HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use it for storage and replication. In our organization, our team is responsible for the disaster recovery process.

Before, we were able to test about 16 virtual machines in production. Now, we can do the same exercise with 180 virtual machines, in less time. And previously, we needed our whole team to execute the manual process with Hitachi. Now, we use half that number of personnel in this exercise.

The speed of recovery is definitely better with Zerto versus the previous mechanisms we had. It has helped to reduce downtime without a doubt. On two occasions when we used Zerto for recovery, we reduced the downtime by about 80 percent.

We had an issue with change configurations in a database and we couldn't roll back those changes. We used Zerto to recover the state of the virtual machines to 10 minutes before the changes.

It has also exceeded our expectations when it comes to RTO.

The replication and recovery features are the most valuable. We have been able to recover files with Zerto. First, we enable the virtual machines on the recovery site and then we navigate to find the file that we need. On two occasions, other departments in our organization reported issues with specific virtual machines. We used the checkpoint feature of the Zerto to enable the recovery of those machines to a point that was a few minutes prior to the problem.

It's an excellent tool for the replication of VMs.

We had some issues with replication, especially on Linux, but we have already resolved them.

I would like them to enable more backup configuration features. I'm not sure if Zerto can give us immutable files for ransomware protection. That could improve the backup.

I have been using Zerto for about two years.

The stability gets a high grade from me. I don't recall any issues.

Our principal site is located in one city and the recovery site is in another city. They are connected by an extended LAN.

In terms of scalability, it is good because, on the two occasions that we have done the upgrade process, they were "hot," meaning we didn't need to turn off our servers and that's very important for us. We always have our tools available.

We have opened cases on several occasions for update processes and for issues that we had at a moment when we were doing an exercise and replicating a VM to the recovery site. Their response was immediate and they were very efficient in coming up with resolutions.

Positive

We didn't have any previous backup solution.

The pricing is a little more expensive in comparison to other tools.

Knowing the backup options that Zerto has, we could be using it to back up our entire company's virtual machines, but we are just using its replication and backup for some virtual machines, but not all of them. That's because we are limited in terms of our license. We are only replicating about 30 percent of our virtual machines, those that have been identified as the most important for the organization.

We checked out Veritas Risk Advisor and Veeam.

It is meeting our RPO expectations and we are happy with the RPO.

We have previously used Zerto for data center migration projects. We have another data center migration coming up within the next year where we will be using Zerto as well.

We had pretty strict requirements when it came to cross data center migration capabilities. We wanted to ensure that no plugins or drivers were needed. We also wanted a simple deployment. Zerto very easily fit that bill.

The most valuable feature is Zerto's ability to synchronize data to the remote destination prior to the actual live migration date. This saves a massive amount of time during the actual migrations, and has been extremely beneficial. Having the data already synchronized on the evening of the migrations makes the final moves fast, easy, and seamless.

The interface is very easy to use. The product is easy to understand. We have had great success in using it for migrations. The benefit for us has primarily been the ease of use and stability of the product.

The VPG model has caused a bit of a concern. We are considering using Zerto to replace Site Recovery Manager. SRM is very easy when we have entire data stores being replicated. We don't have to make any decisions when it comes to groupings of VMs. If we move to Zerto, which we are considering, we will have to work closely with our applications teams to create VPGs and determine how the VMs will be grouped. This will probably be beneficial in the long term, but short term it will create more work for our team.

I spoke to a Zerto engineer who mentioned that we could do a VPG at the cluster level and a VPG at the datastore level. However, the one issue we've seen with VPGs is if the synchronization fails the entire VPG has to be recreated. Even though we can cover our environment at the cluster level or datastore level, that wouldn't be ideal. We really need a simpler solution for DR that will cover all of our VMs at once, instead of spending a considerable amount of time on VPG creation. 

We have been using Zerto for about three years.

The stability is very good. All of the components that we set up for Zerto have been very stable. 

Scalability has met our needs.

Support has been excellent. We had a couple of issues initially with a VPG that wasn't functioning properly. Support was very quick to respond. They were able to assist us and resolve the issue very quickly. We have only had to call support one time.

Positive

We also use Site Recovery Manager. SRM does not have the same feature set for migrations that Zerto has.

The product was easy to deploy. At the time, the only thing that we wanted to improve was to have an appliance for the ZVM, instead of a Windows server. I understand an appliance is available now. This will be very beneficial in the future.

