

Zerto's price seems fair. It's competitive. 

Dell Avamar for Data Domain offers functionality similar to Zerto, but we weren't taking advantage of it. We also looked at Rubrik, but it's a cloud-based solution, and it's a little costly. We're not in a position to leverage cloud solutions at this time. Avamar costs too much to get the same features. Doing a rip and replace was more economical than keeping the hardware in place and adding the functionality.

I rate Zerto a six out of ten. I only give it a low rating because of the issues we've faced lately in our environment. If we didn't have those issues, I'd probably give it an eight.

If you plan to implement Zerto, I suggest double-checking everything. Confirm the configurations and ensure your backup targets are sufficiently sized. You must know what you want from the product, and that requires guidance from the sales engineer. Make sure the plan is solidified and you have a document that spells the whole thing out.

We utilize Zerto for our disaster recovery solution, which involves replicating our virtual machines to a remote hot site to ensure failover capabilities.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is great. 

Our RPO is around ten seconds.

I found Zerto's dashboard and features, such as the Zerto console, easy to use. It is simple to navigate and comprehend. Additionally, it is convenient to check various RPOs and BPG groups to stay informed about the current status.

We now have a robust disaster plan in place since the implementation of Zerto, which was a significant aspect we aimed to ensure.

Syncing data over to the data center for disaster recovery is easy.

I cannot provide a specific answer regarding our RTOs, but they have definitely improved significantly compared to our previous practices.

Zerto is considerably faster than our previous disaster recovery testing, which has saved us a significant amount of time.

Zerto has reduced the number of resources required for our data recovery.

It has helped reduce the number of staff for our backup.

We are utilizing a third-party company to assist us in managing Zerto. However, the RPO time for the copied-off VMs appears to be quite short. Additionally, it is straightforward to use.

One concern we have is the speed at which Zerto maintains compatibility with VMware and different versions of VMware. We are specifically worried about potentially major security issues with our current ESXi version and whether upgrading it would cause any problems or compatibility issues with the Zerto version we are using. It is crucial for Zerto to collaborate closely with VMware in order to promptly test updates.

I have been using Zerto for six months.

Zerto is stable. We have not had any stability issues.

We have not used Zerto in the cloud, but on our ESXi host, it appears to be scalable.

We used to back up VMs to powered-off off-site storage, but Zerto provides live disaster recovery capabilities. We had been utilizing a different disaster recovery concept, but Zerto is easier to use and provides us with an improved turnaround time in the event of a disaster.

The initial setup was straightforward. I assisted in the deployment, and a total of four people were required. The deployment took one week due to the necessary networking changes that had to be made.

We implemented using a third party.

I give Zerto a ten out of ten.

We utilize Zerto for our disaster recovery, and we employ our storage appliance for local snapshots.

No maintenance is required for Zerto.

I suggest using Zerto to have the servers in different Virtual Protection Groups so that they can prioritize the most important aspects of the business.

Zerto is primarily used for disaster recovery. In rare cases, it is also used for backup, but only for long-term storage.

We deployed our on-premises infrastructure in two data centers in Russia located in two cities, and multiple regions with combined infrastructure. We also had two data centers in Europe.

Zerto is extremely easy to use. When I started to pilot the product in 2016, I was able to deploy all required components in one or two hours without any help from Zerto engineers. I only used the provided documentation and user interface. In the years since my engineers have also had no issues with the implementation or configuration of the product. Zerto's ease of use is one of its best features.

To ensure good synchronization and replication of changes in a timely manner, we need to have a very good storage subsystem. In our case, we replaced our old storage subsystem with a new one that is based on full flash storage. After that, Zerto started to replicate changes at lightning speed. Many companies experience issues with Zerto if they do not have full flash storage. When full flash storage is implemented, Zerto is the best replication solution because it is highly dependent on the latency of the storage. Therefore, any kind of storage that is not based on full flashes, such as hybrid storage that combines flash and disks, is not a good foundation for Zerto implementation.

Prior to implementing Zerto, our disaster recovery tests had a 70 percent success rate. After implementing Zerto, all DR tests were 100 percent successful. This represents a significant improvement in our DR capabilities.

We used Zerto to replicate our virtual machines from our primary data center to our disaster recovery data center in another city over a single connection.

