We use Zerto for offsite replication.
Sysadmin with 11-50 employees
Has good documentation, is easy to use, and is stable
Pros and Cons
- "The stability is great; there's very little downtime. I don't have to worry that there will be a surprise update to one of the ZVRAs or the host that I have to contend with. We're given plenty of notice to plan ahead for an update. As far as losing service and downtime, we haven't had that happen."
- "If you want something that you can set and forget, Zerto is a solution you should look into."
- "For special situations, there are options within advanced settings. You don't have to dig too far for them, but they're not quite as straightforward."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
I like how easy it is to run our DR tests with it.
In terms of ease of use, in the user interface it's very easy to tell the different virtual protection groups apart. It's easy to figure out where your virtual machines are and set different recovery IPs. It is a lot easier with Zerto than it was previously.
When you compare Zerto's ease of use versus that of the previous solution we used, Zerto has good documentation. That's probably what made it the easiest to install and configure, and have peace of mind that it's going to do what I expect it to do.
Every six months when I go through my audit, I don't have any stress about whether I'm going to pass any of my audit logs or any of the questions the auditors ask me. That is, I know I'm going to pass.
Zerto helped us reduce downtime.
Our disaster recovery test used to take quite a long time before we started to use Zerto. After we started using Zerto, the speed of the virtual machines' backup when they are going into test mode, is just so much quicker and so much more consistent. When we previously performed tests, we would need a block of about a week. Now, it's two days. The actual recovery portion is just a small part of that, but Zerto cut it in half easily.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with Zerto since 2019.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is great; there's very little downtime. I don't have to worry that there will be a surprise update to one of the ZVRAs or the host that I have to contend with. We're given plenty of notice to plan ahead for an update. As far as losing service and downtime, we haven't had that happen.
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September 2026
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We're a very small shop, but when we did expand to another group of servers that we were going to replicate, it was very easy to go in and just add another virtual protection group, add my virtual machines to it, and set my settings up and go.
We have less than a hundred virtual machines that we replicate.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support staff I've had to interact with have certainly been some of the better ones. I feel that their turnaround time is always pretty fast and that you get reasonable support right off the bat. If my problem is a little more technical, then I may be transferred, but I don't find that to be an issue. I would rate technical support at nine on a scale from one to ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was pretty straightforward for the site-to-site recovery or for setting up the VPGs. If you just want to do basic replication and you don't have a lot of special situations to account for, you could have it up and running very quickly.
For special situations, there are options within advanced settings. You don't have to dig too far for them, but they're not quite as straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it ourselves after reading through Zerto's best practices, etc.
What other advice do I have?
If you want something that you can set and forget, Zerto is a solution you should look into. If I were to rate Zerto on a scale from one to ten, I'd give it a nine.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
It is easy and simple. Allows administrators to sleep at night.
Pros and Cons
- "We don't have to spend a whole lot of time worrying about DR and whether or not we are covered. Zerto just works. As it is replicating, we don't need to spend a whole lot of time with it. That is a huge benefit as far as daily management."
- "From the simple point of not having to worry about whether or not we are protected in the event of ransomware or disaster, it is worth the money."
- "We would like more mobile options. If we are at a restaurant or out and about in our normal daily lives, we would like to be able to interface via our mobiles."
What is our primary use case?
We have three locations. We replicate circularly around all those locations for all our VMs. This is for DR.
How has it helped my organization?
We don't have to spend a whole lot of time worrying about DR and whether or not we are covered. Zerto just works. As it is replicating, we don't need to spend a whole lot of time with it. That is a huge benefit as far as daily management.
Luckily, we haven't actually had to do a full failover. We have tested it many times, and it proves out okay, but we don't have to spend a lot of time managing it.
Our insurance companies provide assistance with staff or boots on the ground. Whereas, using Zerto has allowed us to act very quickly with just our current team. We can fail over and switch over to our disaster recovery site, instead of having to bring in a bigger team.
What is most valuable?
It is amazingly simple to use, monitor, look at, and utilize. It is great for that.
What needs improvement?
We would like more mobile options. If we are at a restaurant or out and about in our normal daily lives, we would like to be able to interface via our mobiles.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for about five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is simple. If you just add more virtual managers, then you are good to go.
How are customer service and support?
Our customer rep, success manager, and engineer are great.
Luckily, I haven't had to use the technical support that often. The times that I have, it has been fantastic. They quickly had me where I needed to be, which is top-notch and good.