The deployment was straightforward. We basically went through the documentation and then had a planning meeting with Zerto. Once we understood all of the requirements we were able to deploy very quickly with really no issues at all. We deployed Zerto in less than a week.

We implemented the product ourselves. Zerto's expertise has always been very good.

Our migrations were all successful. We had no issues at any point during the project. That is what really sold us on Zerto.

The licensing costs are not cheap. It is an expensive product. However, you do get what you pay for.

There was really no other product that compared to Zerto. Zerto had exactly what we were looking for in a data center migration product. It had the ease of use and interface that we were looking for, that is, very simple and straightforward.

Zerto's ability to copy the data first, then synchronize just prior to the migrations made it much faster and easier for us to use than other solutions.

Understand the VPG configuration. Understand that you will need to make some decisions as to how to cover your VMs. We eventually went with one VPG per VM for our migrations. This is because we discovered if the VPG has a problem, then you need start over and recreate the VPG. If you choose to cover 50 VMs on a VPG, and if that VPG fails for some reason, then you need to restart the whole process. So you need to consider your VPG design and how you are grouping your VMs.

We haven't used it yet for disaster recovery, but that is something that we will be looking at over the next year.

We have had great success with the product. It is one of the very few products that we have recently used that literally had no issues and worked exactly as designed. At every single point in our migration, it was successful. We had multiple migration waves that occurred over a period of a year and a half. We literally had no failures during that entire time, which is of rare in the industry and made us very happy. Now that we have another data center migration project coming up, we decided we were just going to go straight back to Zerto.

We purchased Zerto for our business continuity and DR approach to make sure that workloads are available. We have 1,000 servers but are only protecting 250 of them because they are our core servers. The ones we don't currently protect are Tier three applications.

We have had many instances where VMs were corrupted by an application owner, where they were installing something and did not create a snapshot in VMware for it. Instead of tapping into our backups, with just two clicks, we were able to restore the VM back to its original state. It helps a lot in the day-to-day running of our business.

In some instances, there is data within transactions that I need to recover that might be lost. When using Zerto, I might be losing five seconds worth of data instead of losing ten minutes. That helps a lot. Zerto also helped us reduce downtime and we have been able to recover VMs fairly quickly by just clicking two buttons. Within a minute I would have a VM up and running and ready to go with no issues at all.

The RTO and RPO are the most valuable features. I get six-second snapshots for every single time that data gets replicated. I can go back six seconds past whatever happened. The frequency of the snapshots depends on your latency. It could be as frequent as every two seconds.

The overall management plan could improve. If something happens with the VM on the vSphere side, the error codes are pretty weak. If there was a way to click on something within the UI that takes us to a support page or article, that would be very beneficial.

We have been using Zerto for six years. 

This is a stable solution. Most of the time, the issues that we have had with our ZVM going down are caused by us. 

This is a scalable solution. We deployed it in eight different locations. 

The support could be better. Overall they do have the answers for me when I need them but it takes them some time. The Level 1 support team that I contact first when I call in could be more knowledgeable about products and be able to resolve an issue instead of having to wait for a Level 2 or Level 3 person to assist.

I rate their support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I've seen and looked into the VMware SRM. We also use another company, Cohesity, for our backups. They also have a solution for replication. When comparing these solutions, the RTO and RPO times are fairly reduced when using Zerto to get to a point where we need to be functional right away in an event of disaster recovery.

We have experienced ROI using this solution. It helps a lot when we use Zerto to test out certain applications. It offers a lot of value for our upper management to see how this product helps us in the event of a DR.

The pricing for this solution could be cheaper. They have two licensing tiers. When we purchased it, they didn't have a license for the cloud model. Certain things that I used to get with the basic licensing are no longer available. They are only available in the Cloud. Overall, the licensing model could be simplified. 

I would advise others to test drive the solution themselves. They should play with it, see how it works themselves and try to break it. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use Zerto for disaster recovery and backups.

When we use our VMware environment, sometimes the HP hardware is not compatible, and we start to lose data. I like that we can restore our whole application and public-facing system through Zerto.

It's the easiest way to do disaster recovery. It's less complicated than VMware.

Compared to the ease of use of other DR or backup solutions, Zerto's dashboard is the easiest. The user interface is much simpler, and maybe, that's what makes it easier.

Zerto helped reduce downtime when our data is corrupted. We're able to restore it relatively fast. There may be downtime of about half an hour for us, but the users don't see it; it's transparent.

The speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other DR solutions is about the same.

