HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We started using HPE Zerto Software for the disaster recovery (DR) segment. For DR implementation, we are using the HPE Zerto Software tool.

HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce downtime in our corporate IT environment, and it was a very smooth dry run. In our corporate IT environment where we used HPE Zerto Software, it was a good experience regarding RTOs and RPOs. 

HPE Zerto Software is very quick. It reduces our DR testing and takes less than 30 minutes.

To copy the data from one site to another site, HPE Zerto Software is a very powerful tool. We have two environments, Dell and HPE, so now it's very easy to move files from one place to another with HPE Zerto Software. 

HPE Zerto Software is a very good tool with ease of access. We can easily move data from one place to another and replicate it. To manage two types of data centers, DC and DR, HPE Zerto Software is a very useful tool. Replication with the HPE Zerto Software is very smooth. 

The migration part of the HPE Zerto Software is already there. In terms of improvement, we have VMware and Nutanix, and we are looking for solutions to perform migration between these two setups to save costs.

We have used HPE Zerto Software for more than a year.

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

We are expanding the usage of HPE Zerto Software currently from a two-node to more nodes.

The technical support for the HPE Zerto Software is good and very quick. Whenever we raise tickets, we generally get the solution fast. I would rate the technical support of HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten because when we raise technical issues, they can take a little time but they do provide a solution.

Earlier we were not using any other solution for DR. We recently started using HPE Zerto Software for DR.

We have two environments. There's a corporate IT environment and a smart city environment. We have done the implementation in the corporate IT, and it was very smooth. We had a good experience with the solution. 

During the implementation, we encountered no major challenges. Everything is working smoothly, and the implementation process is very quick. The partner support has been excellent. Currently, we are using an on-premises setup with two data centers. One data center serves as our primary data center, while the other acts as a disaster recovery site.

It's still in the implementation stage, but we have seen an ROI.

We have not had any incidents of ransomware. The cost of any downtime for our organization would be approximately $10,000.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for the HPE Zerto Software was good. 

We started the communication with HPE for HPE Zerto Software for DR, and did not look around at other solutions. HPE Zerto Software was already in place, so we started using it for DR.

We are using Fortinet as a cyber vault solution, but in the future, we can explore other options. DDoS attacks and other aspects have to be covered in the next version of our cyber vault solution approach.

I would rate HPE Zerto Software a ten out of ten. It offers ease of access and fast implementation.

Our current use cases for Zerto involve using it for DR, as we replicate to each other for disaster recovery across two different properties. We back up locally and then replicate across using Zerto.

I use Zerto to help protect virtual machines in my environment.

What I appreciate the most about Zerto is the simplicity of it all. It has allowed me to rely on Zerto to do file-level backups which, as a normal DR solution, you usually don't get. I've used other platforms for disaster recovery, and Zerto by far has been the simplest to implement and maintain.

The near-synchronous replication feature is incredible; I haven't used another solution that does it as fast and as seamlessly as Zerto.

I have not seen any effect on my RPOs. Prior to Zerto, we were not able to publish our RPOs, but now we're confident in them.

For improvement points, because Zerto is not a backup company, if they could implement some kind of backup solutions, it would help us out significantly. They can do file-level backups, but if in the future they could achieve application-aware recovery, that would be an incredible help for us.

I have been using Zerto since 2016 in my career.

I have not seen any instability, such as lagging or crashing, in Zerto.

Zerto is very scalable.

I have contacted Zerto's technical support and customer support.

Their support is very knowledgeable about the product. I was concerned because I had reached out to Zerto support directly before they became an HPE company, and although I had never had a problem, I found that after reaching out to support following the HPE acquisition, they did not skip a beat. The support has not dropped off whatsoever.

I would give them a nine out of ten for support.

Positive

The initial deployment of Zerto was easy for me.

I was up and running within an hour to fully set it up.

It was just me who handled the deployment—no team was needed.

Regarding the pricing for Zerto, it's right on target. I was pleasantly surprised once I was introduced to Zerto. I was very impressed with the product but had that in my back pocket because I figured it was going to be overpriced. It was surprisingly affordable.

I have used VMware's SRM tool as an alternative to Zerto in my career.

