HPE Zerto Software Reviews

My main use case for using the HPE Zerto Software is disaster recovery.

The ability to fail workloads over between data centers has benefited my organization significantly. HPE Zerto Software's continuous data replication is very important to my organization.

The features I appreciate the most about HPE Zerto Software are the automated failover and orchestration, and then the journal for point-in-time recovery. 

I don't use HPE Zerto Software directly; it's used by my team, however, they're very complimentary of it.

It's easy to use and does what it says.

HPE Zerto Software has impacted my RTOs or RPOs, and the recovery speed has improved significantly compared to other disaster recovery solutions I've used; it's been really good. An example is that our snapshots were only every 15 minutes, but with HPE Zerto Software replication, our recovery times are in seconds, not minutes.

The solution has helped to reduce my organization's DR testing. I do not know by how much. We haven't reallocated the time saved to other tasks; it just allows us to do more DR testing and recovery, enabling us to go faster in that space.

I am currently using a cyber vault solution for immutable data copies to ensure recovery from a cyberattack. We have multiple solutions: we use Commvault, Cloud MRR, and we also use safe mode on all of our pure storage. When considering a cyber vault solution, cost is probably the most important factor first, and then simplicity to implement.

To improve HPE Zerto Software, I would suggest that the upgrade process is a little bit average and challenging at the moment, rather than necessarily adding features.

I have been using the HPE Zerto Software for two and a half years.

I assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as being fine. I only had one small issue a while ago, and that was fixed eventually; it was just one small issue. It didn't cause an outage.

To date, HPE Zerto Software has scaled fine for the growing needs of my organization. I have expanded usage. The expansion process was very smooth.

I evaluate the technical support for HPE Zerto Software as okay, about average. On a scale of one to ten for technical support/customer service, I would give them a seven.

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using another solution that addresses similar needs: storage replication. The factor that led me to consider a change was capability.

We didn't really go through an evaluation process, so I can't elaborate on what stood out in that regard.

We used a partner to support us, and it took us a while to get it working. Now it's embedded and it's working.

I have not seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software, and nothing specific comes to mind.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been fine.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered just standard backup solutions.

My advice to another organization considering using HPE Zerto Software is to go for it. 

Overall, I would rate HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten.

We use it for disaster recovery purposes. Since Zerto offers a near recovery point objective recovery, we utilize it to validate our servers from one location to another.

By implementing Zerto, we wanted to ensure that in the event of a disaster or ransomware, we are able to recover and not lose any significant amount of data.

Zerto is very easy to use. Installation is about half an hour, and then it starts protecting the data and VMs. It is not very cumbersome. The UI is built very well. It is fairly self-explanatory. To be able to stand up a product you have never seen in half an hour and get it functioning and protecting speaks to how good the UI and workflow are.

Zerto has near-synchronous replication. As a change is made on site A, it gets copied across the network to site B. We are five or six seconds behind production. If I have a heavily used system and I use traditional backups, I could be anywhere from 5 minutes to 23 hours behind. With Zerto, I am single-digit seconds behind. That works well for us.

Our disaster recovery test, which used to span an entire week, now takes two days. We used to recover our servers in the first two or three days with a backup product and then test for two days before tearing it all down. Now, we spend half a day on new servers and ensuring things work with networking, etc. We test the next day, and we are done in two days. Across the entire company, we are able to save significant man-hours by shortening the test from a week to two days. We are now doing smaller tests once a month and larger tests once a year.

Zerto has reduced our DR testing time by 60% to 70%. We are also able to do more disaster recovery testing. Previously, we were doing it once a year, whereas now, we are doing smaller tests once a month and our large tests once a year.

In recovery point objectives, we are single-digit seconds behind. In terms of RTOs, I can recover 350 VMs in 30 minutes. It takes less than several seconds to restore a single VM. From days to 30 minutes for 350 compared to 100 VMs is an incredible time-saving in terms of RTOs and RPOs for us.

I find it easy to use, and the UI is really easy to navigate. We reduced our time with backups from days to less than half an hour for the same data service. 

The best aspect of Zerto is being able to test any day, any time. It provides a quick look to ensure everything is functioning correctly from site A to site B. 

I would like to see different reporting options than what is currently available. I would like to be able to grab different data points that do not currently exist in the reporting system. 

I would also like to see more of a runbook or playbook for using Zerto. If I have 350 objects that I am protecting, I would like Zerto to be able to fire them up in one order, rather than having to manually bring them up in a sequence.

I have used the solution for at least six years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

The servers and VMs that we are protecting are across different business units. We have three people who are the administrators of the solution. 120 people were the testers, but there are only three full-time admins for it.

