HPE Zerto Software Reviews

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.

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 are replicating all of our production VMs to a DR site. We also have another offsite vCenter that we are replicating to a DR site for protection and eventual testing.

It makes me feel more comfortable that we have something to fall back on in case of a disaster. We are a large insurance company, so we have a lot of different applications and SQL Servers. We never had a disaster recovery site before, so this will protect us in the event of a disaster.

A good, valuable feature is using the preseeded LUNs, when deleting a virtual machine. Then, I put the VPG back to keep track of where I was at, so I don't have to replicate everything. Instead, I just preseeded LUNs since it needs less replication time.

It is fairly intuitive and easy to use.

You can go back fairly quickly. You push the button and there you are.

I need to get up to the latest version so I can move my journals to a particular LUN, saving them with a particular storage altogether, rather than with the virtual machine. This is not available until I upgrade, and I need to upgrade all my hypervisors. This would be something that would be nice to have if it could be used on older versions.

I have been using Zerto for almost three years.

It has been stable. We have had glitches between our site and DR site. When the MPLS comes back up, Zerto just kicks right back off, doing what it needs to do.

As we have been growing more VMs in production, I have still been adding to Zerto. So, I haven't had any problems with the amount of VMs and everything that Zerto can handle.

I haven't really had any problems with support. Most of the time, when calling support, I find the answer before they call me back. Or, they will send me an email, and say, "Here, try this."

I would rate the technical support as nine or 10 (out of 10).

Positive

We didn't previously use another solution.

It provides us with a safety net.

We evaluated RecoverPoint, which was very difficult to set up. Even as a test, it was hard to set up. With Zerto, all you have to do is deploy the executable and start setting things up. So, it was very easy. Then, I insisted that the company buy Zerto for me.

RecoverPoint was difficult to set up and use. It wasn't as menu-driven as Zerto. 

We really haven't done any recovery or rollbacks. We are getting there. Later this year, we will be doing those types of failover tests, rollback tests, etc.

We haven't done DR testing. That will probably be done in the next three months.

I would rate Zerto as 10 out of 10.

Our use cases are disaster recovery and long-term retention against ransomware.

Zerto was part of our technology transformation initiative about five years ago, not only to protect our customers' intellectual property that we create for them, but also to protect our organization as a whole.

In a way, it has reduced the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation since we are contracted with insurance companies to help us recover. This solution allows us to be more self-sufficient, using our existing staff to recover.

Zerto has helped reduce our organization's DR testing to seconds to minutes. We have been able to save probably close to 200 hours a year.

If something happens, and we are out and about, I would like to be able to interface with it on our mobile phones. That would be great.

I have been using it for about five years.

Their technical support is really good. They do quarterly tests to make sure everything is working and spot on. Our Zerto engineer is local, so we work with him quite often just to make sure everything is working.

I would rate the technical support as 11 out of 10.

Positive

It replaced Veeam. Zerto is a lot easier.

Prior to Zerto, when we were looking at our traditional disaster recovery, we were looking at 30 days plus.

We have been able to reduce our RPO and RTO to a matter of seconds to minutes versus what our technology committee established as our metrics, which was 30 minutes versus a few days.

Knock on wood, we have never had downtime. However, it has given us better peace of mind.

I would rate Zerto as 11 out of 10.

We use it for DR and general backup. We have snapshots or shadow copies with Microsoft and we do Zerto backups to our other locations so we can always get the data back.

We bought Zerto, in the beginning, to migrate a very important system of the airline from a co-lo that was managed by the co-lo to our on-prem. As an airline, you can't be down because you could cause a ground stop. With Zerto, we were able to migrate all those things across to on-prem without touching anything or losing any time. We took very little downtime.

Also, we've run into some situations where, for some reason, Windows has lost some of the files. I have been able to fail it over to our other data center and they were back up in 10 minutes.

The speed of recovery with Zerto versus other disaster recovery solutions is vastly better. Whereas with the others, I'd have to spin through a lot of stuff and find things, with Zerto I can scroll back in the GUI, find the one I want, and restore it. If that's not right, I can destroy it and go back a little bit more in time.

And our being an ultra-low-cost airline, we don't have staff, so it helps in that way.