Zerto can achieve very low recovery point objectives due to its efficient use of resources and compression techniques. However, our company has different RPO requirements for different-sized companies. Since our company is small, our standard RPO is four hours. Zerto exceeded this requirement by achieving a typical RPO of about 15 seconds.

Zerto is a very easy and fast tool to use. However, it is important to note that Zerto requires some time to accept changes after migration. This means that if we do not finish testing within the required time frame, we may run into issues with storage space, as Zerto will continue to collect logs and other data. If the testing period is short and we are comfortable switching between data centers frequently, then we should have a very good experience with Zerto. Compared to VMware SRM, Zerto is much more reliable. I have never had any issues switching between production and the DR data center with Zerto, while I have had to start DR exercises from scratch multiple times with VMware SRM.

We always define and perform the required RTO values in our company. RTO is the time required to recover from a switch. It is about how long it will take IT staff to restore the environment. With Zerto, we can now do this in hours, typically one or two hours, for all switching activities. We have 70 virtual machines configured in Zerto, so it takes about one hour to switch all of them. This is four times faster than our previous solutions, such as VMware SRM or storage-based replication.

Zerto has saved us time in data recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes. It is very easy to use, so we do not need to spend extra time training engineers on how to use it. All of our engineers were able to start using Zerto immediately. Zerto is also very fast at replicating data. For example, when we set up a new replication, the initial replication was completed very quickly. Another advantage of Zerto is that it does not require additional steps to change the size of virtual disks. With our previous solution, VMware SRM, engineers had to perform additional manipulations in VMware when changing the size of virtual disks. This was a complicated process, but it is not necessary with Zerto. Overall, Zerto is a very user-friendly and efficient data protection solution. It has saved us time and money, and it has made our data recovery process much easier.

Zerto has saved us around 50 percent of our time.

The most important thing to me is Zerto's ability to deliver continuous protection for all data without any issues or incidents. Zerto is a rock-solid product in terms of protection. We migrated to Zerto from VMware SRM because we had a lot of issues with VMware SRM, including the loss of one server.

Zerto's price has room for improvement.

I have used Zerto for six years. 

I give Zerto's stability a nine out of ten.

Globally we have around 200 engineers that use Zerto.

Zerto's technical support is excellent. When we first started using Zerto, we had Russian technical support to help us with some complex tasks, such as configuring unique virtual machines. Our engineers had no communication issues with the support team. Later, when we were in a stable period, global technical support was also very helpful. I cannot recall a time when technical support was unable to help us. Overall, I give Zerto's technical support five stars.

Positive

For many years, the company globally used a variety of different solutions for data protection and disaster recovery. These included storage-based replication solutions based on IBM and EMC storage, as well as special appliances from Dell EMC. For smaller companies, VMware SRM or VMware replication without SRM was used, with manual configuration of replication. In order to simplify and unify its data protection and disaster recovery strategy, the company decided to adopt Zerto. Zerto was initially implemented in a small region, the Middle East/Asia. After a couple of successful migrations of data centers in this region and a parallel unsuccessful DR exercise in EMEA, the company selected to use Zerto globally. Following this, smaller companies in Russia started to receive a recommendation to implement Zerto instead of any existing solutions. Zerto has been a success for the company, providing a unified and simplified data protection and disaster recovery solution that has improved the company's overall resilience.

We used one internal engineer to perform the initial setup on two data centers in two days. In general, this involved installing two virtual machines with Zerto Virtual Manager on each data center, creating the corresponding network access rules, and then deploying Zerto replication agents to all virtualization hosts. The last activity was automated, so it took about one hour to deploy Zerto for all virtualization hosts. The replication took one week.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Zerto is a premium disaster recovery solution. It is not the cheapest option on the market, but it offers a number of features that make it a good value for businesses that need a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

I give Zerto a ten out of ten. Based on my experience with different replication solutions, Zerto is the best one I have used. I am very disappointed that my current company decided to stop using it due to existing standards. Zerto is not cheap, but it is very stable, available, fast, and easy to use.

The most time-consuming part of a disaster recovery test is the testing of small and medium-sized enterprises, business users, and other stakeholders. IT-led environment restoration activities typically take up about 30 percent of the overall DR process. Zerto can reduce this time by 50 percent. Overall, this is not a significant impact, and Zerto is a very stable and reliable solution.