The biggest difference between Zerto and SRM in my opinion is simplicity. SRM was clunky; you almost had to have an engineer maintain it, and it seemed it was a daily project. We just don't have the manpower, as we don't have an extra engineer or staff member to manage it, and it was way too clunky for us.

Fortunately, Zerto has not needed to help us reduce downtime in any situations, as we have not had a situation where we would have had to use it. We do bi-annual failover testing within Zerto, and they've always been successful.

My advice for new users on how to start with Zerto is to start with a demonstration and watch the product in action; don't just review slides by sales.

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

Our systems are primarily Windows-based, but a big portion of the organization also runs on AS/400. About 40% of our systems are AS/400.

We use Zerto to replicate data from a primary data center to a secondary data center. In the previous incarnation, we used Zerto to replicate our secondary data center and also Azure because we were looking to start moving more and more things to Azure. We were considering Azure to have someplace where we could run some of our critical systems in the event we did not have much capacity in the secondary data center or it just made sense to leverage Azure for a particular application.

Zerto’s near-synchronous replication works very well. Most of the time, our systems are running about three seconds behind the primary, which is something most people are not going to complain about. It also has the ability to take you back to a point in time where everything is in sync. You can start from that point and maybe lose a couple of transactions as opposed to a typical backup environment where you could lose hundreds of transactions as a result of an outage. It can help revert systems to a specific point in time, providing continuity where data loss is minimal compared to traditional backup solutions. 

We saw the benefits of Zerto right away. It gave us the confidence that if something happened, we would be able to restore our data. A notable benefit is the ability to conduct failover testing in a virtual environment. We can confirm operations without affecting external users. The software audits its processes, offering detailed reports.

Zerto has also continued to upgrade features, including Secure Vault and tools for immutability, enhancing ransomware protection, but a hardware change is required to fully benefit from Zerto's ransomware solutions. We have to go with their hardware versus what we are running. We can take advantage of some of the things that they do to help with ransomware, but we cannot get all the way there without switching the hardware.

We use Zerto to protect virtual machines. Our RPOs have moved. Prior to Zerto, and at different places, we have used other solutions such as Pure Storage or IBM replication solutions. Most of these solutions tend to have an RPO of minutes or more, whereas, with Zerto, we are looking at an RPO of less than ten seconds or something like that. That was one of the big differences we saw. It is also an integrated solution. You move the entire environment as opposed to some of the other environments where you connect to the storage, and then the storage is doing the replication. At the point at which something fails, you have to reconnect servers back up to the right hardware before you can get started in recovery. With Zerto, your recovery time goes down, and your RPO becomes much better.

The recovery time or RTO is much better with Zerto if you have the right bandwidth and other things. If you have an issue with latency or bandwidth, you may see those RTO numbers go up a little bit. Generally, RTOs are much better.

We have not seen Zerto reducing downtime in any situation. We have not necessarily seen an improvement there.

In terms of time savings in a data recovery situation, we went through a ransomware event at the last company. I have seen Zerto help from a ransomware perspective because one of the things that Zerto does is it maintains a whole bunch of snapshots as it goes along. In a ransomware situation, you can go back to the time before you were hit by the ransomware. You can go back in time and recover those servers. You can scan them to make sure they do not have whatever malware was installed for the ransomware, and then you can recover.

Zerto has had a huge impact on our resiliency strategy. It allows us to be able to leverage our secondary data center for a major event. It also frees us up to do more things in the local environment such as leveraging SQL Always On.

Zerto has not helped us to reduce overall DR testing. We would like to do more testing with Zerto, but some folks are very comfortable with just Zerto saying everything is okay. On the other hand, Zerto has been able to help us increase our testing where we could not do it before. That does not mean that we are satisfied with where it is. We would like to do more with it.

I appreciate the real-time nature of Zerto. It continuously copies data, maintains synchronization, and allows rapid recovery of key systems. In most situations, the recovery delay is approximately six seconds, minimizing data loss. It gives us the ability to recover without losing a bunch of data.

Additionally, it facilitates migration between environments. We are in a business that does a lot of acquisitions and divestitures. That can be tiring, but Zerto makes our path smooth because we can use it to replicate something to another location and then bring it up there.