It has also helped our DR testing because we can fail over the main part that runs the airline within 45 minutes. The first time, it took me an hour and a half. The second time, it took about an hour. The last time I did it, it took about 45 minutes. That's within the timeframe of one hour where we don't have to do a ground stop.

Moving the VPGs from one location to another is a valuable feature. You just click on it and move it and it's done. We have a stretch VLAN between our data centers so it's really easy: this is IP here and the same IP is there. So if something happens or somebody wants to test something, I can fail it over.

Another aspect that I use a lot is that I can fail it over into its own little bubble and I can install software that I want to test to make sure it doesn't break something. I can do that and then roll it all back.

If there is a mass of changes to a server, Zerto will restart the replication. It would be nice to know why that happens. 

The other thing that I've run into lately is that when I've done a whole bunch of upgrades to systems, so they're offline, they get stuck in a pending state. You can never get them out so you have to delete and start all over again. It would be nice if they could make it a little simpler to figure out what's wrong.

I have been using Zerto for about six years.

It always just runs. I don't have to worry about it or keep checking it. It just does its thing.

It's very scalable. Fortunately, we bought a bunch of licenses when we first bought it and we've been growing into those licenses over the years. It has been very scalable for us.

The technical support has been good, although I've had a couple of situations where they've said some things that were totally inaccurate. But you have that in all organizations.

Positive

Since I started with this airline, we have gone through two other solutions. Zerto is the third and we've stuck with it for quite a few years.

One of the other solutions was a direct product that dumped everything to a storage area in the cloud and it never was consistent. The other was a Dell application backup that no longer exists. That was just too limiting and its backup was never consistent.

Zerto is much easier to use. Once you get the concept down of what it's doing, it's really easy to bring up backups, restore backups, move things around, and test things. It's very easy.

I had one of their sales reps in Colorado help me through the setup. Then we just took it over.

The ROI is in "funny money." It's my time and how long something is down or how long it takes somebody to restore something, and that is much faster.

The pricing seems really good. We're an enterprise customer, so we get all the bells and whistles.

We evaluated a couple of things, but one of our co-los was actually using Zerto so we looked at it as a result. That is what led us to buy it.

We use it for disaster recovery, by replicating to our DR data center.

It has simplified our disaster recovery plan. With VMware SRM it was a little bit more complex. Zerto adds more granularity, but not at the expense of complexity.

The most important features are the 

• simplicity of recovery 
• wider capabilities and feature sets than SRM has.

I have been using Zerto for about three years.

We've been using it since version 7. Since then, it's gotten better and better. We've had some bad experiences with DR tests where everything went sideways and we had to restore a bunch of VPGs or recreate them. It seems like those situations are happening less and less as the product develops.

We have 1,200 seats and we have about 1,000 VMs that are replicated. So far, scalability hasn't really been an issue. We haven't run into a problem scaling it out.

I haven't been a super big fan of the support area. The support could really be better in terms of responsiveness. I've had some issues that took two or three days to get resolved. Once I got to the right person, they were resolved quickly, but it took a while to get to that person.

On a scale of one to 10, today I would rate their support at about a seven. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have rated it at three.

Neutral

We were an SRM customer and moved to Zerto. We had issues with SRM and I think we had some issues with Zerto initially. We've had it for three years and we've gone through several revisions. With every revision, it seems to get better. They keep adding feature sets.

SRM and Zerto are really the primary competitors. We like the fact that Zerto does VM-based replication instead of having to involve storage-based replication. You can just point to an instance of it and say, "Replicate to this DR data center," whereas SRM is a little bit more complex in that context.

The speed of recovery between Zerto and SRM is similar. With the later versions of Zerto, the recovery speed has become a little bit faster.

It's very straightforward to set up. You just install the software and point it at your vCenter. There are not really a lot of overly complex parts to the installation. It installs relatively easily and quickly.

We did it ourselves.

We haven't seen ROI because we've not ever had to recover anything. But in an instance where we would have to recover from a disaster, we would definitely see ROI. It's like paying for insurance. You don't really see any value in it until you need it.

The licensing is a little bit steep, but there is some value that you do get for it as well.

In our usage, Zerto has not helped to reduce downtime or the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. It also hasn't reduced our DR testing. We do a DR test regularly and that is about the same as it was.