I would rate them as eight or nine out of 10. Nobody is perfect.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
It gives us peace of mind. Before we had disaster recovery and long-term retention protection against ransomware, it was one of those things that kept us up at night.
We previously used VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and Veeam for backup. Zerto is way better and more friendly. Zerto's interface, simplicity, and reliability are definitely better than SRM.
When we were using SRM, it didn't have a web interface. Zerto's web interface makes it easier to navigate. When we used SRM, it was an actual application. It was a bit clunkier and a lot more difficult to use. However, it has been awhile, so it might not be a fair comparison at this point.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment was pretty simple. The implementation took less than half a day. It has been awhile, but it was very seamless, easy, and did not take very long. We were up and running pretty quickly.
What about the implementation team?
Zerto was involved with the initial deployment. We paid for their Professional Services, who walked us through the whole thing. It was very simple.
What was our ROI?
Our technology committee established an RPO and RTO. We beat those times with Zerto. We have a 30-minute RTO and we can recover within seconds. We have far exceeded any expectations so far.
From the simple point of not having to worry about whether or not we are protected in the event of ransomware or disaster, it is worth the money.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing seems fair.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at other solutions around five years ago.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend buying it. It is easy and simple. It works. It is all the things that any administrator would want. You don't need to spend a lot of time messing with it and you can sleep at night.
I would rate this solution as eight out of 10 because nothing is perfect.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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HPE Zerto Software
September 2026
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Systems Engineer Virtualization at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Reduced our downtime on some critical applications
Pros and Cons
- "I prefer Zerto because it's a little more automated. VMware has more requirements... It's a little more click-and-go versus click-and-monitor..."
- "In that migration instance we had six terabytes of data that we needed to protect and bring online quickly, and we made the protection group switch and brought the systems back within less than 30 minutes."
- "Whenever we do a failover, there's a confirmation box that shows up later. It's a little hard to see sometimes... A popup to continue would be a little bit better because then you're not sitting and waiting for something and it's already there."
- "Sometimes the interface can be a little tricky. If you're using a disaster recovery application, you're in a stressful situation already."
What is our primary use case?
I've used it for a temporary migration. We had to shut down a data center and we moved some database servers over to a disaster recovery site. We then did the maintenance at the data center and brought them back.
We're using it only for on-prem and we use it to replicate from our onsite data center to a co-location, but there is a fiber connection between the two, so it isn't an internet-based replication.
How has it helped my organization?
In that migration instance we had six terabytes of data that we needed to protect and bring online quickly. We had a replication going and we made the protection group switch and brought the systems back within less than 30 minutes. It reduced our downtime on some critical applications.
If we hadn't used Zerto, we would have had to vMotion them to the other side and that could have taken hours. That could also potentially have been unreliable because there's a timeout period when vMotion works. We used Zerto to be safe.
What is most valuable?
It is pretty simple to use.
What needs improvement?
Whenever we do a failover, there's a confirmation box that shows up later. It's a little hard to see sometimes. We'll do the failover and some preparation activities and then there's a checkbox you need to check to continue and sometimes it's small, in the corner, depending on which screen you're using. A popup to continue would be a little bit better because then you're not sitting and waiting for something and it's already there.
We also had an issue with a misnamed network. They should make that a little more apparent when it's not available on the destination side. We were able to go all the way through with it, but when we did the recovery, it wasn't available. A pre-check to say, "Hey, it's not available. What network do you want to use?" would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zerto for about a month because I'm new with my current company.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been alright. We have failed over quite a number of machines.
We did have an issue with one failover. It didn't fail over completely. You really don't want to have to contact support in those situations, but we had to. It could have been an issue on our side as opposed to something being wrong with the configuration. I don't know what happened, but they got it working.
How are customer service and support?
We had to call support during that migration because one of the settings wasn't correct. I don't know exactly what went wrong, but we had to create a ticket. Zerto got back to us within an hour, so we were really impressed with the support from them. It was really good. They got us taken care of pretty fast and we were back online during the process, within an hour. They were quick to respond after we submitted the ticket and then they got it fixed. There's not really much more they could have done in that situation.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use VMware-native as well as Zerto. It's all circumstantial, based on sites. Some sites ended up getting an SRM license, so we have kept them instead of wasting licenses. And some sites use Zerto. Maybe down the road we'll pick one of the products, but for now, we use both.
How was the initial setup?
