HPE Zerto Software Reviews

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is ransomware protection, so basically, the entire environment is replicated.

It's helped protect us and give us recovery from ransomware. We're only allowed about an hour of downtime before we need to start making calls. 

Zerto features of HPE Zerto Software benefit my organization by allowing it to be set and forget. Once it's operational, I just check it every once in a while to make sure it's still working. If I make a new machine, I add it to the group to get replicated and that's it. It requires very little maintenance.

What I appreciate the most about HPE Zerto Software is that it works.

I'd rate the ease of use four out of five. It's fairly easy to use. 

The near-sychronous replication is good, even though we don't need that fast of a replication. If I have an application crash, I can step back a week and get back what I need.

Zerto positively impacted our RTOs and RPOS. Before Zerto, it would take us four days to recover. Now, we're looking at a couple of hours. Compared to other solutions, like Veeam, the biggest difference is that, though it is very simple, it doesn't have in-built security.

We haven't DR tested it yet. I'll bring up machines, however, this is a completely different solution than what we had. We build a complete Vault around Zerto. We made our own Cyber Vault. The most important capability for that is the air gap.

HPE Zerto Software can be improved by allowing a system inside my makeshift vault to reach out to the other system and pull backups inside, which would let me punch fewer holes. 

Currently, my understanding is you have to have two systems that are interconnected. Based on how I've built it, if I could have a system inside my makeshift vault reach out to the other system, that would be more secure.

Right now, both systems have to talk to work. We've completely rebuilt our infrastructure inside, including firewalls and everything, inside a basic vault. It has the same concept. For that system to replicate, we have to have holes in the firewall for the outside system to reach in to connect to the HPE Zerto Software inside.

A lot of the wording isn't very clear. If you don't know what you're looking at, it just oesn't make sense when you are setting it up.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for three months.

My assessment of the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software is that I haven't had any issues yet.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization in that it's all about the licenses. I have not yet expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, however, that is actually in my budget for next year.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as awesome. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as nine. The reason for my rating is that they've been very responsive. I think sometimes there's a little bit of a gap in communications, but usually, it's not too significant a deal.

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using another solution to address similar needs, which was StoreEver.

The deployment model for HPE Zerto Software is that we have two data centers that are basically stacked as one in diverse locations. When we rebuilt and built the HPE Zerto Software system, we built it the same way. We have it stretched across two data centers, so we have high availability across two data centers times two, essentially.

My experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software is that we paid for deployment. We paid for the full service and initial setup. Honestly, that was worth it. It cost as much as the licenses, however, having somebody to be there, walk you through it, find all the loopholes and the menus that aren't quite clear was valuable. There are a few of those products. Morpheus was the same way.

I have seen an ROI on HPE Zerto Software based on estimates of what it would cost us to recover from ransomware. That was the whole use case for getting it - determining what it would take if we had to recover, how much it would cost us, and what our man-hours would be. That's what justified this whole project. This project is just to see how it works. If we it, then we'll expand on it.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software is that for what you get, it's pretty cheap. We did 50 VMs as a trial case, and it was a small portion of our overall budget.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered Commvault. We are a Commvault customer and use it for backups. We also have the HP StoreEver tape system, a very large tape system. That was the chosen ransomware protection. When you're going for tape, you're in a difficult situation. Tapes work, but if you're having to rebuild from that, it's going to take literal weeks. We needed something faster.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to think about your use case. For us, it didn't make sense until we had the hardware and the desire in place. We had a solution that was workable, but the cost was justified when the business decided they needed a more guaranteed recovery time.

A little bit better communication stood out in my evaluation process of HPE Zerto Software. We tried to get more information from the sales team and we had to do a lot of research on our own. The implementation has been very good though.

I rate HPE Zerto Software ten out of ten.

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are disaster recovery and replication.

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I enjoy the most are the ease of setting up the protection groups and the ease of doing testing, such as failover tests. 

The near-synchronous replication is crucial as we don't want any data loss, which is critical.

The quick setup of disaster recovery environments helps streamline our DR testing.