I don't have any advice, but I would absolutely recommend it. The simplicity of how they have laid out the VPG structure, and being able to separate those out into groups, as opposed to SRM where you're replicating everything, seems like it's really well designed.

Zerto is primarily used for site-to-site replication and recovery, low RTO and RPO, and migration from onsite to the cloud.

Currently, we have ZVMs installed on Windows Servers in our environment, vRAs and VRAHs installed on our vCenter environment, and ZCAs installed in our Azure environment.

I am not the primary user of Zerto. I am sort of the implementation or API specialist on it.

It gives us a seamless, performant data center migration. When we were migrating between physical data centers, we did what normally would have been a 72-hour job in about 18 hours. A large part of that was thanks to Zerto being able to rate limit and throttle how much data was being sent or transfers were happening. Being able to script around it and create governors was important. We didn't have that previously. That is one big use case that has saved an immense amount of time and effort. 

Previous data migrations were really tough and hard. It was high stress with late nights, no sleep, and a lot of coffee and Red Bull. We didn't have that this time. Everyone felt that we got through this in a slightly longer working day instead of 72 hours. So, we have seen a return on investment.

Another use case is being able to do disaster recovery testing at will, whenever we want to. That has been really special.

Primarily, the most valuable feature is the simplified deployment methodology, but also use the REST API and script ability for modularity. 

Zerto API Wrapper is really good. We don't use the Zerto module specifically. Instead, we use API Wrapper, which is a lot better in my opinion. The fact that we can extend the functionality of Zerto to high-level policies or processes via the API, whether it is through API Wrapper or otherwise, sort of brings out a lot of interesting usability use cases for us. We can do self-service replication of servers via ServiceNow, scripting, etc., offering extensibility. It is really easy to use. It helps to save a ton of time as far as replication goes.

There are open API calls. Things are available via the UI and API that may not be documented really well. You can open developer tools, inspect those elements, and see what those payloads are, but it is an extra step. For someone who is kind of new to the game, they may not know how to do that. 

Zerto is not an API-first company, but an API-now company. A lot of the functionality that is in Zerto UI is not in the Zerto API. That is likely because it is baked in code or compiled down DLLs. Every business has to make a decision to work on something, and I don't think Zerto has committed resources to working on that part. It is a problem to do cleanup for Azure Blob Storage, recovery site storage, or whenever you remove a VM from a VPG without deleting the VPG. That needs to be improved. 

Doing scheduled disaster recovery connection tests, e.g., being able to migrate things up and get things working on a recovery site without needing a user to do it, would be helpful.

Analytics has a 90-day window, where it keeps data. It would be nice to have on-prem storage instead of cloud storage for that so we can keep the data for longer. Unless you discover the problem within three months, you don't know that you need the data. Then, it is gone by the time you realize there is an issue. 

I would like to be able to offsite some data. We export our analytical data so we can keep it longer without having to script around it. It is possible right now, with the API, to script around it. However, I don't want to have to write a monthly process to export the last three months of data to a spreadsheet so I can just have it if I need it. 

A lot of the PowerShell documentation in some of Zerto tutorials or how-tos is a PowerShell-to-legacy sort of paradigm. It needs to be updated to at least 3, likely 5, or probably 7. It looks like it was written by someone who didn't know PowerShell, but had to learn it really fast. It does the job. If you copy and paste it, then it will work, which is something. That is way better than what a lot of people do. However, I feel like a bit more effort should be pushed towards PowerShell.

I would like them to build an alerting system. I am trying to find a way to connect it to my business continuity people, so the Zerto people don't need to be pseudo-business continuity people all the time. They can just be IT people. 

I would like more creature comforts for the scripting engineer. It would be nice if they could expand the development community around building different APIs or API structures for Zerto.

I have been using Zerto for two and a half to three years.

Stability of Zerto is significantly better now than it used to be. It was a little unstable, especially when you were doing massive amounts of migrations. I think there was a disconnect with Zerto's handling of jobs and the ticketing systems inside of vCenter. I am not saying that was a Zerto problem. It might have been a vCenter problem, where vCenter was unable to communicate how much availability it has to field those jobs, then its internal tickets were consumed in a way that Zerto couldn't deal with them well. There was probably some type of internal timeout that was reached when things failed. 