Zerto has not reduced the number of employees involved in data recovery situations. This is because we have a small team, and we always use engineers to perform disaster recovery activities related to storage and virtualization infrastructure. As a result, we have not had to reduce the number of staff members used for these activities.

Zerto did not replace all of our legacy backup solutions. Our legacy backup solutions were dependent on IBM Power servers, which required corresponding backup agents. Zerto is not compatible with these agents, so we use a separate backup solution for these servers. This separate solution is still in use.

We have two data centers, each with its own equipment, servers, storage, network equipment, and so on. In each data center, we deployed two separate VMware vCenter server infrastructures connected using an L2 line. There was no L3 connection between the data centers. This created a flat L2 network with two data centers and two vCenters on each data center. After that, we deployed two VM servers configured for replication. This allowed us to have a highly available and resilient infrastructure in the event of a failure at one of the data centers.

Regarding Zerto's maintenance, we configured some monitoring for related Zerto services. However, we do not have any daily routine procedures to manually check Zerto to ensure that everything is working properly. Instead, our engineers spend one hour per week reviewing monitoring items and other metrics to ensure that Zerto is operating as expected. From my perspective, Zerto is a self-operating system that requires very little manual intervention.

Zerto is very easy to pilot. I recommend that any customer pilot Zerto before making a decision on whether or not it is the right solution for them. Zerto is a self-selling product. When I piloted it in 2016, I was able to install it in hours and start using it immediately without any help. I believe that a pilot is the best way to see how easy and beneficial Zerto can be.

Zerto is used as our go-to disaster recovery failover software for the replication of key systems from our main office to our main data center. We primarily use it to protect VMs.

Being able to offer the level of disaster recovery RPO that we do has been a game-changer. Offering that level of RPO would have taken other methods to accomplish, but this has been straightforward.

It has been compatible with our VMware environments as time has progressed. We started using this in 2013. To make it easy and even more seamless, they spanned a Layer 2 subnet from one site to another using networking strategies. That way, when we fail over a VM or an asset, it does not change IPs at all. It has definitely given us a level of recovery that we would not have been able to accomplish as easily otherwise.

Recovery with Zerto is faster because, in the past, I believe our organization implemented asynchronous replication and used replication methods that were specific for storage. Having synchronous replication and an RPO that is essentially nothing, between sites, has definitely increased our response time. It allows us to immediately fail over seamlessly. It has also reduced RTOs throughout, since the recovery point objective in general is just a second. The smaller our RPO gap, the faster the RTOs we get.

In terms of downtime, there was a particular situation where we had an unexpected double outage of our WAN link. Unbeknownst to us, both of the fiber runs, although they were from the same company, ran through the same place, along the same train tracks where there was maintenance going. We were able immediately to fail over to our secondary site and keep downtime to zero.

That was an outage that I now know, in hindsight, lasted a couple of hours and it was during the peak closing of the US market for trading. It would have cost us millions. It would've been bad if something had gone wrong, since we needed to trade "now, now, now," but would not have been available. Thankfully we were able to trade.

Another benefit is that it allows for automated testing and non-impactful testing with the ability to spawn VMs in a test. We can perform any type of DR and integrity testing at will without impacting our production. I can't really quantify it but I know that DR tests definitely move a lot quicker now. Normally, DR testing would happen over a weekend. And it used to be the case that we would fail over everything immediately. We still have tests where we do live failovers with Zerto, because they really want to say we have done them. But we have averted investing time in monthly and quarterly tests over a weekend because we can present the automated testing that happens by Zerto with that test network. Without that, we would have to do monthly live testing, so it saves us time.

The most valuable feature is its ability to do failovers from one site to another.

It's also very intuitive, simple, and very straightforward. Its layout doesn't seem very complicated. It shows its features upfront. When I first started using it in 2016, I had not heard about the product, but coming to this company and having to take over managing it was not challenging at all. I was able to intuitively start using it. I have not had any issues with the interface. It's a clean interface and that has allowed me to intuitively use and configure it.

The near-synchronous replication is key. That has allowed us to provide the low RPOs that we promise. For key systems, that has been the deciding factor. The other option would have been establishing VMware's native HA approach, where you have to spawn new VMs. It's not as transparent as Zerto, it's more under the woodwork. Zerto's ability to offer that level of synchronicity and immediateness has enabled us to offer that level of SLA for our processes in case of a disaster.