I would definitely rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I was using BMC Avamar Virtual Edition, which is really a BRS kind of product versus a disaster recovery product.

It is very easy to deploy. For us, the initial setup takes about half an hour.

In terms of maintenance, the most that we ever had to do with Zerto was install a patch. When there is a new patch, we give it a couple of months to make sure there are no other issues that pop up, but it is normal patching. We do not have to babysit it. We log in and get it done, and it just does what it is supposed to do.

Determining ROI is tough. In terms of man-hours, in the last disaster test, we had 120 users in the system. If we did that over a week, it would be 120 times 5 days. With 10-hour days, that is 6,000 man-hours. We now do it in 8-hour days or 1,920 hours. We are talking about a 4,080-hour difference between the old and new ways of doing things.

We feel it is pretty cost-efficient. For the amount of protection that we get for Zerto, we feel that it is at an excellent price point, especially compared to some of the other vendors that were just backup solutions. For all that it does, we feel that the price is good.

We dabbled in RecoverPoint a long time ago. At that time, RecoverPoint was specifically for physical machines and not virtual machines. The complexities with RecoverPoint and SRM, and having to manage two or three different products, made Zerto much more attractive. I am changing IP addresses, doing recovery, and replication all in Zerto. It is an all-in-one product, eliminating the need for two or three other things from different vendors.

It is also vendor agnostic, which is not the case with some other vendors. I can have HPE on one side and Pure on the other side for storage. I can have VMware on one side and Hyper-V potentially on the other side. Zerto can move data from site A to B. It does not care what we are using for servers or storage.

I would absolutely recommend Zerto. It is almost the only product in its market space that provides what it promises, such as near real-time replication and protection. The cost is very reasonable. There is no reason not to suggest Zerto for disaster recovery and ransomware protection. 

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten.

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are to replicate the VM machines to a disaster recovery center and for disaster recovery scenarios.

While I cannot provide a specific example where these features helped my organization since we haven't had a real recovery scenario, it provides peace of mind knowing our data is protected and we can always return to previous checkpoints.

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I value most are its continuous backup capabilities, its effectiveness against ransomware, and the ability to return to any checkpoint in the past. That is probably the best feature. My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are that it provides numerous checkpoints with the ability to go back, which I think is the most important feature.

We encountered some issues with HPE Zerto Software. 

The main concern involves the Delta Sync that triggers when changing the recovery direction. For large virtual machines of several terabytes, this process can take considerable time. As a bank, we are required by regulators to run regular DRC scenario testing for one week from the DRC site. 

When changing replication, the Delta Sync takes approximately six hours for six terabyte virtual machines. During this time, the virtual machine is inaccessible. If another major issue arose requiring us to return to the PDC, we would have to wait six hours for the Delta Sync to complete, which would result in a test failure. This represents our biggest challenge.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for approximately one and a half years.

Regarding the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software, there are occasional warnings and sometimes replication stops for various reasons. However, overall, it is stable and reliable. I would rate it eight points out of ten.

The customer support for HPE Zerto Software is very good. I have opened several cases, and their responses were consistently quick. In most instances, we resolved the issue or they provided proper guidance on how to proceed.

Before implementing HPE Zerto Software, we used SRM, the VMware solution. We also considered building all machines in the DRC as alternatives. However, we abandoned this design as it would have created more complications, requiring the application team to release applications on both sides.

Our organization implemented HPE Zerto Software to address the challenge of maintaining a functional disaster recovery scenario. Prior to HPE Zerto Software, we used VMware, but due to VMware's license policy changes, we anticipated significantly higher costs for future license renewals.

The solution's ease of use with HPE Zerto Software is exceptional. Compared to SRM, it is much more intuitive. The setup process took only a few hours to complete everything. The recovery process is also very straightforward, requiring just a few clicks.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software, I do not have information about the prices.

We haven't experienced any real recovery scenarios yet, and our testing showed similar recovery times between SRM and HPE Zerto Software. I am currently not using a Cyber Vault solution. 

Overall, I would rate HPE Zerto Software eight out of ten.

Our use case is disaster recovery replication.

We primarily use it for the automation orchestration for disaster recovery. We were looking for a solution that could do individual virtual machine replication failover and failback, and Zerto provided that.

We conduct DR tests biannually. With Zerto, our DR tests go much faster. Orchestration is much better. Previously, these events took two to four hours, and they are now down to under fifteen minutes. The speed of the DR test is better. Accuracy is better. Everything is faster all around. It has saved 15% to 25% of time.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. Right now, our recovery is in seconds of several critical VMs. There is more than a 95% reduction in RPO and RTO time. It has been significant.