If you are not prepared to rapidly click retry a bunch of times, that will be a big problem for you. You can get around it by scripting. That is how we did it. You can get around it by updating Zerto to at least version 8, maybe even 7.53. 

The stability now seems solid. If there are some disruptions of service, I am not seeing it. We have taken off restrictions on our network throttling. So, we are not throttling that at all. We fullly let it go and it doesn't seem to be having a problem.

We have hundreds of terabytes up to petabytes of storage and replicated data. Triple-digits up to thousand-plus virtual machines are being replicated. There is RDM to VHD and VHDX-VMDK conversions. We have temporary disks or bypass disks involved for situations where VMs might be turned off or removed from environments without any lead time, thus pausing VPGs.

I don't think it has a problem with scalability. We haven't yet run into a problem scaling it. You could always deploy more ZVMs and ZCAs. The analytics engine has a calculator to figure out how many you should deploy. Follow that. It isn't perfect. If anything, it's a little conservative. Just don't test the waters unless you are prepared to sink a little bit. Be prepared to sink if you're going to try to min-max it. You can always tweak it. There are so many tweaks you can do on the ZVM and ZCA side. We have had to do probably a half dozen of those because our environment isn't the same as every other environment. 

You can push it to its limits. I don't think it is a problem with scalability. I think it is a nuance of your environment.

There were some hurt feelings with some of our engineers. They were told that it would just be plug and play. They didn't realize that it would actually take up a duplicate amount of storage. As a point of policy, that is how it works. I asked them, "How do you think it should work? If you don't think the storage should double, where are we putting the bits? Where is it going? How is replication happening?" It makes sense to me, but I think they were told something else. I don't know if that was a salesperson from Zerto's side or an advocate on the company's side, but they were misinformed. 

Zerto support is usually very good. I feel like we always get those Sev 1 cases where something is wrong with the core product. For example, every time that they have released a new minor or major build, there are release notes of what has been fixed. We have had five of those line items since version 7.

We have been using it since version 5. However, since version 7, we have had five big line items for those changes since we have a big environment and script a lot more, and maybe we script more than a lot of Zerto customers. We found a lot of weirdness in our environment, and that matriculated up. I got a call from the East Coast technical representative for the dev team. Every day, I had a call on the update of those tickets. You don't see that a lot. 

Some platforms work flawlessly. Some platforms are more simple. Zerto is a complicated platform doing a lot. After that initial burn-in period with our support team, we got grade-A service, which was really great. I would probably rate them as eight or nine out of 10. There is room for improvement, but if they never improved, I would be happy with the level of service and support that we have now.

I am pretty patient. From a programming standpoint, technology is hard and environments differ greatly, and I am willing to forgive a little bit. I don't speak for all my company. There are people in my company who don't accept that. They want it fixed tomorrow (or yesterday). Personally, I understand that it is hard and takes time to understand as the logs only tell you so much. 

Positive

I can't even remember what the previous product was. 

I wasn't involved in the initial deployment. I have been involved with subsequent deployments, which were straightforward. Originally, I babysat it, then I owned it in tandem with another engineer who was actually the owner of it. I helped with the scripting part since I had more scripting knowledge. 

Subsequent deployments take 15 minutes, which is not long. With ZVM installers, they ask you a question, then you put it in. If you don't have the answers, then you go get them. You have no business deploying Zerto if you don't have those answers to begin with. ZCM is just as easy.

Don't buy Zerto expecting to save money and get 100% performance. That is not how it works. That is not what you are buying. You are buying a solution that you have to invest in. Don't invest in buying the license, but none of the technology to support it. Ask the hard questions and expect answers that aren't, "Yeah, it will do that. No questions asked." 

I don't have a lot of experience with other solutions, but I have used a lot of technology. I know what approachable and unapproachable platforms look like. Zerto is an approachable platform. If you know the concepts of data replication and data recovery and know what those data protections look like, then you should be able to pick up Zerto with relative ease. 