When it comes to failover tests, we would like to be able to take that extra step to shut things down and see what it looks like at the other site versus just doing it in a virtual environment. That is one thing I would push back on them. I would like the ability to perform actual failovers more easily compared to our current process. In the event of an issue, we can switch and bring back servers smoothly, but when we do the tests, currently, Zerto's test failovers are virtual. We cannot get end users to come access those systems. I would like to be able to do a test where we failover and rebuild the network connections so that end-users can hit that center or server and test. Improving testing capabilities would be advantageous.

When it comes to deployment, one improvement could be being able to visually see virtual private groups and server names. Although the reporting is comprehensive, occasionally, people use long names that do not display fully on the monitoring page. Despite this minor issue, deployment has been easy, and we rarely need support.

I initially explored Zerto around 2018. That was when I first became aware of it and initiated a pilot project. It was not until around 2023 that I began working in an organization actively using it.

I have not observed any instability. Occasionally, systems might run out of space, which is a common issue in any setup. However, the software alerts us effectively, allowing prompt resolution. Overall, I have not seen any stability issues with the system.

I believe Zerto scales quite well. In our current environment, we manage around 200 servers, with licensing that supports up to 500. Scaling is largely about expanding compute and storage capacity. There are no significant barriers to scalability with Zerto.

They have support, but we do not tend to need support from them. They have a lot of good material online to learn about the product. For the most part, it just runs and does not complain about anything.

I have not personally contacted technical support. In my previous organization, other team members, one of the four or five colleagues, reached out to tech support.

Neutral

I have used and explored several solutions, including Commvault and NetWorker. We have also used Rubrik, which effectively manages storage across data centers.

We constantly monitor available technologies to create strategies for using Zerto alongside others like Rubrik and NetWorker. We use Rubrik for certain things and NetWorker for other things, but without Zerto or any of the others, it would not work. Zerto's development aims to substitute some tools by enhancing functionality. They continue to work to add functionality that could then help us eliminate some of the other tools that we are using because we can get the same functionality out of Zerto.

It is extremely easy to deploy. The deployment is straightforward. Once the virtual replication appliances are connected to the environment, the system is ready to start. After licensing, replication begins.

In this particular organization, it was deployed before I got here. At the previous organization, it took a few weeks or a month. We had to set things up and wait for some storage. We then rolled it out. The actual rollout was something that was done overnight, and it was relatively easy to do.

The maintenance that it requires includes upgrades to the latest version of the software. There might be features that you want that are not available in the current version. Overall, the system just runs itself, but you may get an alert that says that this particular system has gone out of bounds of its RPO. You can go in to find out the problem. You might need to add space to the journaling system so that it can get back up again.

We had a team of probably four or five individuals handling the implementation.

We have always been able to get the pricing worked out. At this new company I am right now, we are doing well. We sometimes go through a third party to help us with pricing, but Zerto is fairly decently priced, especially when you consider some of the other solutions that are out there which could be very expensive.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

I use Zerto for backup and restore.

With both Veeam and vCenter, the restoration process took a considerable amount of time. Zerto bragged about how their restoration was much faster, and it was true. It seemed unrealistically faster when they described and said that they could restore a VM within minutes. With vCenter and Veeam, when we restore a VM, depending on the size of the VM, it can take hours. Zerto proved true, and we have tested it numerous times now. We have done restorations via Zerto, and it truly does a full restoration of a VM within minutes. That was the problem we needed to solve, and they provided the solution. We are very pleased.

We are able to do a restoration so quickly because it backs up in near real-time. Of course, nothing is going to be in real-time, but it is as near real-time as possible. Instead of copying a larger amount of data, it is able to copy just delta data which is in a compressed form so that replication is more frequent. If we need to do a restoration, we will be missing less data.

Its interface is like any enterprise-grade utility. It is complex and not easy to use, but it is learnable.

We were able to see its benefits after some time. That was mostly because we did not have a good opportunity to test it in production. The initial onboarding came with an opportunity for us to do a test backup and restoration, but that was test data. You find the true value of this platform when you use it in a production environment where a stakeholder is involved and there is data that if you do not restore will lead to problems.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. The restoration time is in minutes versus hours. That goes a long way towards our RPO. With our previous platform, it took two hours, and with this platform, it takes five minutes. It has also had a positive effect on our RTOs.