Recently, I started to try to deploy vVols instead of VMFS volumes in my VMware environment and I did encounter an incompatibility. It seems that for Zerto volumes to be protected, there's some sort of limitation with drives having to be either thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned, I forget which. But there's some sort of inherent limitation that causes an incompatibility with vVols and VMware. That has to be overcome somehow. It has to be flexible enough to be able to do its thing.

And for an additional feature, and I'm not sure if this is already in the works, I would like to see improvement on the Zerto Virtual Replication appliances, so that they are a little bit more streamlined as opposed to now where they just span multiple ZVR appliances like there were gremlins. We have our three main ZVR appliances, each one of them associated with one of the hosts, but as this thing grows it just spawns unlimited numbers of additional ZVR appliances and you end up with a bunch so that you can't really tell which is which. Better management of those ZVR appliances would help, if you have to vMotion them off of something.

If you want to migrate a ZVR appliance from one storage to another, you can't really tell what's what and there are multiple pieces related to this ZVR appliance. I would like to see that cleaned up a little bit with better management features for ZVR appliance maintenance overall.

I've been with the company since May of 2016, so I've been using Zerto for that long—going on seven years. Through the years, I have become a Zerto-Certified administrator because Zerto offers a free course on it.

It's very stable and very hands-off. I have so many other things to do and the last thing I need to be doing is babysitting Zerto, and that's not the case. Thankfully, it's one of those solutions that you set and forget. You pop in every once in a while and make sure the VPGs are still green and thinking. 

The only thing that has happened over the years is that the data store that this thing was on might have run out of space, but that was for other reasons. As long as you keep an eye on it, it will probably always be green and you'll never have to do anything.

I've been able to engage with their support many times over the years and I have not had bad experiences with them. They've always been very efficient and prompt in taking me out of very sticky situations.

Positive

We already have solutions in place for backup, such as Rubric. We used to be a Veeam shop.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup.

We have two environments, one in our main office and the other in a data center. We have virtual protection groups that protect VMs in the main office and we are able to move them from failover to the data center as a DR strategy. That will change in the future when we move all assets that currently exist in our practice office into the data center as its native location. For now, it's office and data center, but in the future it will be data center and data center.

Our Zerto environment is VMware vSphere 7, and ESXi 7. It's mostly Windows VMs but there are some Linux VMs in there. It's a mixture of thick and thin-provisioned drives, all on VMFS data stores. Those are VMs that it protects and that it is able to move from one place to another.

As for maintenance, Zerto is really hands-off. It's just the usual software updates and that's about it. 

I believe the next step is that the recovery ZVMs (Zerto Virtual Managers) will turn into appliances, so they will be full Linux appliances. That will be great because we won't have to patch the Windows box underneath. Once that migration happens, it'll be even easier to manage. The only other thing that I have to do every once in a while is when we have another VM to protect. I edit the VPG and keep moving.

We have seen ROI due to the lack of losses from downtime that has been avoided.

The pricing seems reasonable. It's still within what we consider to be value-add. Currently, we're running 50 licenses. We're probably going to downsize because there have been organizational changes in our environment and we don't protect as many VMs as we used to.

We have not looked to change over since I got here because Zerto has been that good.

We don't really leverage the restore point backup capabilities of Zerto, although we do, in our virtual protection groups, configure it to have at least two hours' worth of restore points since the last RPO. We also haven't ventured toward DR in the cloud, although there will be initiatives in the future, but it's just something we have not done yet. At least for the assets we're covering with Zerto right now, we've limited ourselves to being able to pivot between data centers.

Currently, we are using it to provide DR coverage for key assets, but I am also going to use it to move all these assets from the practice office in downtown Chicago to the data center, which will be its permanent location. I am going to leverage Zerto's move capabilities to relocate those VMs, Windows Servers, and Linux boxes to the data center permanently. And then I'll establish a recovery relationship between data centers.

For the cost of the product, its value-add, and the return on investment, which is twofold, you should definitely consider Zerto. The hands-off approach and stability of the product alone will give additional dividends. Invest in the solution. It's pretty great.

Zerto is a 10 out of 10 for me. It's one of the easiest pieces of software that I have to manage and one of the most reliable over the years.