We also have more accuracy. There is about a 50% improvement. Human error has decreased by 50% as well. Things seem to be going a little bit better. We are working on more scripting and automation so that we get to the eventual goal of push-button. Right now, engineers have to push buttons within the Zerto console, but we are trying to work on full automation orchestration so that we can get it down to five minutes from fifteen minutes.

Zerto has saved downtime by 25%. From a quantification standpoint, there are 15% to 20% cost savings.

We are using anti-ransomware approaches on Zerto as well as data protection backup and primary storage, so at this time, Zerto has not saved time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes, but we are investigating use cases for anti-ransomware recovery.

Zerto is quite central to our IT resiliency strategy. Several of our big customers require it. DR is a service that we sell, so it is pretty important for us.

Many aspects of Zerto are valuable, such as the automation and orchestration features. The dashboarding shows recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives, indicating seconds or minutes remaining, which is useful. 

The ease of installation and use of virtual replication adapters on hosts is beneficial. The ability to simulate a disaster recovery failover commit and see what the results are going to be before we perform the commit is valuable.

Near-synchronous replication has some trade-offs. With near-synchronous replication, we get almost all the information up to date at the destination site, but the trade-off is that sometimes that could take a lot of CPU cycles, network bandwidth, and troubleshooting. A few versions back with Zerto, there were some bugs in the software that were causing constant replication back and forth that was driving a lot of network bandwidth utilization over the network, and we did not know why until we found out it was a bug. It depends on what your business or application really requires. If it requires near-synchronous, you have to enable that. However, if Zerto can make it easier or have a smaller footprint by sending larger payloads or having network compression, it will be a little bit easier. On wide area networks and local area networks, that would definitely be preferred.

We have had some issues running Linux virtual machines on the new version. There were some issues with virtual replication adapters on Cisco UCS hosts running VMware vCenter 8. There were several things we had to do with installation and getting the replication adapters to work. Integration with Keycloak for Active Directory authentication using new Linux VMs was challenging, but it is now functioning well.

I have been using the solution for more than three years personally, and the company has been using it for five or ten years.

I would rate the stability a solid nine or ten. There have not been many bugs. It has been running perfectly.

I would rate the scalability at about a seven out of ten. There is room for improvement, but that is also applicable to our side. We should slice and dice our databases into smaller chunks so that Zerto can get them replicated. Customers need to follow good engineering practices for optimal product use. It is not fully a Zerto problem; it is a shared responsibility.

It is being used at multiple locations. We are a small to medium-sized organization. We have two IT administrators working on it. We have about 200 to 500 users.

I would rate their technical support a ten out of ten. The team is really good, especially when we get someone from Ukraine. They have a very good Ukrainian support team. We sometimes request those guys specifically because they know the product in and out.

Positive

We have used other solutions, such as Commvault. We have used remote replication from other data protection backup vendors like Cohesity, which did not have a lot of automation. We tried using NetApp SnapCenter, but it did not have the level of automation that Zerto did. I find Zerto to be the fastest, easiest, and least complex solution compared to others.

I was not involved in the initial deployment. In terms of maintenance, it is not too bad. Getting everything migrated from the old version to the new version took some cycles and time. It just runs in the background with minimal upkeep.

I believe the return on investment is 15% to 25% because disaster recovery is a service that we sell to customers. We are able to do it quickly, efficiently, and accurately with replicable processes and resilience.

It is cost-efficient because we have perpetual licenses. We are a small to medium-sized business, so cost is a pretty big important factor. Being cost-efficient with perpetual licensing is a key factor.

I would recommend Zerto to others for high availability, scalability, near-real-time synchronous replication, ease of use, VM stability, and competitive pricing.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is to move VMs from one place to another. We implemented HPE Zerto Software to solve the challenge of moving workloads from on-premises to the cloud.

I would assess the ease of use of HPE Zerto Software as straightforward. It is easy to use, and the user interface is excellent. When using HPE Zerto Software for VM migrations from on-premises to the cloud, it provides valuable features and transfers them quickly, so users do not need to spend much time on it.

My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are that it is seamless. Near-synchronous replication is important to my organization because it takes less time to migrate the workload, which is what we are looking for, along with it being faster and having no complexity, making the migration 100% successful.

HPE Zerto Software has improved our RPO and RTO. Earlier, our RPO and RTO were based on the application tier, but now they have been reduced significantly, so we appreciate this product.