Generally speaking, things in Zerto are where I would expect them to be. That is hard to do sometimes on other platforms. Sometimes, you get designers, UI developers, or user-experience people who don't really understand how engineers will approach a product. The Zerto platform seems tailored for people who are full code, low-code, or no-code, which is really special. I don't feel like you see that a lot. You start to get more of it now. However, having someone who is not specifically geared towards data replication, data recovery, or data protection accessing Zerto, they can use it if they have some of the nomenclature. They need to know a very small vocabulary in order to be able to navigate Zerto since things are where you think they will be.

Determine your questions in advance and ask them to the Zerto sales team. Get them to engage the engineering team as best they can. It does what it is supposed to do. It is not a magic silver bullet that just takes out everything. Everything is in layers. Zerto is only as good as your storage, back-end network, and replication infrastructure layer. It is only as good as the things allowing it to be good.

It has done a great job for what we needed it to do. I don't really have to worry about it doing the job. It is already doing it.

I would rate Zerto as eight or nine out of 10.

We use it to protect VMs. Disaster recovery is our use case. Our compliance requires that we need to simulate a DR exercise every six months if we are protecting a VM. One of the features of Zerto is simulating a disaster recovery exercise in case of failure. We fail back the VM to the DR site, and when the event is over, we fail it back to the production site.

We are using one of the newer releases, but we are still six months behind.

It meets our SLAs for RPOs and RTOs.

• Replication
• Failover and failback for DR

It needs more documentation and automation features. I would like more documentation on designing an environment and network operations. On the automation side, I would like automation to clean up the environment in cases of a failed DR effort. An API interface to perform the DR exercise would also be nice.

I have been using Zerto for seven years.

It is stable. We have had no big problems. 

There have been a few minor upgrades.

It is scalable. From a few hundred to 5,000, it has been pretty easy to scale, not only horizontally, but also vertically.

Zerto is protecting a couple thousand VMs.

The support is very good with quick response times. They are helpful. If you open a session, they will take over and immediately solve your problem. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have used SRM and Veeam. 

Zerto is a better product. It has more modern features. It is easy to use. It also has a good interface with command line for scripts.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The solution is easy to implement. You implement it and it starts working out-of-the-box. There is not much configuration required. It takes a couple of hours to have it up and running, protecting you.

We deployed the system ourselves.

We have seen ROI with the RTOs, RPOs, and speed of recovery.

Using Zerto, you can have your VM up and running in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is flip a switch, then you are good to go.

For speed of recovery, Zerto is faster than SRM. SRM takes more time and needs some manual effort. Veeam is pretty good and on par with Zerto.

Do a PoC. You can compare it with other products, like SRM and Veeam. Then, you will see that difference. It is good to have the solution working in a lab. Or, engage Zerto who can assist you in building a lab for it.

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10.

We use Zerto as our primary disaster recovery tool for our most important servers.

Zerto is tremendously valuable. It is the backbone of our DR solution for critical databases that hold the data we can't afford to lose. It provided new opportunities to change how we approach disaster recovery. 

We realized the benefits quickly, but I don't think it became a staple of our disaster recovery until about a year into our deployment. In the first couple of months, we had some hiccups with upgrades. Once they sorted everything out, it truly became a core solution for us.

It enabled us to transition from data recovery based in a physical data center to the cloud and protect VMs in our environment. Our RPOs also improved tremendously. When we first started, only one other product offered the same RPOs that Zerto provides. However, the other product was problematic, and Zerto has been solid. Compared to other DR solutions, it works quickly to stand up the failed server at another site and bring it nearly into full production. 

We used it to migrate a server, which provided a wonderful recovery time. It worked well. Our RTOs improved tremendously. It reduced downtime in most situations and the time spent on DR testing. A DR test used to run probably 48 hours and involved around four engineers. With Zerto, it runs for about six hours and only requires two engineers.

We couldn't find a product that provides the near-zero recovery point that Zerto offers. The closest we could get was another product that had zero data loss. Everything else had a minimum of 15 minutes of replication time, resulting in data loss.

Zerto can also perform test environment restorations that don't affect production. It's also easy to use. It's a set-it-and-forget-it product. Unless you need to make changes to the devices you protect, you don't need to go in except to make sure everything runs smoothly.