We mostly use it for disaster recovery purposes. We do a lot of migrations as well, e.g., VM from one site to another. We use Zerto for that, as we have hundreds of VMs that we protect as our main DR position using Zerto.

In general, our DR position is entirely based around Zerto. We use it for everything. We just have a couple things that we don't put on it. There are a couple of Oracle things that we replicate with different methods, but we pretty much do everything related to DR with Zerto.

We are not using it for backup. We are using it for continuous DR and replication between two on-prem sites. 

We have two data center sites with bidirectional replications. Each site protects the other site and we have our VPGs that go back and forth.

We perform more DR testing now because it is so easy. For example, what we are doing right now is baselines on our recovery time objectives, determining, "Okay, if we recover one VM, it takes this long. If we recover another VM this size, it is this long." Then, we recover 10, 100, and 800. That way, we get kind of a forecast, when we add VMs, about how that will affect our DR stance.

When we need to move a VM from one data center to another, it is replicated there. We don't need to do any snapshots of storage. We just make a VPG for it, do a move action, and it is just there. It works really well.

The test features have been really good for us. Our DR testing goes very quickly and easily now for all our stuff with Zerto. We have our priority recovery process, where we cover our databases for our app servers and web servers. All our teams pretty much get their VMs very quickly. The RPOs are very low. 

It is very easy to use. There are a lot of training materials online on the Zerto portal, which make it very simple to learn and use. You could go from not knowing how to use it to fully understanding all of it in a day. This can be done by using the Zerto University, getting your little certification and making your boss happy. It is pretty easy to set up VPG-wise.

You have a 24-hour journal. The amount of disasters and things that you can recover from using a 24-hour journal is huge, e.g., ransomware. We haven't had to do that yet, but the possibility is there. It is good to know that you can go back as far as you need.

I would like to see the app be more like the analytics site. Right now, when you go into the analytics, you need to zoom in real tight on your browser. You get a lot more from the analytics site than you do from the app. If they made those two more similar, it would be really useful for day-to-day monitoring of your stuff.

I don't like the evacuation process. The host evacuation process could be a little simpler too. It takes our maintenance a bit longer, when we are doing host maintenance, because we still need to evacuate the vRAs manually. I know they tried to make it more automatic, but it is not quite there yet.

I have been using it for at least three years in my job function.

We have had no problems with it. Stability-wise, I can only say positive things because we haven't had any real negatives with it.

It is very scalable. If you add a data center, then you just add a ZVM at that data center, link it up, and add your vRAs. After that, you are ready to start making VPGs. It is very simple to set up.

We don't have issues with scaling. If a vRA is getting a bit overloaded, it makes little vRAs. So, it kind of handles itself. We have our vRAs at the maximum size, as far as CPU and memory, that they can be. Our RPOs are really short, so we are doing pretty well for our size.

Zerto's support is always responsive. I have never had any problems with it. Our lead Zerto engineer does a lot more stuff than I do as far as with support. Typically, I will escalate to her. If there is an issue, then I defer to her. However, as far as my experience with support, I have experienced nothing but good things. The learning portal, myZerto portal, and analytics are very good. I don't have to use support very often, which is a good thing.

If I were to rate it, I would probably rate it as 10 out of 10. Every time that I have needed them, they have been responsive and quick. I haven't used them that much, but when I have, they have been very responsive.

Positive

We have used SRM, who is Zerto's main competitor. 

SRM was pretty quick. However, the speed of recovery with Zerto is so simple. It can failover, e.g., do whatever kind of failover you want it to do. You choose your VPGs, then you are off. It is really fast and simple. A lot of people could handle using it pretty easily.

I haven't found it to be hard. When you add a new host, you just go to set up and add a new host, then it builds a vRA. It is pretty easy to manage alerts. It will tell you exactly what is wrong, e.g., this doesn't have enough scratch disk, so you need to go update that. Or, this host is offline, e.g., you forgot to evacuate it, so then you need to take it out of Zerto. So, it will alert you to that stuff.

I have done my share of deploying vRAs. Though, our lead Zerto engineer handled most of that stuff from the initial setup.

We have definitely seen a return on investment. We can move any of our VMs from either of our data centers back and forth very easily, bringing them back and doing tests as frequently as we want. We will be doing two tests next week. At previous companies, we did one test a year. Now, we are doing different stacks, e.g., if we do 20, 100, or 700 VMS, then it will be this long. So, we can forecast additional workload and how much that will affect our DR position.