HPE Zerto Software has reduced both my RTOs and RPOs. Its recovery speed is much faster than other disaster recovery solutions and much easier to use. I can recover one of our tier zero SQL servers and have it up and running in under ten minutes. If I were using one of our backup products, that would take hours.

It has helped to reduce the time it takes for our organization's DR testing, reducing it by days. The big benefit is that I can set up that environment and people can test, but if something happened and we needed to redeploy that environment, it's very quick and easy. It has reduced the overall time for the DR testing, including the testing process to make sure the applications are working.

HPE Zerto Software, as far as the replication, had near-synchronous replication, which made our RPOs better. It was easier to use, easier to recover from, so it was far superior for that purpose. Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, we were using our backup system to test DR.

I don't have any recommendations regarding how HPE Zerto Software can be improved or what additional features should be included in the next release.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for a year and a half, about 18 months.

I have experienced issues with downtime, crashes, and performance with HPE Zerto Software. When we first deployed it, we were replicating to AVS, and we've done DR tests where we've left that test environment running for a significant period and had issues with the amount of storage space it was using. Sometimes the VMs become unstable when they're running too long.

HPE Zerto Software scales well with the growing needs of my organization because we haven't had any issues there.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as good. Any case I've opened, they've been very responsive. I would give them a ten out of ten. They're very responsive and knowledgeable. They've helped me with all my issues.

Positive

I found the deployment to be easy.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software was great. It was not overly expensive, and deployment was easy. 

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered Rubrik, which has orchestrated recovery plans, and we've tried using those. HPE Zerto Software was much easier to use.

The solution has not helped to reduce downtime in any situations. 

The advice I would give to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to do it. If you need a good recovery product, HPE Zerto Software is fantastic. 

I rate HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten.

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are business continuity and disaster recovery.

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate the most include its core function, where I can replicate near instantaneously, which guarantees that I have X RTO, Y RPO, and that actually works. 

The core functionality is what's beautiful about it.

HPE Zerto Software Analytics enables me to see my entire global real estate from one SaaS portal—that's powerful. We are still less than a year into using HPE Zerto Software, currently in the deployment phase, with the plan to have a unified global deployment. It will be a cookie-cutter template for every single site, where based on the application's criticality, that type of provisioning is determined. HPE Zerto Software would automatically inherit the workload, protect it, and create a DR for it. 

HPE Zerto Software also works based off of tags, in an automatic fashion, saving a lot of time for my engineers where they don't have to babysit a tool, as it automatically takes care of itself.

HPE Zerto Software's recovery speed to other disaster recovery solutions shows that it's superior. The native technology is stream-based replication, instantaneous replication, whereas the other technologies I've used in the past are purely snapshot-based, which impact the production. HPE Zerto Software is transparent, as the production is not impacted, and it's a live write to a destination.

My impression of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is that it's a great technology, and that's what we're really counting on for the DR teams.

We're still in the process of reducing our organization's DR testing. We anticipate that, since, it doesn't impact production, we should be able to test more frequently on the DR side.

An improvement I would like to see in HPE Zerto Software is the ability to start protecting bare-metal configurations, as today it only handles virtualized workloads. I would love to see some progress in bare-metal protection. Several bare-metal use cases also need similar RTO, RPO, and business criticality thinking, which would be fantastic if HPE Zerto Software ventures into the bare-metal space.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for less than a year.

We haven't had any challenges so far, so it's pretty robust. There have been no downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization, as the licensing model is pretty good, and I'm happy with what I have, leveraging economies of scale through my team, making it positioned for us to match our scaling and buy more licenses as we grow.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as satisfactory. We have a virtual TAM with a lot of experience in the space, and we have frequent meetings with the technology team, plus the customer support is also very responsive.

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using another solution to address similar needs, specifically RecoverPoint for VMs and VMware Live Recovery, which I plan to replace. I'm also familiar with Rubrik.

The factors that led me to consider a change were the core architecture, where one solution utilized snapshot-based replication while another used stream-based replication, and HPE Zerto Software's approach is more effective than snapshot-based replication.

The way its architecture is formatted, deployment is fairly easy for us to get started. We can get set up and be production-ready very fast.