I think HPE Zerto Software is excellent, and I don't see any issues with it, so I don't know if anything needs to be improved. I don't have any suggestions for additional features I would to see included in the next release of HPE Zerto Software.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for almost five years now.

I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as good, and I cannot say anything negative about it. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software, as we have high availability.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively, and I cannot complain about anything. We have expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, and the process was smooth, as we have a descriptive runbook on how to use it, so the team uses it efficiently.

I evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as excellent, as whenever we have any issues, we reach out to customer support, and they provide the support we need. 

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate customer service for HPE Zerto Software as nine because the response time is quick, and the technical knowledge of the associates is excellent.

Positive

Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was not using another solution to address similar needs. Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were doing it manually, so there was no other product we evaluated.

HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce our organization's DR testing.

I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I think on the pricing side, I don't generally deal with it, but from what I hear from my finance team, it's somewhat on the higher side. If licensing could be reduced, that would be beneficial.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is that they should try it first and evaluate it based on the feature set before making a decision, as I think they will appreciate HPE Zerto Software. I rate HPE Zerto Software 10 out of 10.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is to achieve disaster recovery.

I can provide a quick specific example of how I use HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery in my environment. It is very good software to achieve disaster recovery because it provides very low RTO and RPO. We have multiple critical systems in our environment, and we try to find the best scenario or best solution to get that result. With HPE Zerto Software, we achieve those numbers. We did scenarios for drills and carried out real scenarios for disaster recovery, and HPE Zerto Software was the best approach to go with.

In the beginning, we faced some issues during failover and failback. Sometimes HPE Zerto Software did not remove or delete the folder for machines in the main site, and when you fail back, it causes conflicts if the folder name still exists. When you fail back, HPE Zerto Software just adds a suffix to that new virtual machine, which causes issues with backups or when you want to migrate the data store for those virtual machines. After failover, you have to make sure to search for any existing files and change or delete them. This is the big issue that arose from HPE Zerto Software; otherwise, it has been a very good solution.

The best features HPE Zerto Software offers are that it is very easy to use, and it is not complex software. I can do the installation and start the implementation for the virtual machine to replicate and for the disaster recovery site in maybe just one day. It does not take much time for me to understand how this software works; it is very good and easy to manage.

The simplicity of how easy it is to use and set up HPE Zerto Software really helps me day to day. Compared to other tools I have tried, HPE Zerto Software was easy to install the management server. They provide an OVA, and you simply need to add some information, such as server name and IPs, and open some ports. Then you install it on every ESXi in the main site and disaster recovery site, and that's it. You just need to add the virtual machine that you want to replicate.

Our team is very concerned about how we can achieve a disaster recovery scenario with our critical systems, which are based on security tools. With HPE Zerto Software, when we achieve that scenario to fail over and stay there for a long period, and then come back and fail back to the main site, it has had a huge positive impact on our management.

We have two topics to improve with HPE Zerto Software. First, when you fail over, you have to make sure that files for the existing virtual machine are cleaned up. Sometimes when we fail over, HPE Zerto Software deletes some files and keeps others, leading to disputes when failing back. Second, during failover, sometimes you have to ask HPE Zerto Software to shut down the virtual machine, and it can take a long time. HPE Zerto Software will wait for maybe one or two minutes, or sometimes five minutes. If the virtual machine doesn't shut down in that time, it just powers it back on and cancels the failover. These two things should be enhanced and developed to improve the process.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software since one year ago.

HPE Zerto Software is very stable.

HPE Zerto Software is really easy to scale. It can be done by extending the license or installing it for more hosts. I believe it offers very good scalability.

Sometimes I find very good engineers that support us and provide more information to help solve issues. Other times, it takes a long time with engineering to find a solution to problems. I would rate the customer support of HPE Zerto Software as seven out of ten.

Before switching to HPE Zerto Software, I used Veeam. Everything was fine, but to achieve a large number for RPO and RTO, switching to HPE Zerto Software was the only solution that could meet our needs.

HPE Zerto Software was easy to install the management server. They provide an OVA, and you simply need to add some information, such as server name and IPs, and open some ports. Then you install it on every ESXi in the main site and disaster recovery site, and that's it. You just need to add the virtual machine that you want to replicate. The simplicity really helps me day to day compared to other tools I have tried.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software is that it was a little expensive. I have Veeam which we use for backup, and it has a replication feature that is much cheaper compared to HPE Zerto Software. HPE Zerto Software focuses solely on disaster recovery and replication, while Veeam provides backups, replications, and copies to other locations with multiple features at a lower price.