Zerto was already there when I stepped into the picture. I helped initiate some of the disaster recovery processes. Based on what I saw from the outside, it was easy because it was ready for that situation quickly. It was ready in a business day or less, aside from the replication aspect or the data sync from when you first set up the jobs. But the basic setup to get things going was ready within less than a business day.
What was our ROI?
I would think we have seen return on the investment in Zerto because we use it a decent amount of the time. We have reduced the downtime within the last month because of it as well.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We've used SRM from VMware. Personally, I prefer Zerto because it's a little more automated. VMware has more requirements and VMware tools get us stuck sometimes. If the VMware tools aren't working on a virtual machine, it won't replicate over as quickly or start up as quickly because it's waiting for that service. You have to do custom settings to avoid that. Zerto doesn't have that requirement. It's a little more click-and-go versus click-and-monitor and then trace back and see what went wrong.
Zerto is also probably faster because SRM waits for VMware tools to come up and say, "Hey, we're here." That's not a requirement that I know of, with Zerto. Maybe it is. I'm a newer user of the product.
What other advice do I have?
In terms of the number of staff involved in data recovery situations, Zerto hasn't really reduced that. My team generally handles those situations and it's the same number of people, regardless of which product we're using.
Zerto worked and did its job and it was easy to use. My team liked it, and the database administrators, who were the customers in that instance where we did the temporary migration, appreciated it.
I would rate it at eight out 10. Sometimes the interface can be a little tricky. If you're using a disaster recovery application, you're in a stressful situation already. Sometimes there are a lot of confirmations you have to go through just to start the Virtual Protection Group, and then it starts and you have to confirm again a few minutes later. You're stressed out. You're talking via chats with a bunch of people and there were times where that prompt was probably sitting there for minutes, which cost money.
More confirmations upfront and removing that second one later on in the process would be good, or a popup, instead of it being a small checkbox in the corner of the screen, is my recommendation.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Engineer
Reduces our DR testing, and fast and simple to use
Pros and Cons
- "Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration."
- "If we have multiple VMs in a VPG (Virtual Protected Group) and one VM is hung for DR, it holds things up. The only alternative is to create multiple VPGs. It would be nice to have one VPG where, if one VM is failing, it does not impact the overall process."
What is our primary use case?
We are mainly using it for DR and, in a few use cases, we leverage it for migration as well. It really fits our use cases.
How has it helped my organization?
The experience has been smooth when it comes to DR testing, as it has reduced the testing we need to do.
What is most valuable?
Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration. It is very simple to use and fast. We haven't run into any issues.
What needs improvement?
If we have multiple VMs in a VPG (Virtual Protected Group) and one VM is hung for DR, it holds things up. The only alternative is to create multiple VPGs. It would be nice to have one VPG where, if one VM is failing, it does not impact the overall process.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Zerto for close to a year.
Our experience with Zerto has been good, but I don't know if we have actually saved a ton of time with it. There have been no issues or real challenges so far. We just recently adopted and started using it, so in terms of implementation of real use cases, it has barely been a couple of months. We haven't even done a single upgrade of it yet.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We right-sized initially and we have not had to scale up yet.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't had to engage support. One of my colleagues handles that. But I have heard no complaints about support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have a VMware product, SRM, and we use it in a few data centers around the globe. We started using Zerto in a few locations and, in other locations, we still have other products being used.
We were using SRM in our data centers and what happened was that we had a merger. In that process, the other party already owned some Zerto licenses. That's when we got our hands on it and started looking at it. We figured Zerto would be a better fit for our European data centers. We ended up using Zerto there and then got more licenses so that we could use Zerto more.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have one other solution that we use for live migrations, VMware HCX, rather than Zerto. But we were not always able to use that. That's where the delta for those VMs is, and why we use Zerto for migrations.
The speed of recovery of Zerto is right up there compared with other solutions. It's good, no complaints in that respect.
Compared to other solutions, Zerto is very straightforward and simple to use. The preparation for DR is fairly straightforward, and the deployment is not very complicated.
What other advice do I have?
Zerto hasn't cut the number of staff involved in data recovery, for us. We had one engineer doing it before and he continues to do it. He wears multiple hats. You cannot go down to less than one engineer.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Converged Infrastructure Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
When a server needs to be moved over in a crisis situation, this solution has been there to help me out
Pros and Cons
- "It is way faster than just manually moving VMDKs, etc. It saves hours of time and a significant amount of money."