My experience with pricing, setup, costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software was pretty good and in line with what I expected.

Before HPE Zerto Software, I considered other solutions such as RecoverPoint for VMs, VMware Cloud on AWS with the VMLR tool, and a few other industry-standard options, mostly snapshot-based, and a few replication-based, but HPE Zerto Software was the better of all of them. What stood out with HPE Zerto Software is that when making a purchase, it's a combination of great technology and the price matching my expectations, so HPE Zerto Software fit the bill in both cases, which is why I went ahead and purchased it.

Regarding expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, it's too soon to tell if we will, as we've been using it for less than a year. 

I rate HPE Zerto Software overall as eight out of ten. 

I won't advise other organizations since everyone has to evaluate their own footprints to understand what's the right fit for them. 

Our main use case for HPE Zerto Software is for DR purposes—that's disaster recovery—for our separate DR site.

What I appreciate about HPE Zerto Software is that it seems fairly easy to use, and there are a couple of minor challenges that we figured out. We also found ways around those. 

The way HPE Zerto Software specifically benefited us is that when we've had to do some testing to show we can actually bring things up in our disaster recovery site, we're able to do it with relative ease, allowing us to check off boxes on testing for either auditors or some of the other cyber insurance or whomever else that we need to validate that through. It made it a lot easier and gave everybody else a sense of comfort.

HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is great, just based on the small timeline that's there; that's what I found to be most beneficial. Near-synchronous replication is very important to our organization as it gives us that safety and security blanket of knowing that the data is being mirrored or replicated up to another environment, so in case we were to have some kind of disaster locally, we would at least have another copy sitting somewhere else within a very short period of time.

HPE Zerto Software has helped reduce downtime in some situations; we haven't had to use it officially to bring anything back up, but we have tested numerous times throughout the year for different applications to see how long it takes for us to bring things up, and while we haven't had to actually use that in place just yet, we know it's there if certain things happen.

HPE Zerto Software has saved us time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes; we've been able to utilize it just for doing some work with it. But we've also found that certain situations will not work for us since we haven't finalized the air gap vault in place, and we know that using some simulated ransomware attacks would cause problems, so we wouldn't be able to recover. That's why we're looking and trying to see what we can do to mitigate that issue.

In testing, I wouldn't be able to come up with a number right now as we take our time to ensure we don't miss anything. Usually, we can normally do that within a day. HPE Zerto Software has definitely impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively; they have come down considerably.

In comparing it to other disaster recovery solutions that we've used in the past, I would say that since we own and use HPE Zerto Software, it clearly beat out any of the competitors we had looked at previously. We're not yet using a cyber vault solution or immutable data copies. I can't say how HPE Zerto Software can be improved just yet; I want to see us get the vault in place first to test that out, so we're hoping to look at it here sometime soon. Our DR testing will probably save about 50% of the time.

The only thing I could suggest for HPE Zerto Software would be better support for detached drives in a clustered environment, as it's currently not supported very well unless everything's running on a virtualized VMDK file. If it's detached an iSCSI drive, it doesn't work, so that would be about the only thing I would suggest.

We have been using HPE Zerto Software for six to seven years.

HPE Zerto Software has been stable and reliable every time we've had to go through it thus far.

HPE Zerto Software has scaled with us thus far.

The support we've received from HP Zerto has typically been very good, and they normally answer any questions we have; we're looking at a couple of gaps we found, and we'll be testing that out to see how that's going to meet our situation.

Positive

Prior to using HPE Zerto Software, we weren't actually using anyone for a similar type of situation; we were relying on backups.

For the most part, it's very easy to set up, and the time it takes for it to keep things in sync is very small, which has also been a huge benefit. We've seen that work out very well when we've had to test part of our DR situations.

I've seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. I've been able to see that return based on the time it saves us for recovery and testing for DR testing.

I can't say what those competitors are since we've had HPE Zerto Software for about six to seven years now, and I don't remember which ones they were at the time.

Initially, HPE Zerto Software has helped us deal with many challenges. We have had a couple of bouts where it did cause a problem, however, part of this is due to the fact that we haven't implemented the new air gap solution yet, so we run into some difficulties there. We are reevaluating that through our rep and also talking to them now just trying to get more information on that.