I don't remember all the options I evaluated before choosing HPE Zerto Software as it happened about a year ago. When I looked at other software, I found that HPE Zerto Software might be the best approach to meet our disaster recovery needs. After the POC, I confirmed it as the correct choice for our disaster recovery scenarios.

We achieved an RPO of just seconds for the systems, and when you fail over, it takes just three minutes, or maybe less than one minute for some systems. For others, it depends on how quickly you can shut down in the main site and fail over those systems. I would say three to four or five minutes maximum. For us, it was really no downtime or data loss.

I rate HPE Zerto Software as nine out of ten because, as I mentioned previously, it caused me some trouble during drills, which helped me learn how to deal with those issues. However, HPE Zerto Software deserves more; it is really very good software. If you are looking to achieve very good numbers with RTO and RPO and want to conduct smooth disaster recovery scenarios, I really advise you to use HPE Zerto Software.

My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are for DR failover and recovery.

HPE Zerto Software benefited my organization as it allows us to test changes without impacting production.

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate the most include being able to recover VMs, change the target, and either deploy the VM with the same IP address or a different IP address on different networks for a digital twin.

My impressions of HPE Zerto's near-synchronous replication are impressive, and this feature is particularly important to us. Unfortunately, we're not a HPE Zerto Software customer anymore, but I've been actively trying to push for us to get it again. 

The solution has saved me time in data recovery situations due to data corruption scenarios, though not specifically for ransomware. 

The solution has helped reduce downtime by approximately 10 hours. I cannot specify how much that amount of downtime would have cost my organization since we were a managed service provider managing HPE Zerto Software for their company. 

HPE Zerto Software has significantly lowered our time to recovery. It performs better than other recovery solutions I've used, including Veeam and the native VMware solution, which I found inadequate. 

It has helped reduce our DR testing by about two hours. I am not currently using a cyber vault solution or immutable data copies to ensure recovery from a cyber threat. We have discontinued using HPE Zerto Software. 

I don't know how HPE Zerto Software can be improved; I think it's pretty great. If it can recover VMs or infrastructure into public clouds or vice versa, that would be awesome. 

One potential improvement for the future would be competitive pricing with Veeam.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for three years.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software.

HPE Zerto Software scaled effectively with the growing needs of my organization. The multi-tenancy capabilities were beneficial since we were a managed service provider and could resell that to our customers.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as exceptional, though I never needed to engage them. On a scale of one to 10, I would rate them as a 10, though I never really interacted with them.

Positive

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were using Veeam and the VMware equivalent simultaneously. We ultimately chose HPE Zerto Software because we were unhappy with the other products we were using.

My experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software was that it was pretty straightforward and easy to deploy.

I would say I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software.

Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were using Veeam and the VMware equivalent. We chose HPE Zerto Software because we were dissatisfied with other products.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 10.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is that it would be unwise not to purchase it.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is BCDR. 

By implementing this solution, we were trying to solve BCDR challenges and needed a vendor-agnostic solution.

The feature I appreciate most about HPE Zerto Software is its journal-based replication, which is a faster replication technology than what we had prior.

Overall, it has improved our RTO and RPO and reduced the engineering time spent during regularly scheduled DR exercises.

When failing over virtual machines (VMs), where VLANs aren't spanned across geographical data centers, it's essential to change the IP address of replicated VMs. The mechanism used to control and configure this process could be improved for customers with restrictions on DHCP usage.

Additionally, there are nuances to consider when dealing with Linux systems.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for three years.

HPE Zerto Software has had some issues, such as storage problems and logs filling up, but they were resolved by support.

Our replicated workloads are mostly static. We have not needed to scale our implementation, yet.

Their support team didn’t have all the answers, and some of the cases took far too long to address, especially on critical systems that needed to be operational before our scheduled DR events.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support of HPE Zerto Software as probably a five out of ten. 

Neutral

Before adopting HPE Zerto Software, we were using a vendor-specific technology. We considered the change to HPE Zerto Software due to performance and the need to use multiple hypervisors.

Deploying HPE Zerto Software was pretty streamlined, but there have been some challenges with the support organization. There were instances where additional resources were needed to address cases, and the time to bring them on was longer than expected.

We were able to consolidate tools with HPE Zerto. That yielded a meaningful amount of cost savings for us.

My experience with the pricing and licensing of HPE Zerto Software is that it was more affordable than our previously used technologies.

My advice to another organization considering HPE Zerto Software is to get a good contact within the account team to ensure a quick path to escalation exists. 

Potential customers should be aware that Zerto does not support all hypervisors in the market. So, depending on your footprint, Zerto may or may not be a fit for your long-term virtualization strategy.

I would rate HPE Zerto Software a seven out of ten.