Zerto is definitely a lot easier to manage. My whole team knows how to use it, since it is very simple to use and intuitive. There are a couple people who use it and I am the secondary person. We have someone who basically lives in Zerto. She adds stuff on a daily basis and we are always on top of our updates. We are always looking at whatever new features come out. We try to maximize our journals. We are up to 24 hours on a lot of them. Our average RPO is eight seconds, and that is pretty good since we have 1,500 VMs and 280-plus VPGs. We have a pretty big on-prem environment. So, the good thing about it is the frequency and ease of testing because Zerto is very simple to use. DR has enough problems to deal with and Zerto makes things a lot easier.

We have looked at Veeam and SRM. We examined the marketplace, Gartner, etc. This product that management chose, and we are pretty happy with it.

Give it a try. Move some VMs back and forth to see how easy it is to use. The one-to-many is pretty good. We have two sites, so it is not a very big deal for us to do that, but it is very useful. 

I would rate Zerto as 10 out of 10. I love Zerto's CDP solution. It is really easy to use. It does everything that we need it to do and scales easily.

We currently utilize Zerto as our disaster recovery solution. With Zerto, we replicate production virtual machines to our DR site. This approach enables us to recover and bring everything back online in a disaster swiftly. Our recovery point objective can be as low as five seconds, depending on the replication point. By journaling, we can also role back to the earliest journal period available. Currently, we keep VM journals for 30 days. 

Additionally, we employ Zerto for scaling purposes and for conducting upgrade testing. This entails spinning up VMs in an isolated environment, allowing us to perform various tests. For example, a few years ago, we tested the upgrade of our active directory domain controllers. By validating processes within this environment, we can ensure their smooth execution in production. These are the two primary use cases for Zerto in our organization.

Zerto is very user-friendly. We can select the VMs by installing a small agent specifically designed for the host. This agent identifies all the VMs. Zerto integrates smoothly with VMware, which is our primary core platform. I believe it also functions well with other hypervisors, although I am only familiar with VMware. Therefore, the integration with vSphere simplifies the process of creating groups, runbooks, and other components necessary for building our disaster recovery environment.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication performs admirably. Many times when I check, we are only about five seconds behind in terms of production time. Of course, this does depend on network performance. There have been instances where the delay exceeded five seconds due to network blips or other issues. However, for the most part, we consistently remain within a five-second range of our production environment.

As a manufacturer, a significant portion of our operations relies on timely execution in order to ensure efficient production and timely delivery of our products. We closely coordinate with external partners and customers to minimize downtime and maintain a seamless real-time production process, which is crucial for us.

The ability to conduct faster disaster recovery testing and the potential for quicker recovery in the event of a disaster have been greatly improved. Before using Zerto, our approach involved log shipping and manual recovery, which meant that the best we could do was recover the previous backup from the previous night, assuming the backup was successful. This process would take hours or even days. However, with Zerto's automation, we can now recover within seconds—five, ten, or twenty seconds from the point of the outage. We can bring systems back online automatically and at a significantly faster pace than our previous manual approach allowed.

Zerto has significantly improved our recovery time objectives compared to what they used to be. Previously, we would have to restore from backups from the previous night and manually configure systems. Therefore, the recovery time objective has likely decreased from days to approximately an hour, or perhaps even less. It's challenging to determine the precise timeframe in a real disaster scenario since we conduct disaster recovery testing. However, it is undoubtedly much better than it was before, although pinpointing the exact time of an actual disaster is somewhat different.

Zerto has helped us reduce our organization's disaster recovery testing from several days of preparation to just a single day.

Zerto is easy to configure and manage. The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario. This enables us to swiftly recover in the event of a disaster.

Zerto could be easier to configure when we need to perform data testing and establish network connectivity outside of the isolated environment. We encounter situations where there is a desire to test a printer during disaster recovery testing. However, due to the presence of an isolated environment, doing so can result in complex configurations.  It can be made to work but requires some other adaptations like using Citrix VDI sessions that are dual homed within vCenter to accomplish those tasks. 