Our deployment model for HPE Zerto Software is all on-prem; we keep everything on-prem with our primary data center to a disaster recovery location located out of state.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give the product overall a big nine, probably over nine; it's not perfect. There's always going to be some pieces that are missing.

We use Zerto primarily as a cloud provider to set up either ground-to-cloud or cloud-to-other cloud sites for disaster recovery. 

We also use it as a migration tool to get people's virtual VMs from ground to cloud. 

Another use case is to protect our virtual machines in our environment. We have our own internal IT, and we protect them with Zerto, but the vast majority, probably 98% or 99% or even more, of what we do is with customers since we're a cloud service provider. As a service provider, we're not classified as an MSP. We do resell Zerto to our clients.

What I appreciate about Zerto is the speed to recover. We have two ways that we migrate them into the cloud: one is with Zerto and one is with Acronis. Acronis is a bare-metal restorer that takes much longer to do the restore, depending on the size of the VM. 

I appreciate that Zerto already has the disk synchronized to the cloud, and it just updates deltas every five seconds or so. Should there be an instance, such as a migration, or if the customer has been ransomed, or if they want to roll back for any reason, they can do it because we have their data in the cloud. 

When I was an IT manager, our RPO and RTO were measured in hours or days; now it's measured in minutes, which is huge for disaster recovery. 

The interface and ease of use of Zerto make it easy. We're getting into version 10 now. The version 10 update 4 took really long to deploy, and we had to back off and do update 2 because that seems to deploy much quicker. 

Other than that, it's pretty easy to deploy and manage; we can set it up through Zerto Cloud and update it remotely. 

I see the benefits of Zerto immediately after deploying it. As a former IT manager, when I saw what it did, it was a revelation, and I thought this is excellent for disaster recovery. Zerto's near synchronous replication is fantastic. It helps our RPO and RTO and is beneficial all around. In terms of RTO and RPO, Zerto improves them to seconds. It indicates right in the health of the VPG how many seconds the RPO or RTO is. 

Our DR testing with Zerto is much quicker. We encourage our customers to do testing so they get familiar with recovery processes. We maintain a playbook and a method of procedure, and every test adds something new to the MOP, improving how quickly we can resolve any disaster. 

Zerto has a significant impact on our IT resiliency strategy. We do it for customers, making all the difference in the world. It's not just about me as an IT manager using Zerto; as a service provider, we host people's data in the cloud for disaster recovery, making instantaneous recovery possible that wouldn't be as quick otherwise.

In terms of improvement, Zerto does reasonably with support and responds quickly to help us. I don't know if there's anything they could do better, but we'd prefer Zerto to work with our open cloud product for disaster recovery and migrations. So far, they haven't made their product compatible with KVM, and we would appreciate seeing that.

I have been using Zerto in my career for four years.

I haven't seen much instability with Zerto; it seems pretty stable overall.

Zerto scales efficiently; we have hundreds of hosts, with production and disaster recovery environments. We set it up to replicate, such as from Grand Rapids to Indianapolis or Detroit, so it scales pretty efficiently.

Zerto's support is reasonably good. If they know I'm on the call with a customer, they usually join a Zoom session quickly to help resolve issues. Sometimes it's resolved quickly, while other times it may take two or three sessions, but they're generally pretty good.

I use alternatives to Zerto, as I'm a Veeam engineer certified in Veeam. We use Acronis and Cohesity, but in my opinion, there's nothing that works for disaster recovery quite like Zerto. The main differences between Zerto and Veeam are ease of use and convenience. 

Veeam allows a restore of a server in a test environment while detecting any malware before connecting to the network, which I haven't seen in Zerto. Zerto just replicates what's there without evaluating for malware. Zerto is quick and easy to use while Veeam is more complicated but has more capabilities for backup. I haven't greatly used Veeam's continuous replication feature, but from my experience, Zerto is easier to set up and use, and it's less expensive as.