I wish Zerto had better file restoration capabilities. We have not been able to use that because of the limitations of Zerto's de-duplication technology. When we used the immutable data copies feature, we had some lag in replication times, so we don't use that anymore. When there is big data movement, it tends to cause some lag.

We've been using Zerto for about three or four years.

With time, it became a highly reliable and stable solution. We were an early adopter, and it had some hiccups initially. I think they've done a great job streamlining it and making it reliable.

The times that I've needed technical support, they've been very good.I would give it an eight.

Positive

Zerto still hasn't replaced all our other backup solutions, but it has replaced two of them. It is leagues above the other products we used in terms of simplicity and reliability. We have another solution to get around Zerto's file restoration and de-duplication issues. We use Veeam Backup and Replication for that. 

Setting up Zerto is straightforward. The documentation was great, and it is intuitive. Integration with VMware is seamless. It's good at running the scripts needed to run in order to work with VMware. We have a 90 percent virtualized environment. 

I think everything can be cheaper. Pricing limited our ability to use Zerto as much as we'd like, but that's not why we haven't adopted it as our primary backup solution.

We evaluated Double-Take, Veeam's replication solution, and Azure's Site Recovery. None could match Zerto's RTO and RPO. The only one that got close was Double-Take, but Double-Take was very problematic.

I rate Zerto eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement. It's one of the best solutions for disaster recovery available right now.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. We needed a tool to provide a quick resolution during a failure or problem and help us achieve our goals related to our service level agreement (SLA). We needed a tool that would help us in providing the availability of lost services within a specific time frame. We wanted to make sure that in case there is a problem and we have to execute the DR procedure, it is quick, easy, and safe. So, the main purpose for going for Zerto is related to meeting the required parameters for RPO and RTO.

We don't use Zerto for backup purposes. It is used only for virtual machines. We also have physical servers, but we have different tools for backup. 

Currently, we are using it for on-premise data centers, but we also do proof of concept tests with public clouds or hybrid clouds.

It is very good in terms of end-user experience and functionality. The graphical user interface (GUI) is quite simple, and it shows many values related to the status of replication. You can see the current status of a specific application and the health status of infrastructure on the GUI. You can very quickly navigate the application and find very useful information related to the health status of your infrastructure. You can see if the infrastructure is working fine and if there are any bottlenecks or problems that need to be verified by the IT infra department.

It helps us with standardization. It allows us to have a unified DR approach where with one tool, we can meet the DR requirements of different systems with different levels of DR criticality and classification. We have customers for whom the availability of a particular system is crucial for business, and this system requires a very high quality of replication. At the same time, they also have systems that are not as critical. For a unified approach to the DR process, it is better to use the same DR tool for all applications with different levels of criticality. Instead of using different tools for critical and non-critical applications, it is better to use one single tool and have a unified process. Zerto helps us with that.

Different types of integration allow you to provide the tool not only to specialist teams, such as infrastructure teams, but also to the end-users to perform activities like failover, system recovery, and system protection. Service portal integration and automation integration provide a big value in terms of DR activities. You don't have to wait for VMware specialists to perform the DR failover task. You can do it on your own if you have access to the DRaaS portal, for example. DRaaS portal is DR as a service that we have implemented in our own infrastructure, and it is a part of process improvement in our organization.

It has significantly decreased our RTO for failover to the full scope of an application. You can easily measure DR activities for a specific application. If you are responsible not only for your application as an application owner but also need to provide support to many customers at the same time, such a tool is very good. When you are responsible for delivering as per the SLA for RTO to many customers at the same time, it is very helpful because you can perform required activities automatically, and you can also perform them in parallel.

We are very satisfied with the achieved RTOs. We have specific requirements based on the service delivered values and SLA contracts, and by using the tool, we are able to fully meet RTOs for specific applications, a group of applications, or the whole scope of a data center.

During our DR exercises, we try to simulate the worst-case scenario where a complete data center is unreachable, and we are able to achieve the required RTO. Zerto is able to fully meet our needs, and we are able to achieve the required RTO during our normal and yearly DR exercise. We are receiving exactly what we were promised. However, I can't provide metrics or compare it to another tool because we have been using it from the beginning. I don't have the metrics for how much time it would take if we didn't have this tool, but the values that we are receiving during our annual DR exercise are fully satisfactory. So, it is fully sufficient for us.