Zerto has helped us to reduce downtime with a restoration time of five minutes versus two hours.

We have not had to use it for restoration because of ransomware. We were using a couple of VMs to test migration to a new database. While testing that migration, we caused damage to the VMs. We then used Zerto to restore them prior to that damage, and it was fantastic. The restoration was quick and effective, and we were back in production in minutes versus hours.

Zerto has reduced the time spent on DR testing but we still do the same number of DR tests throughout the year to make sure. It just takes a lot less time.

Zerto has improved our confidence tremendously, and it has reduced the RPO of any potential restoration needs.

I find Zerto's ability to restore a virtual VM much more quickly than Veeam or vCenter's restoration capabilities to be incredibly valuable. 

I cannot think of any features that Zerto does not have. They probably have a lot of features that I do not even use. I am primarily interested in Zerto as a backup and recovery mechanism, and it does a phenomenal job of that. It is an enterprise-grade tool, and enterprise-grade tools tend to be complex. They can be a little difficult to use at first until you learn them. It is not reasonable to suggest making it easier to use because it is an enterprise-grade tool, and it is very robust. Therefore, it is not going to be easy to use. I just have to spend the time to learn it and become good at it. I am very pleased with it as is, but the ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially.

I have used Zerto for just over a year.

It is 100% stable. We have had no downtime with it, and we are pleased with its uptime and stability. We have great confidence that it will be available and usable when needed.

I have not personally contacted Zerto customer service, but Todd, my sysadmin, is the primary point of contact for Zerto. He has contacted them for issues or day-to-day troubleshooting. When there is an upgrade to be done, he always reaches out to them to get guidance and ensure that he is doing the upgrades correctly. They are very good to work with.

Positive

We were using Veeam. There were no security concerns. It was more about performance. The restoration took approximately two hours with Veeam compared to five minutes with Zerto. The benefit was obvious, but there were no concerns about data security in the backups, protection mechanisms, or air gaps on either platform. It was just about the performance.

Neither one is easy to use. They are both very similar. Veeam is probably a little bit more complex than Zerto. Zerto is already doing a slightly better job than Veeam in ease of use, but they are both very complex and difficult to learn at first until you learn them.

Anything new is always going to have a level of difficulty. It was difficult, but Zerto's onboarding development team helped us every step of the way. As we crossed bridges and had problems, that team jumped right in the middle of it and helped us resolve each and every problem until we were a hundred percent satisfied.

To fully set it up, from the kickoff call until I was satisfied that it was fully functional, it took about two weeks. There was probably a month's worth of preparatory work done in advance of the actual kickoff call and deployment, including some information gathering. You could include those 30 days prior as part of that work. Technically, it was about two weeks from the kickoff call to fully deployed and fully functional.

It is a one-person job. One person primarily takes care of it, but we have three of us who are kept abreast and familiar with the process so that we do not have a single point of failure. It is definitely something that one person can handle.

In terms of maintenance, it requires periodic patching and upgrades.

It is an enterprise-grade product. When you buy enterprise-grade tools, you have to expect to pay a higher price. It goes back to the idea of you get what you pay for. If you want an old cheap tool, you pay cheap prices to get it. If you want a good-quality tool that is robust and does a good job for you, you have to pay a higher price to get that, and Zerto is no different. We pay a little bit higher than the cheap tool price, but we get our money's worth. I am not dissatisfied with the price.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. There is nothing that is absolutely perfect, but Zerto does a pretty good job of getting as close to perfect as they can.

It is part of a new deployment. We have a large deployment for the public sector in the UK, and we are using Zerto to enable disaster recovery by replicating data. This allows us to have a very low recovery point objective for that data.

Zerto is easy to use and fairly straightforward to set up. It reliably keeps the data in sync which is all that we can ask of it. It does what it says on the tin, and that takes away any worries. We know that we will be able to recover as we are contracted to do.

Having Zerto in place takes a headache off my plate. I do not have to worry about it. I check it, or I have my team check that it is up to date and synchronizing. All they have to do is log on, have a look, and confirm that we are okay and have green lights across the board. It is very easy to understand the interface.