When I first deployed Zerto about four years ago, it took about 15 to 20 minutes to set up after the client had a Windows server ready. We'd give them the installer and set it up, then pair it with their hosts. After installing the VRAs and setting up the VPGs, once the first VPG is set up, we can do the rest without client involvement. Overall, the total time ranged from half an hour to 45 minutes, depending on how many they wanted to set up initially.

I'm a Professional Services Engineer, which means that I implement projects. When our salesman sells disaster recovery with Zerto to a client, I'm the one who sets it up, creates the VPGs, and ensures all the syncs work properly; the long-term maintenance is handled by another team.

Zerto has a significant impact on our IT resiliency strategy. We do it for customers, making all the difference in the world.

Zerto is easier to set up and use, and it's less expensive.

We use alternatives such as Acronis and Cohesity.

The recovery process depends on the customer. Zerto is one of those things that we set up and monitor, but if the customer isn't monitoring their VMs, it can complicate things. 

We had one customer who made a decision to protect only a few of their VMs and then got hacked, which wasn't Zerto's fault or ours; it was their decision.

However, for customers that have everything protected, we've had quite a few successful recoveries. There have been situations involving ransomware or data recovery situations when we used Zerto. I haven't personally been involved in one, but our company has had multiple incidents where we were able to recover without paying the ransom.

Zerto does require maintenance on our end. We register the client in the cloud, and if they move away from us, we unregister them and remove their tenant. We also have updates to do, including the Zerto virtual manager and the virtual replication appliances on the hosts. With hundreds of hosts and multiple data centers, we have a lot of work to do, which is why we have someone dedicated to updating Zerto. 

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Zerto a 9.

The purpose was for cloud migration, as it's for cloud DR as a service. It's for DR purposes on the cloud and also on-prem to different sites. The main challenge is that I'm not working with one customer but I'm working with multiple customers. My role is I'm an architect that provides DR solutions and cloud solutions to the customers in Israel, but not only in Israel. Most of the use cases are for DR as a service. The challenge is to provide a disaster recovery solution for big organizations, and they are not limited to their on-prem sites.

The most liked feature in HPE Zerto Software is that it uses CDP, Continuous Data Protection. It's a protocol that provides a very low RPO, which is Recovery Point Objective. This means how much data you lose when a disaster occurs. This is the main feature of the product. It's called CDP, and until two years ago, it was the only product able to provide that. Today, there are competitors, but they are not as mature as HPE.

The near-synchronous replication is the CDP I just mentioned. The near-zero replication is possible due to the CDP usage, and this is a game changer. DR in the cloud is much cheaper, and the ROI is absolutely in favor of cloud DR because we do not need to purchase any hardware. As a customer, I do not need to purchase hardware, rent a physical data center, or bring all my equipment to locate in the DR site.

It's not only in the cloud; it's DR as a service, which means that the recovery operations are performed by a dedicated team specializing in this area. Organizations don't need to have the expertise to manage and know HPE Zerto Software platform because a dedicated team of the cloud provider is actually operating all the necessary steps to recover the systems. Comparing to a regular backup solution, it reduces downtime by 95%. The recovery time objective reduction comes from the fact that it's CDP. Additionally, HPE Zerto Software comes out of the box with an orchestration tool, which means you can automate the recovery process and don't need to perform tasks manually for the recovery operations. The recovery process with HPE Zerto Software is better compared to other DR solutions. However, it's equivalent for some products or methods.

There are few areas for improvement that are mostly technical. It has limited support mostly for VMware environments; they are trying to reduce support for Hyper-V and now bring it back, but it's not working as easy with VMWARE. There is a problem where you need to perform a full sweep to back up and sync a VM from the beginning, which occurs in some scenrios. There are times you need to restart synchronization from the start, which is a heavy operation without clear reasoning, consuming a lot of resources.

I have been architecting soluitions with this product for four years.

I rate the stability of HPE Zerto Software at nine.

Scalability is rated at 10, but it is limited mostly to VMware.

The deployment, whether cloud or on-prem, is easy. The deployment process takes about one to four hours, specifically the deployment of the HPE Zerto Software footprint.

in DRaaS, maintenance is easy because it's cloud-based; everything happens behind the scenes for the customers and end users.