Zerto reduced the number of staff involved in DR situations. We went from ten people to two for the whole organization.

It also reduced our organization's DR testing by about 30%. We've actually been able to move a lot of our resources (people) to AWS Innovation.

Zerto can improve the dashboard by making it even more simple. Right now, there's a lot on the dashboard, and it can be overwhelming. If you're an experienced user, then you'll find it easy to use, but if you're a beginner, it will take you some time.

We've been using it for seven years now.

Zertos' stability is very good.

It's very easy to scale, but the only problem is that there are additional costs associated with it. 

Zerto's technical support is excellent. When you open a ticket, they get back to you right away. If you mark it as a priority, then you have instantaneous access to support. I would give technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have VMware products and tried to implement VMware Site Recovery Manager. However, it was just a little too difficult for our environment.

At first, the initial deployment was complex, but now it's relatively easy. For someone experienced, it is not a problem.

We have five data centers, and we started with one and deployed it in phases. Because there are lots of firewalls and access, we picked one data center and then built the next one.

We implemented it ourselves, and it took about a year to deploy it across the whole system.

For a long time, we needed disaster recovery that was more than IBM's, which is in Colorado. We needed something on-premises that was instantaneous. That's what Zerto offers, and that's the ROI we have with Zerto.

The last time I looked at pricing, it was very good. It's much cheaper than VMware by far.

We looked at VMware Site Recovery Manager and IBM, but they didn't work well.

The best way to look at it is from an ease-of-use standpoint because when you look at VMware's version, it's a little bit more complex even though it is native to where we use it. That's why we went with Zerto.

Considering what we use Zerto for, I'd give it a ten out of ten because it is our primary solution.

It is mainly for disaster recovery of our public-facing website.

I oversee the infrastructure team. I'm the lead for the infrastructure. It is not one of the technologies that I've primarily managed. As an infrastructure lead, I have my hands on every project, and it is hard for me to just focus on one. Especially because it is more of a disaster-recovery type solution for us, as long as replication is going fine and there are no issues, we don't really go in and play with it much.

It does what it claims to do. I can't say whether it improves anything. It is just the fact that we want to make sure our public-facing website is up 24/7, and Zerto gives us the capability of doing that.

It hasn't reduced downtime because we haven't experienced any downtime yet. We've done annual testing to make sure that it is working properly. So far, so good.

The replication is valuable. We have two data centers, and it is replicating from our main data center to another data center. In the event that there is an issue with the first one, it just goes over, and we have the website up and running. It does an automatic build. It keeps our website up and running without interruption. It is constantly replicating. It has the most up-to-date information, at least until the main one goes down, and then it automatically brings up the other one. It is already pre-configured with the network and everything else. So, the website is up and running in seconds.

The recovery was pretty seamless. It took about a minute for it to kick over when we did our testing. So, it wasn't a long downtime.

Zerto is more of a set-and-forget-it type of solution. As long as the replication is continuous and there are no issues, I don't touch Zerto. We don't have a lot of workload that needs to be up. We just have our web server and our applications here. Those are two main servers that we get up and running in a disaster-recovery type situation. I can't give any area of improvement from a real-world experience because we haven't had that issue, but from testing, Zerto has been working great. 

It is not something that goes beyond what our use case is for. When it comes to a solution, one of the things the management wants is to standardize platforms. That's why when Rubrik came out with their solution, they wanted to look at it. For instance, if you have multiple technologies, you're going to need admins to manage all those different ones. I would like Zerto to be something that fits all our needs, including the backup that Rubrik provides, but I understand that not all solutions can be that way. When I started working here, my predecessor who was managing Zerto had no documentation. So, I had to take over. No one else knew how to manage Zerto. So, there is just that type of learning process. That's why management wants to standardize on one solution so that it is easier to cross-train, but that's not Zerto's part. It just happens to be our environment and our management style. Zerto as a solution has been great for us.

I've been using it for about three years.

It has been stable for us. We had networking issues that caused the replication to break, but once we had that resolved, replication was seamless again. The
networking issues were on our side.

I don't have much input for its scalability because we only have a maximum of three servers that we need Zerto to bring up and get running as soon as possible, in the event that the main data center goes down.

It has been great. I've only requested support twice. The support engineer that worked with me has been great. I believe it was for the upgrade process, and he reached out to me and informed me that there was a new version that fixed a lot of the bugs from the previous version. He worked with me to get both data centers up to the latest version. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

I haven't used any other one. Rubrik just happens to be coming out with a similar solution, and because we use Rubrik, management wants us to take a look at it and do a comparison between the two.