- "The solution is really good and I am super happy with Zerto."
- "I have had problems with vRAs. When I am trying to restart a host, sometimes the vRAs will hang. I would like it if they wouldn't migrate off or shut themselves down, then I have to manually work with it a lot of the time."
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use it for disaster recovery backup. Also, whenever we need to move things between our different environments, e.g., moving it to different vCenters and Azure, that is primarily done through Zerto
How has it helped my organization?
We are in the process of doing a disaster recovery test soon, and Zerto is at the forefront of that. Zerto is really helping out with this. The bigwigs, who don't know anything about technology, come to us and then we explain Zerto to them. Whenever we simulate failures, Zerto has been able to seamlessly and instantly recover. This really gives our team big brownie points.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is Instant Recovery. Especially when a server needs to be moved over in a crisis situation, Zerto has been there to help me out in a pinch. It is really fast and responsive. It is always there when you need it most.
It is great for reliability.
What needs improvement?
I have had problems with vRAs. When I am trying to restart a host, sometimes the vRAs will hang. I would like it if they wouldn't migrate off or shut themselves down, then I have to manually work with it a lot of the time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been at the company for about six months and using Zerto the whole time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is pretty stable. The only problem I have is with the vRAs sometimes freezing up. Other than that, it has been pretty stable and reliable. I feel like we can count on it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. I feel comfortable with it. if we needed to expand in an instant we could.
How are customer service and support?
I have only used our customer support for upgrades, but they have been great and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What was our ROI?
If I have networking issues on one vCenter, then I can just Zerto it over to another vCenter. This instantly fixes the problem, saving us time and money. In one case, our phone system was down because we were having a network issue at one of the vCenters. So, I just moved the machine over to the other vCenter through Zerto. It came back online, bringing us back up.
It is way faster than just manually moving VMDKs, etc. It saves hours of time and a significant amount of money.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I can compare Zerto to Rubrik's instant VM recovery from our backups. Zerto is faster. Since Zerto is instant, it is always watching while Rubrik has to take time and restore everything.
What other advice do I have?
The solution is really good. I am super happy with Zerto.
I would rate Zerto as 10 out of 10. They are great.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Drastically reduced our replication time and we now do less DR testing
Pros and Cons
- "For us, the most valuable features are the quick upload time and how the sync works... We have VMware SRM and Veeam, and they have been pretty slow and sluggish."
- "The total time for replication has been reduced drastically for us and that really adds value in the long run because time equals money and resources."
- "An area for improvement is the support because it gets really expensive. They need to make it a little cheaper. Support also takes time."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for backup and replication.
How has it helped my organization?
The total time for replication has been reduced drastically for us and that really adds value in the long run because time equals money and resources.
It has also helped to reduce our DR testing. Previously, when we were doing it across our own locations, we had to make sure it was working by doing a lot of testing back and forth.
Also, the solution is already up to the mark on audits and certification.
What is most valuable?
For us, the most valuable features are the quick upload time and how the sync works. The sync is pretty good and that's really helpful. The quick upload is important to us because other solutions were lagging behind. We have VMware SRM and Veeam, and they have been pretty slow and sluggish. We have had some challenges with them.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Zerto for seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We're just replicating and I assume it runs on some kind of cloud as an overlay, so the stability is pretty good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is insane. Really good.
How are customer service and support?
An area for improvement is the support because it gets really expensive. They need to make it a little cheaper. Support also takes time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We still have some other solutions in-house. We are not fully dependent on Zerto. We are still trying to get rid of the others, but we have not entirely moved on.
How was the initial setup?
In 2014, when Zerto was launched, the initial setup was pretty simple.
What about the implementation team?
We used an integrator. Our experience with them, at our engineering level, was that it was pretty smooth and streamlined, the first time we used Zerto. We had a few issues in the initial deployment, but later on, when we moved to scripting, the process became streamlined.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would like to see different service levels. They're good, but it still takes a lot of our budget in ops.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Veeam and SRM. Zerto is an HPE product, and we have been using a lot of HPE servers. That trust in HPE won our business.
When comparing Zerto with Veeam and SRM, the latter are newer in the market. They try to provide a multi-cloud strategy with tie-ups across six different clouds, which is different from Zerto. That's where I would use them if I had to.
All the solutions were almost equal but Zerto is still better because they have a lot of releases and new versions.
What other advice do I have?