It is one of those things that sits and does its job and does it well. Therefore, we do not have to worry about it. That is the biggest thing. We have peace of mind at the end of the day.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is very important. We run an application in the SaaS model for our customers. Our customers sign into our application. It is a purchasing application called PECOS. We do purchasing and inventory management. They sign in to our systems and do their business. We have to ensure that the systems are highly available. In the event of a disaster, we can bring them up with a minimum loss of data. That is where Zerto comes in.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. Our recovery point objective by contract is within four hours, but practically, it is within five minutes. Zerto is very effective. If I look at it during the day, I generally see that we are within nine to ten seconds. It is a very good thing to see.

Zerto recovery is a lot faster than recovery from a tape or a digital backup. We did a test against the old RecoverPoint and found Zerto to be faster. We also do disaster recovery tests. I have a full disaster recovery test coming up at the end of the month. We expect to be able to bring up the entire environment for our customer within 45 minutes, which is very good.

Zerto has not reduced our downtime, but it has made us feel a lot better. In the event we have downtime, we have some protection there.

Zerto has not saved us time in a real-time data recovery situation. In our rehearsals, it definitely has saved time. Hopefully, our systems have been built reliably enough that we would not have to use it for one. It is just an insurance system.

We still do DR testing. We have noticed a speed improvement in our DR testing. It is slightly faster, but we still have to do DR testing. As with any system, you have to make sure it works.

Zerto has given us confidence in our IT resilience strategy. We had similar strategies in place with the previous infrastructure. We completely renewed our entire infrastructure and replaced it with HPE backend and SAN. Zerto is the recovery solution. We have a lot of confidence that it will work if called upon.

Zerto is quite straightforward to use. It is quite easy to set up. Getting it right is a bit more complex, but setting it up is quite straightforward. 

It seems to be very reliable, and it consistently keeps our data synchronized within ten seconds or so, which gives our customers confidence that the data synchronization and replication will allow for a very low recovery point objective.

The onboarding was not very good. It felt like, "Now you have Zerto, good luck. Figure out how to use it." It was not terrible. Their support since having the product has been good when I have had an issue, but there was not much of an onboarding process. The setup of the system, although simple to get working, is a little more tricky to get right. This aspect could have benefitted from a bit more explanation.

It is very easy to simply say, "There are manuals." A little hand-holding upfront instead of trying to get it right by going through a big manual would have saved a lot of time. Once I reported a problem, they were very quick to jump on that and assist us with it. It is not a huge criticism, but it would have saved time. A little bit of upfront help would have stopped us from getting into that cycle. At the end of the day, I am happy with the product. It works.

I have been using Zerto for four months.

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

I do not know about scalability. We have implemented it for the size that we need. We have not tried to change licenses, add VMs, or grow it at all. From what I understand, it is very good. We will have to increase the usage but not for a good six months or so.

Our environment has about 400 virtual machines. It is not massive. We are an application provider. We provide a purchasing and inventory management application set to our customers mainly in the UK public sector. Our clients are large organizations. They are health care and local government organizations.

I have a team of eight people. They are not daily involved with Zerto. Only four people are daily involved with Zerto.

The only issues we had stemmed from a lack of familiarity. After we submitted the ticket, their technical support got back to us and helped us resolve the issues.

I would rate them an eight out of ten. It has been very good.

Positive

We used another replication system prior to this, which was the old EMC RecoverPoint. It was very good as well, but we had a change in technology. We shifted our technology to HPE for various reasons, and Zerto was the offering that came with their data synchronization.

Overall, it was straightforward. I did it myself in the afternoon by figuring it out myself. It took us a few days to get it right and then another couple of days fiddling with it, but it was under a week.

It requires very little maintenance on a day-to-day basis. It requires monitoring to ensure that you are not running out of space. Once you have got those space parameters right, it pretty much looks after itself unless there are significant changes.

We update Zerto when a new version is available. At that point, we schedule an update.

I managed the deployment initially, but it has now been handed off to a team.

It is too early to say. I think it will eventually prove beneficial by saving us time and eliminating the constant worry of checking these things.

Having seen the product and how it works and its reliability, it seems it will pay for itself.

Nothing is cheap, but Zerto represents decent value.

I would recommend Zerto. It seems to be a very good product. It appears to be stable, and it is a simple product to manage that gives us peace of mind. 