DR in the cloud is much cheaper, and the ROI is absolutely in favor of cloud DR because we do not need to purchase any hardware. As a customer, I do not need to purchase hardware, rent a physical data center, or bring all my equipment to locate in the DR site. Having it in the cloud is very beneficial for customers and organizations. It's not only in the cloud; it's DR as a service, which means that the recovery operations are performed by a dedicated team specializing in this area. Organizations don't need to have the expertise to manage and know HPE Zerto Software platform because a dedicated team of the cloud provider is actually operating all the necessary steps to recover the systems.

I would say the pricing is expensive, rated at 10.

For now, HPE Zerto Software is the best with CDP, although other vendors are catching up. In two years, it's not guaranteed they will be the leaders.

HPE Zerto Software is not the only recovery tool needed for ransomware recovery. It provides the ability to deploy systems for review and cleanup, it's beneficial to use it to reduce the time for bringing back the system for ransomware investigation. It reduces time by about 50% in a ransomware case. I absolutely recommend HPE Zerto Software, but my first advice is to ensure proper sizing and validate that applications are supported by a tool that supports CDP. There's a possibility that a VM, which is hosting an application, may not always be considered by HPE Zerto Software when copying VM data, so checking application support with CDP systems is crucial. 

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software include providing near-zero recovery. We're replicating several of our VMs for instant recovery purposes.

Zerto features benefit my organization. I've never had to use HPE Zerto Software in a real disaster scenario, however, we test it every year and it performs its job effectively. 

It's easy to use, setup, and configure. It's also very easy to do a recovery.

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate most include its integration with our VMware environment, which makes replicating VMs really easy. My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication capability are that it's one of the main features why we purchased it, as it allows us to restore from anywhere from basically five seconds ago to three days ago.

HPE Zerto Software has impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively by providing near-real-time replication and instant recovery, which has definitely reduced our RPOs and RTOs.

The solution has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing as it allows our DR tests to proceed very quickly. We conduct several tests each year, with the process being very seamless. The saved time has been allocated to value-add tasks because it's one less thing we have to focus on when we can easily perform a DR test.

Although we have not had situations involving ransomware or other causes, HPE Zerto Software has saved us time in general-purpose recoveries.

Fortunately, we've not had to use HPE Zerto Software to reduce downtime in any cases, but we know that it works effectively.

My only suggestion for how HPE Zerto Software could be improved would be to integrate with other virtualization platforms, as many organizations are moving off of VMware, so having options there would be beneficial.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for probably close to eight to ten years, since before it was an HP product.

I would describe the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as consistently stable over the years. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software.

HPE Zerto Software scales effectively with the growing needs of my organization as we just have a small footprint where we use it in our most production-oriented VMs, and it has scaled fine for our needs. 

I have expanded the usage of HPE Zerto Software; it's a relatively small footprint, but it has grown a little bit over time, and it's been easy to include more VMs in our recovery.

I cannot specifically evaluate customer service and technical support because I'm not usually the one to call support, but I've never heard complaints from others at my company who use it. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as probably a nine or ten, although I cannot really answer that since I haven't been the one to contact support.

Positive

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using traditional backup systems, which obviously don't have as low of RTOs and RPOs.

It's easy to set up, configure, and performing a recovery is very straightforward with simple steps. 

I have seen return on investment with HPE Zerto Software as it is affordable and definitely prevents us from needing to purchase other similar software.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of HPE Zerto Software has been that the product has been affordable for us, so I have no complaints from a pricing standpoint.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered other solutions, however, it's been so long ago that I don't remember. However, we have been consistently happy with it so we haven't shopped around.

In my evaluation process, what stood out positively was the ease of use, as the setup was simple, and performing the actual DR recoveries was extremely easy. My experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software has been smooth, particularly the setup with our VMware environment.

We didn't really change from anything in particular, so the factors that led us to consider HPE Zerto Software were more of an add-on to a traditional backup system. My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to ensure it aligns with your needs, and to try to get a demo of it and go through a proof of concept. 

I rate HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten.

We use Zerto at a very large public sector undertaking in India that manufactures power equipment. 