We are just using it for backup and replication. We have not yet had an event where we have had to restore.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Customer
Engineering Manager at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Enabled us to consolidate data centers and move workloads to our primaries
Pros and Cons
- "One of the valuable features is the ability to re-IP on the fly, because it makes the migration a lot smoother on the system end."
- "We have been able to close three data centers so far."
- "The syncing of the replication needs improvement. My experience has been that, every once in a while, when you go to do a failover, it tells you it's not syncing. Then you have to troubleshoot and figure out why it's not fully synced up."
What is our primary use case?
We've been using it to consolidate data centers. We have 13 hospitals and two main data centers and a cloud presence. We're trying to collapse everything. We've been using Zerto to move the workloads over to our primaries.
How has it helped my organization?
It's allowed us to save a lot of money by collapsing a few data centers. We have been able to evacuate the hardware in the one data center in our virtual environment, and then shut down and get rid of all those hosts. And it has saved us time in our failovers, from collapsing data centers to our primaries. It enabled us to do that on the fly.
What is most valuable?
One of the valuable features is the ability to re-IP on the fly, because it makes the migration a lot smoother on the system end.
What needs improvement?
The syncing of the replication needs improvement. My experience has been that, every once in a while, when you go to do a failover, it tells you it's not syncing. Then you have to troubleshoot and figure out why it's not fully synced up.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zerto for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's pretty stable.
How are customer service and support?
I've never had to use the technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use VMware SRM pretty exclusively for our disaster recovery stuff. SRM and Zerto are very similar in the way they work. Zerto enables features that SRM doesn't give us and that's why we purchased it.
Also, it takes half as much time to failover with Zerto as it does with SRM. Every six months we do a failover of our Epic environment from one data center to another, and we use SRM for that. We've been using Zerto for failovers from one data center to another for data center consolidation, and those seem to happen a lot faster than SRM.
What was our ROI?
We've definitely gotten our money's worth out of it for what we've been doing. We have been able to close three data centers so far.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at Veeam, but that was a long time ago.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
AVP IT at a media company with 201-500 employees
Exceeds RPOs we set out to achieve, and DR testing is significantly faster than with our previous solution
Pros and Cons
- "I would give it an eight out of 10, if not a nine out of 10, when it comes to ease of use."
- "It's given us a sense of trust that if we have to fail over in a DR situation, it's going to be kind of like Apple, it just works."
- "There are a couple of areas in the interface that are not very intuitive. Most of them are pretty easy, but there are a few areas in the journal and replication that, unless you've done it before, you really have no idea what to do."
What is our primary use case?
We have a production environment that we are replicating to a warm data center, and Zerto keeps our virtual machine-protected groups in continuous sync. It has been working really well for us.
How has it helped my organization?
It's given us a sense of trust that if we have to fail over in a DR situation, it's going to be kind of like Apple, it just works. It gives us peace of mind.
We use it to help protect VMs and its effect on our RPOs is that it is exceeding what we set out to achieve. And the RTO is exactly what we're looking for.
It has also helped to reduce our DR testing. It's at least 300 percent faster than our previous solution.
What is most valuable?
I would give it an eight out of 10, if not a nine out of 10, when it comes to ease of use.
What needs improvement?
It's hard to say where it could be improved. The few times I've had issues with the interface, which is, for the most part, intuitive, we have been able to take care of most issues without having to open a case.
There are a couple of areas in the interface that are not very intuitive. Most of them are pretty easy, but there are a few areas in the journal and replication that, unless you've done it before, you really have no idea what to do. When I get to those points I'll reach out and ask for a little assistance or do a Google search to find the solution to the problem that we're having.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zerto for around seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I'm very impressed with the stability of the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't had to scale it up yet from the initial licensing that we got, but it seems pretty straightforward that, if we grow, it can grow right along with us, and it's pretty easy.
We have not done anything other than replicate to a warm data center for DR purposes. We have not looked into taking it to the cloud, but that may be something we'll do in the future.
How are customer service and support?
Their technical support is pretty good. The few times I've had to open a case, the response has been a little bit slow in the sense that it's almost like they want me to prove my need for a case; more than I think should be necessary.
If I'm looking for help, I need help, and their first response is to tell me to run logs and to put them up, and "Are you sure you covered this and that?" I have to tell them, "I'm already past that point and I'm ready to speak to somebody."