The time saved in a data recovery situation depends on the specific scenario and the specific system that needs to be recovered. For example, if you have 50 gigabytes built into a machine that needs to be recovered, then with a traditional backup and restore solution, the recovery is very quick and easy. It would take from minutes to an hour depending upon your infrastructure or the bottleneck in your infrastructure. The problem occurs when you have very big systems with 10, 30, or 50 terabytes to be recovered. In such a case, it doesn't matter if it is ransomware or it is an infra failure. Even though the root cause is not the same, the outcome is the same. The fact is that you don't have a working system, and you need to recover the system. Recovering a big system with the traditional approach could take you a week, which is something that businesses do not accept. With a tool like Zerto, I can fail over the system very quickly. During DR exercises, I performed DR activities for systems with many terabytes of data, and it is not a problem to recover that system and failover. I have very good experience with that. During the training or presentation for my customers, I have shown how it works and what are its advantages. One of them is the possibility of a very quick recovery irrespective of the size of the system. The approach is exactly the same irrespective of whether it is an infra issue or a ransomware issue.

The main purpose of this tool is to allow failover between different data centers and different locations. When one site is unavailable, we can start the failover activity and perform the failover task. When a primary location is unavailable, or there is some hardware or logical issue at the primary location, it allows us to resolve the problem. We are able to start services at safe locations. We handle the disaster recovery process, and this is the main function for which we are using it all the time.

The second valuable feature is related to integration. If we want to implement any tool in our company, we want to make sure that it is not sandboxed. It shouldn't be completely isolated from other systems, and it should help other systems to receive feedback. To gain advantages of having tools like Zerto on the board, we want to combine our disaster recovery with other processes, such as incident management or change management. We can integrate these processes using different tools, but usually, the best approach is related to API. So, we can integrate different systems and combine them into a big IT platform, which allows us to achieve more features that are normally not available in the tool itself.

Zerto supports different ways to integrate with or get information from the systems. GUI is one of the options, and technologies like PowerShell cmdlets or RESTful APIs are also very good to exchange data for integration or automation purposes.

We also use Zerto for compliance purposes in case we need to provide evidence. When we perform DR exercises and we have some problems with the infrastructure, we need to prove that some actions were taken. It works very well when we perform DR activities and we want to show external auditors the proof and evidence of performed actions.

It is very quickly developed, and new features are provided quite often. I don't have any input for improvement or a critical feature request at this moment. If anything, a lower price is always better.

I have been using Zerto for six years. 

Its stability is very good. Of course, bugs can be found because this is live infrastructure, which is normal. There are new VMware releases, and there are new operating system releases. If there are some problems with applications, we raise cases, and we get the required support in resolving the issue. So, my experience has been very good.

Its scalability is very good. We can use it in on-prem and hybrid cloud environments. It works well with different vendors.

We are using it for different locations. We are using it for on-premise data centers, and we are also using it for all the production systems that we have. Any increase in its usage will depend on the decision of the company. If the decision is to change the platform and integrate with different vendors, we can choose additional features, but at the moment, we are using only the on-premises functionality.

Their support is very good. We have to meet our SLA, and the infrastructure is very sophisticated and demanding. We have had different cases that need investigation and resolution, and we could always count on Zerto's support, which is available 24/7. I don't have any complaints about their support. I would rate them a ten out of ten. If possible, I would even give them eleven.

Positive

I have not worked with any other tool previously. This is the only tool I have used. 

It was quite easy to implement and start the execution. There were no problems. It took us about three months to implement it in production.

For implementation, we were using the services directly from Zerto's support teams. In terms of the number of people, there were two people from the DR team and two from the infrastructure team, which included the networking and VMware teams.

In terms of maintenance, every tool requires maintenance, and when you upgrade, there are some bugs or issues that need to be resolved. Currently, for the maintenance of the application for many customers, one person is enough. Based on the number of protected systems and sophisticated infrastructure that we have, it works very well. It is not something that we should complain about.

Its price is reasonable. I have not worked with other tools, but as compared to its competitors such as VMware, its price is lower. So, in my opinion, its price is good.