Aside from working with the network team to get all the networking pieces configured, it was pretty straightforward. Installing the agents on the servers and doing the initial replication took the longest time because we have close to a terabyte of data that has to be replicated from one data center to another, but other than that, it was pretty seamless.

It gives us peace of mind. It hasn't happened yet, but it does happen. Based on our annual testing, we are pretty much happy with what Zerto has done or can do.

Zerto is pretty reasonable. I haven't checked to see how much Rubrik is going to quote us for their solution. At least for us, the price doesn't play a big factor in the decision-making because it is a pretty small deployment for our use case.

We're currently evaluating Rubrik because we use that as our primary backup solution, and they just came out with a technology that's similar to Zerto. My managers, the executives, and I are in discussion on possibly looking at their solution and comparing it to Zerto to see which is the right fit for us.

In terms of ease of use, I haven't played with the Rubrik one yet just because they just announced it, but Zerto is pretty straightforward. I went in, and I did all the configuration myself within about 30, 40 minutes.

It is a great solution for what it does, but every company and every department has its own use cases. It is just a matter of evaluating different solutions that are available and picking the right one for your environment. For us, Zerto happens to be the right one.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10 just because it fits our needs for the solution and the environment we're in.

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.

Our primary use case is disaster recovery, as well as data center migration when we went to a new VMware infrastructure platform.

The first benefit was being able to sleep better at night knowing that we can recover instantly. Because we do public safety, we have some databases that are terabytes in size, and were we to have to recover them using standard backup software, it would take a significant amount of time. With Zerto we can recover instantly in the event of an emergency. 

And when we went to a new data center, we had the ability to do a cross-center migration of the systems, and we found Zerto was much faster. We could migrate 25 to 30 servers and have them up and going in less than five minutes in the new environment, with very minimal downtime.

It has also reduced the number of staff involved in data recovery situations. We find that we really only need one person to manage it. That person was able to write up documentation so that any of the other system administrators can jump in and handle it, because of the ease of use.

For me, the most valuable feature is the ability to recover critical systems, such as public safety, within a few minutes. In addition, the RPO is six seconds of data loss, tops.

Also, the ability to adjust the journal is important. If there were a ransomware event and we were not able to recognize that ransomware event for, say, four hours, we could go back, literally per minute, to the previous 24 to 48 hours to have instant recoverability. That, to me, is the big value of the product: to have our systems up with very minimal downtime.

We've been using Zerto for three to four years.

The stability has been excellent unless there is an issue with something on our end. For example, if a virtual replication appliance exists on a specific host and we take the host offline, Zerto will flash alerts at us, which I love. Zerto is always telling us when there's an issue with recovery. But the application itself has never gone down.

We haven't even noticed any over-utilization across our circuits, with the ability to throttle how much it's using. And once the initial sync is done, it's just kilobytes to keep it in sync. We don't see any downtime from using it. We haven't had a disaster situation recovery yet, but when we do, we're confident because our tests with it are successful.

Scaling has been easy in that we had multiple data centers that we needed to combine into one. It was very easy to create "spokes," where we installed different Zerto appliances in the other data centers and then linked them to the master to migrate them over. From a VPG perspective, we've had to scale out and it's never been a problem.

We have about 250 virtual servers. We had about 100 and we recently purchased another 150 licenses so that we could protect the entire environment. We're in the process of applying those licenses to all of them. We haven't applied all of them yet because we like to categorize which Virtual Protection Groups we want them to be in, so that they spin up at certain times. We like to think that out a little.

Their support has been very good. I haven't had to open very many tickets, but the few times I have, I have gotten a response within an hour or two. The support is good. They handle everything all the way through to completion and then they say, "We'll keep this ticket open in case you have any more issues."

Positive

We used VMware's SRM, which was a great solution; there was nothing wrong with it. But with Zerto, it's like riding a bike. Once I learned it and knew how to do it, I could let it run and do its thing. Maybe a month later I would have to jump in and do something, and the user interface is so easy. I don't have to relearn or remember how it works.

Zerto is quite a bit better when it comes to ease of use, compared to SRM. It's very user-friendly. With SRM, I definitely had to do some learning and read some things. With the VPG, it was almost self-explanatory, such as how to set up VPGs, how to recover things, how to do a failover, and how to do a test. Even as a proof of concept for management, I was able to take a VPG, delete a bunch of files on it, and then recover them from a few minutes prior. It was so user-friendly that even my management was able to watch me do it and understand what was going on.