That would be the only thing that could use some improvement, having quicker access to somebody I can speak to, or at least email with, without having to jump through a lot of hoops first.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used VMware's SRM, which is their site-to-site replication solution. We made the switch because we needed something that actually worked. VMware SRM was very complex, very clunky, and it was constantly falling behind our RPO. Zerto is lean and mean and gets the job done, and I don't have to babysit it.
Also, the ease of use is much better than anything we have used before.
How was the initial setup?
I was amazed at the ease of the installation and how quickly it went. I actually did the install with the support engineer looking over my shoulder, and it was done in 30 minutes.
What about the implementation team?
We went through a reseller to purchase the product, but it was the Zerto engineer and I who did the actual install.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We were pretty happy with the pricing. When we switched to Zerto, we were a little on the small side of things. Zerto was looking at more of a larger-environment customer base. We're in at the bottom tier of supported servers, but they gave us a very good price. It was really a no-brainer for us to be able to have such a good product for our size environment. They came down and met us in the middle and gave us an enterprise-quality product for our mid- to small-size business needs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
It's been a while since we have looked around. We came from VMware, and there were at least two others. Cisco had a product, and IBM had a product, and they were way overpriced.
What other advice do I have?
It has been very consistent in keeping up with our RPO and RTO and we have been very happy with it.
Zerto hasn't replaced our other backup solutions, just so that we have redundancy. We don't own the license for long-term retention with Zerto, so we have an offsite backup in addition to the production environment replication.
Give it a shot. It's quick, it's easy, and reliable, and you can run an evaluation pretty inexpensively. You just need another location that you can replicate to for that.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Good support and training with great analytics tools
Pros and Cons
- "The Zerto university for training staff is very useful."
- "The long-term journal is one feature that is useful in that it allows us to use the product as both CDP and backup."
- "They could improve their online documentation."
- "From a reliability perspective, the product is around seven. It's less reliable than others, for example."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for continuous data protection and cloud onboarding.
What is most valuable?
The analytic tools are great.
The external API is something we're using quite a lot. It was upgraded, however, we still haven't upgraded to nine. We were starting to work at six, then seven, then eight, and now we are at eight of five updates. We've been working with this product quite a lot, and they have constantly added a few features. The long-term journal is one feature that is useful in that it allows us to use the product as both CDP and backup. You don't need the backup and disaster recovery tool. That's lowered the overall maintenance and operational costs. The OPEX gets reduced, once you use these two products.
They have reasonable support. The Zerto university for training staff is very useful. It's very easy to get people on board and to get technicians to work and be familiar with the product. The virtual labs are very useful. You have a sandbox and you can easily play and try the product.
Unlike other products that split the VPG into protection plans and activation plans, they're doing everything within the same location.
Technical support is good.
It's a very stable solution.
What needs improvement?
They could improve their online documentation.
From a reliability perspective, the product is around seven. It's less reliable than, others for example. They have one limitation when they have a virtual protection group that does everything.
From the ease of deployment perspective, it requires expertise and time. It's not very easy to do auto-tagging or to run multiple VPG genes at the same time. So, from multi-tenant or multi-complex scenarios such as using Zerto external products, such as firewalls, while their own product is good, it's part of a larger ecosystem, that still has a long way to go.
The triggering of external products could be better. Combining a master runbook and not just a single VPG or splitting the protection group from the activation plan could be better. There will be a protection policy and activation policy as being done in other products.
Better tagging and better multi-term support are needed. Currently, there is no tenant admin support, only global admin support. They should work at the tenant level instead of the global admin level.
Right now it's an HPE product; they're no longer a startup. We are hoping that being bought by a major company will do good for them and they'll fix what needs to be fixed. There were very good products, to begin with, and HPE should work to make it even better.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using the solution for the last three years at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the product is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's reliable and the performance is good.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support has been great. We are happy with the level of support.
What other advice do I have?
We use both on-premises and cloud deployments. In terms of the cloud we are using, we are using Azure. We are using our own Cloud provider; we are using VMware Cloud Director.
I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We are happy with its capabilities. They are a very good product, however, they are not perfect just yet.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Systems Administrator at a legal firm with 10,001+ employees
Easy to use, enabling us to configure a DR solution for our customers they can use themselves
Pros and Cons
- "It's also very much faster than any other migration or disaster recovery platform we have. I work with virtualization, mostly on VMware, and I must admit that Zerto is even better than VMware Site Recovery Manager. Zerto compresses the data and it works much faster."