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. The tiny amount of problems we have encountered is reasonably insignificant. It works.

We primarily use Zerto as a disaster recovery tool to handle data transfer between virtual machines. Currently, Zerto is implemented on-premises, as 90 percent of our services reside there. However, we plan to migrate some services to the cloud and utilize Zerto's migration capabilities to move VMs directly from our on-premises environment to the cloud. This is a crucial feature for us, as our virtualization technique relies heavily on VMware, and Zerto allows for straightforward migration of critical VMs to the cloud.

Our multi-campus university faced challenges delivering services hosted in a single location to geographically dispersed users. The extensive data volume and risk of outages due to disasters led us to implement a Disaster Recovery and Continuity setup. This involves hosting primary services in one data center and maintaining a disaster recovery site in another. Zerto's replication technology allows us to continuously update data at the DR site, ensuring data currency and the ability to roll back to a stable version quickly.

Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss.

One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization.

Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment.

Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime.

Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently.

Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems.

Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages.

Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time.

Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management.

Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

One of the most valuable features of Zerto is its straightforward cost model. It's essentially a one-time purchase, meaning you pay once and can use the software indefinitely despite the three-year license. This non-licensing-based approach allows for long-term use with a single purchase. Additionally, Zerto offers excellent technical support with responsive and helpful experts.

Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses. Its structure limits affordability to approximately five to ten virtual machines. To increase accessibility for small and medium businesses, Zerto should consider a competitive pricing strategy, possibly including subscription-based licensing options. This would enable more organizations to utilize Zerto's services.

I want Zerto to add support for Proxmox.

I have been working with Zerto for one year.

Zerto is stable.

Zerto is scalable; however, the primary concern remains the cost, especially if needing to scale to 300 virtual machines. It is more cost-effective to use fewer virtual machines.

Zerto's technical support is superb. Following HP's acquisition of the product, significant improvements have been made.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. We implemented it in two geographically separated campuses, setting up one server and adding another for disaster recovery. Zerto's demo provided a solid understanding and clear strategy for the implementation.

We did not use third parties for deployment; our on-premises engineers handled it. Only two to three staff members were needed.

The return on investment is evident, as Zerto saves more than 60 percent of time in various operations compared to the previous manual processes. The savings extend to hardware and resource allocation, which were reduced by Zerto’s efficient backup solutions.

I rate Zerto ten out of ten.

Our on-premises firewall provides a basic level of security, but it cannot guarantee complete application security. Therefore, the application, including Zerto, must have robust security measures to mitigate any vulnerabilities. Even with a firewall, loopholes can exist, potentially compromising Zerto and other services. To ensure comprehensive security, we can integrate Zerto with our security firewall, enhancing protection and minimizing the risk of software compromise. Ultimately, Zerto remains our primary solution for software recovery in case of a security breach.

Zerto requires minimal maintenance due to its operation on virtual machines. Three people are required for the maintenance.

We have Zerto on 300 virtual machines in our environment.

Zerto's capabilities would greatly benefit organizations with on-premises and on-cloud setups, as it facilitates seamless migrations. It is highly recommended for anyone prioritizing data security and disaster recovery assurance.

We are using Zerto as a DR solution. We also utilize Zerto when we have to migrate any servers from one location to another.

Previously, we were using VMware Site Recovery Manager, and we were not happy with the services we received. There were lots of issues. Since implementing Zerto, we have been happy. We are not seeing any issues with the services. Zerto's support is also excellent. If we encounter any issues, we open a ticket, and they are available all the time.

When we implemented Zerto, we were not sure how things would work. We have a DR test or maintenance window every quarter. During the first window, when we did the DR implementation through Zerto, we found it to be very helpful. Previously, we used to manually take screenshots for DR evidence, whereas now, we can generate a report from Zerto. After the DR, it tells everything in detail such as when a VM was moved, what the procedure was, and how much time it took to consolidate from the primary site to the DR site.

When we had an issue with a legacy application over the weekend and users reported it on Monday, we had to revert the VM to a snapshot from eight hours prior. We could do that easily. This is an excellent feature. Zerto allows us to select a custom recovery time. For instance, if no one checked the server yesterday because it was a holiday and we needed to restore the VM to the day before yesterday, we could do that quickly. Zerto helps address downtime situations effectively.