It is being used for continuous data protection, replication, and recovery. We have a consolidated data center in Hyderabad, India, and we are replicating the data to another data center in Hyderabad. For replication and continuous data protection, we are using Zerto between both sites.

It simplifies management. The console provided by Zerto is very simple to use. With the click of a button, we can do the failover and failback.

It helps with business continuity. We can easily failover from one site to another and back. We are able to do most of the operations very easily.

It does asynchronous replication. When the data gets modified in the main data center, the modified data is immediately replicated to the other data centers. It helps to maintain minimum RPO in seconds and the RTO in minutes.

We have a number of virtual machines for databases, application servers, web servers, Internet servers, and proxy servers. We are using Zerto for the complete replication of these VMs to the other data center.

Our RPOs are in seconds, and our RTOs are in minutes. That is critical for the applications. Earlier, we were using another replication software from IBM. We did not get the same RPOs and RTOs. Zerto is helping us a lot in preventing data loss. The data loss is minimal. It is only in seconds. This is a very important feature of Zerto, where it maintains RPOs in seconds and RTOs in minutes.

In November 2024, we faced a ransomware attack. With the help of Zerto, we were able to identify the journal entry that was malicious. Zerto gave us an alert, and we were able to identify the clean copy by going backward. We went back a few seconds. It maintains journal entries every five seconds, so we were able to identify a good copy of the data. We were then able to do the failover. Because of Zerto, we had minimal data loss. We were able to identify a good copy of the data and do the failover to the main data center.

With Zerto, we have become more resilient and scalable. We were able to scale from a few VMs to about 250 VMs. Our scalability has improved a lot because of Zerto. The ransomware resilience feature has made us more resilient. We chose Zerto over VMware Site Recovery Manager because VMware Site Recovery Manager did not have the ransomware resilience feature. In November 2024, when we faced an attack, with the help of Zerto, we were able to recover within seconds with a minimum amount of downtime. We were up and running quickly.

The features I find most beneficial about Zerto include continuous data protection, easy configuration, and simplified management with a user-friendly interface. We were able to configure it easily for our needs. Continuous data protection between our two data centers is also valuable.

I also like its scalability and flexibility. We have scalability from a few virtual machines to more. We can increase the number of VMs according to our requirements. Zerto scales very easily with our increased number of VMs.

Zerto also provides ransomware safeguards. While doing the continuous data replication, Zerto creates journal entries. When the data gets transferred to the other site, Zerto checks whether the replicated data is malicious or clean. If it is a good copy, it makes a journal entry. If there is any malicious code, it immediately gives an alert. We are very happy with this ransomware protection feature of Zerto.

Its pricing could be better. Also, Zerto needs to improve its reporting capabilities and provide better dashboards. A number of times, I had to contact Zerto for more reports. They are very customer-friendly. They helped us and gave us some customized reports, but its reporting capabilities could be better.

I have been using the solution for about two years.

It has improved scalability significantly. I was able to scale from a few virtual machines to about two hundred fifty virtual machines.

The support team is very customer-friendly. When I raise a ticket, they respond quickly with minimal waiting time. I often get a call within half an hour. Their customer support is reliable and fast.

Positive

Previously, I used some other replication software from IBM but did not achieve the desired RPOs and RTOs. This led me to choose Zerto.

The deployment was very easy. With a few clicks, we were able to configure Zerto for both of our data centers in Hyderabad. It was very easy to configure. It has a very intuitive classical user interface. The configuration was done with minimal clicks.

In about one hour, we were up and running with the first replication. We were able to do the first replication within an hour from our main data center to our secondary data center in Hyderabad. It is efficient and reliable.

Its maintenance is being taken care of by Zerto.

I am the main database administrator, and two of my colleagues also participated. Three of us were involved.

Zerto is definitely more costly compared to its competitors, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager. It may not be suitable for small and medium-sized industries.

We considered VMware Site Recovery Manager but did not opt for it because it did not offer the ransomware resilience feature like Zerto.

Overall, I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. The software is exceptional in terms of continuous data protection, resilience, scalability, agility, and ransomware protection.