- "It's a great platform, if you use it as a recovery system and as a migration tool."
What is our primary use case?
We use Zerto as a migration platform from a customer's data center or from their on-premises environment to our data centers. We also use it for disaster recovery.
How has it helped my organization?
Zerto has helped to reduce the number of people involved during a data recovery situation in our company. All we have to do is click a few times. We have even configured a DR solution for our customers so that they can do it themselves. We give them access to the Zerto platform, as well as have a small manual of instructions, and they can go do it. It's very simple to use and to deploy and to support. It does not have a very large learning curve.
For our clients who do DR in the cloud, Zerto has definitely saved them money. We only have a few DR client accounts, but for the ones we do have, there haven't been any failures of Zerto, whenever we do failover tests. It performs well.
What is most valuable?
It's a great platform because it's very well built, technically.
It's also very much faster than any other migration or disaster recovery platform we have. I work with virtualization, mostly on VMware, and I must admit that Zerto is even better than VMware Site Recovery Manager. Zerto compresses the data and it works much faster. We use it whenever we can, and especially whenever we are on a tight time schedule for closing a project, or we need to bring information or VMs from a client or from another data center. Zerto is very valuable because of its speed.
And in terms of ease of use, when I started with my current company I didn't even know about Zerto. My first project was a migration from a big customer and I thought, "Wow, this will be a lot of work." It was a little scary because of the pressure to get it done. But Zerto was so easy to use. I like it a lot.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Zerto for about 12 months, but the company I work for has been using it for four or five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very solid, like a rock. It's very stable.
Even with the most recent customer that we migrated to our data center, it was really impressive that Zerto kept the levels of performance very consistent. This customer's site was at another data center provider, not one of ours. It was on a very old VMware version, and we were deploying them to the latest, vCenter Server 7. At first I thought, "We will be struggling to bring this customer over," because they were two major versions behind. I didn't think Zerto would be compatible for making this migration happen. But it worked like a charm, and we had no problems regarding Zerto itself. While we had some problems with this migration, they were not related to the technology.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable. Most of our core usage here is for migrations from our customers' on-premises or data center instances. And about two years ago, we had a very big migration of over 3,000 virtual machines, and Zerto performed really well. That's why we have kept Zerto in our portfolio.
How are customer service and support?
Their support is amazing. We have had to open some support cases and they have a very good technical team. They're always referring us to their technical teams if we need to discuss something. Or if we fail to understand some of the concepts, we can reach out to them too. It's more than a commercial relationship. They support us whenever we need help.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
We do setups of Zerto every week or two weeks, because it's not a single platform. We are a multi-cloud environment and service provider. We deploy it according to project requirements. So we don't have a single Zerto platform. We are always deploying VMs and DRs.
Zerto is very easy and straightforward to set up. Whenever we want to use Zerto for a migration from an on-premises customer to our data center, we usually create a WAN to WAN link, or a LAN to LAN, or a VPN link between the customer and us. We just deploy the VPNs from our side to the customer site and request access to their environment. We check for special VM configurations. It's pretty straightforward. We don't like telling the customer to do it, even though it's very easy to deploy and configure, because it's part of our service to do this job for them. We also have our own guidelines and policies that we use to configure Zerto for the best migration setup.
The last deployment I did took me four hours, which included setting up both my side and the customer side, doing the pairing and, later, the VPG's. We migrated over 100 VMs and it took about two days to fully replicate their site to ours. The migration window to do the move was about six hours because they had to change applications. But the move itself took no more than two minutes for every Zerto machine.
When I talk to the customers, I tell them that it will be faster than the move window we request. Most of the time set aside for the window is for taking applications offline, because they will often need to reconfigure them. When client data comes from an on-premises site to our data centers, there are usually IP address changes, or we have to update VMware tools, or do something at the Zerto machine level by changing Zerto hardware, such as a network card. The moving itself is pretty straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Because I'm a support engineer, I don't really work directly on the commercial side of things. Whenever I need to request a license for Zerto, someone on our dedicated licensing support team takes care of it. So I don't know if that process is easy or not.
Zerto works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds.
What other advice do I have?
It's a great platform, if you use it as a recovery system and as a migration tool. It's really amazing. It's a very well-developed product and one of the best solutions. In the same way that what makes Microsoft big today is Active Directory, which is an amazing product and one that no other enterprise could do any better, Zerto is the same type of leader in its category and is at the very top, without a doubt.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Updated: September 2026
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