Zerto has reduced the DR testing time. Previously, it took three to four hours, including app testing, but now it gets completed in one hour. 

Zerto is excellent. It is the primary and only solution we are using in our organization.

The constant replication between the primary and the DR site is valuable. Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent.

Zerto is very easy to use. A new team member can pick up the pace in one or two days. Someone who has never worked with Zerto can understand it in one week. It has a user-friendly graphical user interface. Everything is well described.

I have one recommendation, but I am not sure if it has been addressed in the current or upcoming version. The challenge we faced occurred during a DR for a database server running on SQL Always On. We experienced a database crash and logged a case with Zerto about a year ago. They said that they do not support Always On. As a result, we had to plan accordingly. We deployed another server to that location with Always On and moved all the database servers out of the Zerto application. We are uncertain if Zerto now supports Always On because we have not explored that option. We have a couple of environments on the cloud but have not tested if that feature is available or not.

I have been using Zerto for the last four to five years.

We have experienced no issues at all.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten for scalability.

Zerto's support is excellent. At the time of implementation, the support was slightly delayed because there was only one way to log cases, which was through the portal. They provided us with a few articles to refer to, which helped us address the solution.

Positive

We had VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which was very difficult to manage. Sometimes, we faced replication issues. When performing a failover, the network was not stable. There were many issues, including dependencies on the storage area, requiring the storage team to be available during DR tests. The network team also had to be available, involving multiple teams. With Zerto, we do not need the involvement of the storage area or network teams.

It was easy. Initially, we took help from Zerto support because we were not sure about the configuration and best practices. We received help from Zerto.

The challenge was not from Zerto's perspective; deploying VMs where we were going to install Zerto took some time. We had dependencies on aspects such as VMs not being ready. The deployment of only Zerto took less than eight hours.

We reached out to Zerto for any support.

One person can handle the implementation, but if that person is not available, it creates challenges. Whenever we undertake projects, it is between team members. One person deploys, but everyone is involved so that everyone is aware of what is being done.

Currently, it is good, but the license we are using is based on VM count. We are only protecting mission-critical servers, so we are using a very low number, about 300. However, we have 3,000 or more servers. If we consider using Zerto for data protection, it would cost us more than what we have for data protection now.

For new users, Zerto used to offer free training and certification. I am not sure if it is still available, but it was available. Anyone planning to deploy Zerto can get support from Zerto and should go through the basic training, which is free on the Zerto website. They can get certification and reach out to Zerto support if needed. Having a basic understanding of how Zerto works is important.

Overall, I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten because we do not have the functionality to protect our database servers that are on Always On.

My current use cases for HPE Zerto Software include site-to-site and site-to-cloud.

HPE Zerto Software has saved me time in data recovery situations due to something like ransomware because we have protection against it. Due to the logging functions, we can go back in time and bring systems up a day before or a day after. We have been able to avoid ransomware issues with HPE Zerto Software.

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

The features of HPE Zerto Software that I have found most valuable are the copy capabilities, specifically being able to copy a VM over to another site and bring it back up if I have an outage. I used HPE Zerto Software recently to go from cluster to cluster, and I was able to move VMs seamlessly. 

I find HPE Zerto Software very easy to use. Going in and being able to copy the VM makes it very efficient.

Near-synchronous replication makes it pretty easy for me to move things on the fly, so I can be up within about 10 minutes. Being up in 10 minutes is important for me because if we're not up in that timeframe, we have users complaining and calling.

HPE Zerto Software could evolve to where, instead of me having to push a button, it can detect disasters on the fly and automate disaster detection.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about a year.

HPE Zerto Software is really stable. I haven't had an experience where I've had downtime.

HPE Zerto Software scales just fine with the growing needs of my organization; it's gone from a small test group to a larger test group with no problems.

I'd give their support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The support team was really great. Everything was configured, and out-of-the-box configurations were seamless.

I have seen a return on investment from HPE Zerto Software, already just moving from data center to data center. Just moving the things over from one spot to another with no outage time, or very little outage, reflects how I've gotten the return on investment.

The licensing and setup costs have been reasonable.

I didn't consider any other solutions before selecting HPE Zerto Software. It was given to me.

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