Zerto has been improved on how it works with VMware Life Cycle Manager, but there can still be issues. Also, it seems that with the release of VMware VCF 9.X, full compatibility can only be achieved with a fresh deployment and configuration with VAIO.

I have been using Zerto for over ten years.

Zerto is highly stable. It is rare to encounter any issues with it. Typically, any problems that arise are due to changes made on our end that may have inadvertently affected it. However, Zerto remains an exceptionally stable product.

To the best of my knowledge, Zerto can scale to the extent that we require. I am not aware of any limitations, as we have not encountered any thus far.

The technical support is generally very prompt in responding, and highly knowledgeable, and they will continue working with us until the problem is resolved.

We previously used Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines and completely replaced it with Zerto.

Zerto is much easier to use compared to RecoverPoint. Previously, with RecoverPoint, we could only program-specific logs, and the VMs we wanted to replicate had to remain on those logs. If we moved the data off those logs, replication would be lost. However, Zerto keeps track of the VM regardless of its location, making it superior to RecoverPoint in terms of configuration and management.

Zerto is a more cost-effective product than Dell RecoverPoint.

The initial setup is straightforward. We need a virtual machine, install it, push it through, and configure it to communicate with the host for deployment. I mean, it's a very straightforward process. Two people were involved in the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The human resources necessary to perform a disaster recovery test are undoubtedly available. It is more economical than RecoverPoint. Now, it has been many years, and I am uncertain about the cost disparity. However, on the whole, there is a decrease in various aspects regarding the product's cost and the number of work hours needed for disaster recovery testing which is a clear return on investment.

The pricing is straightforward. We are on an enterprise licensing model, and it is based on a per-VM basis. We have the option to purchase them in blocks. This approach is quite cost-effective as we do not replicate our development and testing environments. We only replicate the production environment. Therefore, we are not paying for the entire setup, but only for what we are actually replicating.

I rate Zerto a ten out of ten.

Currently, we have a separate product that we use for backup, which has immutability features. However, we do not currently employ Zerto for immutability purposes.

We have considered using the cloud for disaster recovery, but currently, we maintain the same hardware at both locations. However, since we conduct all of our firmware testing and upgrades on our disaster recovery site first, we have decided to keep our own disaster recovery site instead of attempting to do it in the cloud.

We could easily transfer data to the disaster recovery system. One of Zerto's functions is to replicate data from virtual machines or migrate entire virtual machines, although we haven't utilized it for that purpose.

The only maintenance required is typically software updates. Whenever a new version is released, we must go through the process of upgrading Zerto. Other than that, unless there are any issues, it generally operates smoothly.

We just need to ensure that we know the number of virtual machines we would be replicating so that we can obtain the correct licensing. Otherwise, we will have to backtrack. If we underestimate, we will need to provide additional licensing. It is important to determine this information upfront, as well as the bandwidth between our site and the replication location, as it also affects our recovery objectives.

We use Zerto for multiple use cases. We are using it for disaster recovery, backup and recovery, and data protection. There is an inbuilt feature where we can utilize the Zerto platform in a hybrid model which means we have one instance on-premises and another instance on our cloud for redundancy and for cross integration.

Zerto’s near-synchronous replication works. We have configured near-synchronous replication between two different clusters. One cluster is on-premises, and another cluster is on the cloud. For near-synchronous replication, the value proposition is excellent. We are able to achieve the results for which we procured this solution. Near-synchronous replication is working perfectly. We do not see any challenges with data retrieval, complete replication, and synchronization processes. Everything is working perfectly and seamlessly.

We were able to see its benefits when we integrated it with our HPE GreenLake for DR purposes. It is a SaaS-based platform, so we are able to see the fastest way to recover data and applications. We were perfectly able to meet our recovery point and recovery times objectives through Zerto. On top of that, Zerto is protecting our data from ransomware, cyberattacks, cyber threats, national disasters, or human errors.

We are using a lot of virtual machines on-premises and in the cloud. Our main goal is to protect the complete data that we have in production and non-production clusters with different applications and big platforms.

Zerto is a market leader in continuous data protection technology. Previously, we had RPOs and RTOs in terms of minutes, whereas now, they have changed from minutes to seconds.

Zerto has an inbuilt disaster recovery protection and prevention with continuous replication. Whenever we faced any challenge related to our link being broken or not being able to access the data from the primary data center, all the backups were readily available because Zerto had replicated snapshots. We have not seen much latency or delay in recovery and the ability to get replicated data from different destinations.