Based on our experience and the implementations that we have done successfully, it is the right tool for protecting small environments and very big environments. It fits the needs of organizations that require a few functionalities, and it also fits the needs of organizations with a sophisticated environment comprising managed systems, multiple integrations, etc.

Zerto provides near-synchronous replication. So, the RTO is near zero. It is not equal to zero. From my perspective, there are some specific IT areas where synchronous replication is a must, but in most scenarios or use cases, synchronous replication is like a trap because you need to have a single connection between two replication zones or sites, which I would refer to as a single point of failure. If you have storage that is replicated between two sites, in certain scenarios, you won't be able to perform failover activities. If storage is broken on the primary location and you have enabled synchronous replication, the replicated data is also sent to the recovery site. So, you cannot perform failover activities because you now have corrupted data at both sites or data centers. We have chosen this tool to get out of this trap and be able to failover but not to the exact point in time when the issue occurred. I have experience working with such scenarios. For a specific group of systems that require synchronous replication, I can have an additional level of protection by having other DR tools, and at the same time, I can provide replication by using tools like Zerto. So, I can enable two DR solutions on one protected system and resolve the issues related to different scenarios.

In terms of reducing the DR tasks, because I have not used other tools, I can't provide the metrics for increase or decrease in time. However, considering that the tool is implemented for the whole scope of our application, we do not have to wait and spend weeks or months preparing for the DR test. We are prepared all the time for any issue. We also perform the unknown data center DR exercise allowing us to choose the test data center just before the DR exercise. I can very quickly start the recovery operations without a long preparation phase. This is one of the main features of a DR tool that should be taken into account for a company. You should have a tool that you can use at any time. You should ensure and be confident of the fact that it will work and not create any problems during the failover.

DR exercises generally should be performed by customers and application owners. That's because they know best what the issue is and how to provide a solution. It requires synchronization of some tasks and allowing more critical systems to be failed over before the less critical ones. To perform a global DR exercise preparation and execution, very less staff is required. Communicating with customers about the agenda and defining the scope, tasks, schedule, and other things take most of the time, but the execution phase is quick. It can be executed by one operator. It can be done by an infra specialist or an application owner, but ideally, it shouldn't be done by the specialist team. It should be done by application owners because they know the best about the issue.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten. It is a very good tool, and we have had very good experience with it. We have no problems with recommending it to others.

Zerto is deployed on a VM, and we use it to replicate the database for our POS system in our data center.

Zerto helps us when our server has an emergency. When we needed to get something from a server that had a corrupt file, it saved us from needing to go back to a tape or a backup to use that server. The recovery works better than our backup. I would rate that nine out of a 10.

It works great because we only use it in VMware for our virtual machines. We use Zerto Instead of snapshots. Zerto is a lot quicker than other solutions. It cuts our downtime in half when we need to recover data.

Data replication is the most valuable feature. The near-synchronous replication works in the background, so it does not interfere with the production usage of the server. Zerto is challenging to set up but easy to use. It's not difficult to configure once you see how it works. I'd give it at least eight out of 10 for ease of use.

I've been using Zerto for about a year.

Zerto is highly scalable. Even though we only have it on a couple of servers, we could do all of them if we want to.

Customer support is great. I'd say it is at least a nine. When I have a technical question, it sometimes takes a while for tech support to respond. That's a problem everywhere.

Positive

I've used backup solutions like Veeam in the past, but Zerto seemed like a better, faster solution. We adopted Zerto because of the speed, and because we wanted to do everything in-house. I would rate Zerto eight out of ten for ease of use, but Veeam seven out of 10. 

Setting up Zerto is straightforward, but I needed to call tech support a few times with some basic questions. I handled the setup by myself because I'm in charge of servers and VMware. It doesn't require much maintenance aside from updates. 

It reduces the time and effort needed to get our data. 

I rate Zerto a nine out of ten. When I first installed it, I learned a lot about how it worked and how to integrate it with my storage. I needed to configure our storage to work with this because we do everything in-house. It's crucial to understand how everything works together.

You need to read the installation instructions thoroughly and prepare your VMware environment. I jumped right into it and didn't go through everything. Read everything and watch some videos first to prepare. If I do it again, I will watch the videos a few times to make sure I understand what's required and go from there.