SRM was just kind of there, in place, and it worked. Zerto is the one that I've really dug into and got my hands dirty with. Once we started utilizing it and realized how quickly we could recover. We realized that it could be used for migrating to a new data center. When we called Zerto we found out that that is a use case people use it for. From a speed perspective, the servers were down for less than five minutes when we migrated them. It was really fast with very little downtime.

The whole process was extremely straightforward. I did a little bit of learning in the Zerto University on how to do a quick deployment. There are not a lot of steps to the quick deployment. After just a few steps we were up and going, almost instantly.

After the installation, it prompts you to log in, and as soon as you log in, it starts telling you what to do. It says, "You need to deploy your virtual replication appliances." And then it says, "Great. Now that you've done that, you're ready to create VPGs." It was almost like the application was literally telling me what to do next.

We deployed it ourselves. I had a couple of questions after deployment, but nothing major, about a couple of ways I could tweak it. But the initial deployment didn't need any technical support. It was that easy to deploy.

We looked at a few other solutions. Zerto was the one that really stuck out, especially once we were given a proof of concept.

Definitely try it out. I was able to leap right into it and use it immediately and do a test case within a matter of minutes. I was able to show management the ease of use and the ability to recover, and of course, that makes management happy.

We are using it to decommission a data center, then moving the data over to other data centers that will still persist within our environment. Also, we now have a more robust disaster recovery for a lot of our non-vital, non-critical applications.

From a management perspective, one of the biggest benefits is to see the excitement of your engineers having a tool that truly enables them, really making their lives easier. That is something that I love. When we came out of the PoC, their eyes were just wide with excitement of what was possible now.

The replication would be the best feature. It increases our DR capabilities. We put a lot of time and effort into DR overall. For the amount of time that it takes to test and go through those activities on a regular, recurring basis, well, this cuts down on the time commitment, not just by the infrastructure team, but by the application teams and all their peripherals. Even just from a man-hours perspective, it is a huge cost savings. You cut down three hours per application, and an application has anywhere from three to 12 developers plus others who support that application. So, you are probably looking at 20 people times three hours, then times however many applications we have, which is in the thousands. That compounds pretty quickly.

We have been officially using it for three weeks.

It seems as though everything on the scalability factor checks out. However, we will see that very soon in our use case.

We have thousands of applications and servers. There is an exorbitant amount of data. 

The support that came in and engaged with us, setting us up through the PoC, were fantastic. Coming out of it, I already have five engineers who have gone through multiple levels of certifications. So, it appears as though that technical expertise, to be able to improve themselves, is right there at their fingertips. It seems highly available. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have used Site Reliability Manager (SRM), which is capable, but to a lesser degree. Zerto is 10 times to 100 times easier to use. It is amazingly fast.

I was not involved in the initial setup or deployment.

From the team, the deployment was very straightforward. The proof of concept that we ran took a little over a week. They were able to stand it up from scratch, deploy, and run several tests of varying complexities. Everything went smoothly. We put a contract and agreement together in record timing for our company.

We had a terrific hands-on proof of concept with the Zerto team, where they came in and worked with our infrastructure engineers. Our engineers were completely amazed by the solution's capabilities. As quickly as we could get our licensing in place, we did. Now, we have had our licenses assigned for the last two or three weeks.

From our perspective, we are already thin-staffed as it is. So, Zerto has allowed us to focus on other things that are equally important.

We have not been able to apply ROI yet, just because of our circumstances. We are waiting on teams to move out of the data center. However, we are now poised and ready. Once that onslaught of requests come in, that is when we will really see the return on it.

If you are a numbers person, the benefit far outweighs the cost from any other competing software or service provider. When you are talking about trying to keep a reduced amount of engineers in the happiest state possible in their work environment to do the workload that they had traditionally done with double the amount of people on their teams, this tool relieves all the stress that they are carrying with them on a daily basis, even though they don't have to implement it on a daily basis. I have seen that firsthand. That return on investment is almost invaluable.

They could iron out the licensing aspect of it, so we might be a bit quicker when implementing and starting to use it. At the same time, our sales rep and all the supporting team members from HPE and Zerto were great and very flexible. It is hard to be critical of that.

We have not done another valuation recently. Zerto was the first in quite some time.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.