We have not had any ransomware type of event. However, during the PoC and testing in an isolated environment, we have seen what would happen in the case of an attack. We could see how Zerto and its policies will take action and isolate that environment within a fraction of a minute or second.

For DR, we were previously using VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) but there was a lot of complexity. It was time-consuming. Most of the time, we saw a lot of human errors happening, and we were not able to test our DR activity. By leveraging Zerto for the past 14 or 15 months, we could achieve all of our desired results. There were no human errors. Everything went seamlessly. We are very happy with this solution.

Zerto has had a positive effect on our IT resiliency strategy. With the earlier vendor, we had a lot of problems. Our data got lost in transit during replication, snapshot creation, and recovery scenarios. By using this robust platform, we could achieve our resiliency metrics. The metrics are stable and never went below the benchmark.

Things are working perfectly. Each and every feature is complete with advanced options. It is a simplified DR operation platform. It has great visibility when it comes to protection from ransomware attacks. It has deep analytics features and robust data recovery policies. Everything is good in this platform.

The most valuable feature is the resiliency towards cyber threats for data protection. The main reasons for adopting Zerto are data protection and being able to do disaster recovery for site recovery. We can ensure that if the site goes down, data is available to all the users within a fraction of a second. On top of these, we have the resiliency towards malware and other security threats and attacks. Zerto has an embedded feature to protect our data from external and internal threats.

Zerto is very easy to use. It is very user-friendly. It is a GUI-based platform with a centralized dashboard where we can create policies, snapshots, replication policies, and disaster recovery policies. It is very user-friendly.

Patch management can be better. Although we are doing patch management on the Zerto platform in an automated manner, it can be improved by leveraging some AI-assisted technology. With the help of AI, things are going to be faster in terms of patching the solution.

We have been using Zerto for 14 or 15 months.

Since we deployed it, there have been no critical issues or major incidents. The platform is working as per the expectations. There was no downtime of any production activity. We are happy with the stability and overall performance of the complete platform.

It is completely scalable in terms of adding licenses, subscriptions, modules, and different sorts of features. Its scalability is seamless, and it is easy to use.

I have contacted them multiple times. Their support was good. We got a timely response and a timely resolution.

Positive

We were using VMware SRM previously. We switched from VMware SRM to Zerto due to complexity, cost, human errors, and data protection.

The most important security feature in Zerto is protection against ransomware attacks and internal or external threats. These capabilities were not present in the VMware platform. Cybersecurity resiliency and protection are embedded in Zerto.

Zerto is very easy to use, operate, and administer. It is very simple and easy to create and work on any of the policies and rules. It is easy to extract reports and navigate to the other tabs where we can see the health scorecard and other things. We can see all the things. It is very easy to patch the entire system. Everything is good.

We have a hybrid deployment. We have one instance of Zerto disaster recovery and protection running in an on-premises data center, and then we have another instance running on the cloud. Both are continuously replicated so that in case of any difficulty or problem with one, we can leverage the functionality of the other one. The on-premises one is taking care of the on-premises environment, and the cloud-based instance is taking care of the cloud-based environment.

Its initial deployment was very easy and flexible. We did not face any challenges. The solution is quite simple. It is easy to navigate, easy to use, and easy to migrate, although we did not go with any sort of migration. It was a fresh greenfield deployment, so we had no issues at all.

Its implementation took us about 12 weeks. It does require maintenance. The maintenance contract was already placed when we went with the purchase order for procurement. It was a multi-year support contract. It does require maintenance in terms of patch management, updates, health checks, performance tuning, policy updates, and recovery plans and procedures updates. We have a storage and backup team working 24/7 in this environment.

We directly worked with a Zerto system integrator. That integrator was recommended by Zerto. We also worked with the Zerto team for the complete architecture, framework design, implementation plan, and other things. We did not take any help from any third-party vendor or resource.

We had five to seven people for its implementation.

Its pricing is very competitive. As compared to VMware SRM, Zerto has reduced our OPEX cost by at least 30%.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten as a platform. With the help of Zerto, we have very enriched features for ransomware protection of all our data repositories. It provides great support for disaster recovery and response. Our RTOs have improved after adopting the Zerto platform, so everything is good.