HPE Zerto Software Reviews

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.

We have two data centers, so we use HPE Zerto Software for site recovery. We fail over, run out of one data center, then we fail back and run out of the other, and we do failover testing. 

We were using VMC on AWS with VMware replication. The challenge was it had a five-minute RTO and we wanted something faster. At the time, HPE Zerto Software didn't support VMC on AWS, which was actually our first choice. Then we had a mandate to build a new data center.

We wanted both physical locations, so we went that direction and decided to go with HPE Zerto Software. We wanted something that we could fail over quickly, have minimal recovery times, and make sure that we could come up quickly. We use the move feature in HPE Zerto Software probably the most, moving from data center to data center. It allows us to meet with our compliance regulations to test our DR site and run in our DR site with seamless operation.

We've proven a few times that we can fail over within a very short window, and it works very well. Our RTO with HPE Zerto Software is less than five seconds. It is extremely important. We work in the financial industry, and being able to fail over and know that we can bring that server up within a very short window and that the data is going to be accurate means we're not having to go back and rework a day's worth of data. That's what we wanted and that's what we got.

The failover test option in HPE Zerto Software is the most valuable at this point since we can validate that things are going to come up, that the data is valid, and then tear it back down without having to interrupt the users. 

It's extremely easy to use HPE Zerto Software. 

Our first failover test went flawlessly. We failed over our entire data center, approximately 200 VMs in half an hour - very fast. This last fast failover, we ran into a couple of hiccups. Working with support, we found we need to do more testing in between our main failovers since we've actually had an 11% failure rate of things not coming up. They advised us to test, validate, and then resync if needed, so we're learning from it.

We haven't experienced any ransomware yet with HPE Zerto Software. Regarding time savings, it has definitely been beneficial. Once we've got it set up and can manage it, it really is a time saver.

We haven't had a situation where we've had to use it to reduce downtime. Comparing it to our other failover solution, the speed is notable. We used to schedule an eight-hour day to do this, and now we're scheduling a half an hour, which saves us significant time on weekends.

Regarding RTOs and RPOs with HPE Zerto Software, we can look at it and know exactly where every VPG is regarding recovery time. The speed to move it over and bring it up is extremely efficient for us.

The solution has helped reduce our organization's DR testing. Previously, we would isolate our DR and test in a defined bubble just to validate the data was there and users could access it. Now we can fail it over to our backup data center and actively run there. We can fail it back and run both locations in an active-active mode with HPE Zerto Software, which we hadn't been able to do before.

It has allowed us to trim the team down and focus on other tasks without constantly worrying about disaster recovery. We know it's there and we can validate and test it through our monthly procedures.

When we did our test this year with HPE Zerto Software, we had some failures that we weren't expecting. The challenge was realizing there was data corruption, and fortunately we found it before we committed the failover, so we could fail back. We could resync it, and we weren't in an actual disaster. If there's any way to validate that data on the recovery site without having to manually go in and do failover testing and try to validate, that would be a feature that would be really nice. We're not sure why we had some corruption, however, we did the resync and it seemed to bring it back up and fix the problem. That's probably the biggest area I'd ask about - some way of validating the recovery sites in an automated fashion.

We started using HPE Zerto Software in April last year.

We haven't had any crashes or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software, except trying to figure out why we had some data corruption. Overall, it seems to be functioning very well. Support's biggest recommendation was that we just need to do more failover testing and validate.

We have not expanded our usage of HPE Zerto Software.

The customer support I received from HPE Zerto Software has been very good. I haven't had any complaints about the support we receive. I would rate it a nine or ten. When I ask them a question, they give me a very quick response.

We were using SRM before selecting HPE Zerto Software. From attending different conferences, HPE Zerto Software was where I wanted to get to, however, at the time, our disaster recovery site wasn't allowing for it. Comparing SRM to HPE Zerto Software, I really prefer using HPE Zerto Software. It's easier to group, set up. I can see really quickly what things are doing and I feel a lot more comfortable that things are working.

Setup was extremely fast, and we had the system up and running within a couple of days. Our biggest hold-up was getting the network configured correctly. For training, we were able to take some online courses that got us up to speed very quickly.

During the setup for HPE Zerto Software, we were working with a technician who could walk us through it and that worked really well for us.

Since we just got HPE Zerto Software, our pricing didn't seem too high. Our renewal is next year.

We used SRM before adopting HPE Zerto Software to address similar needs.

My rating for HPE Zerto Software would be ten out of ten.

Primarily, I use it for disaster recovery. I like the Zerto RPO. I can perform short recovery and recovery time. That's the reason I go for Zerto.

The retention and the snapshot retention, which I am able to do every three seconds or every five seconds, are valuable. That is primarily what I like the most. The RPO I am looking at is five minutes. I need to bring things up, referring to recovery time. I need it every five seconds. In comparison in terms of ease of use, Zerto offers a much better user experience. It has basically reduced our disaster recovery time by at least fifty percent. In terms of IT resiliency, this provides a better SLA to the user. That's how it helps me.

The mission critical apps, like the ERP system or any casino software, are areas that I always hope to improve.

I have been working on Zerto for the past five years.

Primarily, medium enterprises use it. Most of my sites are customers using Zerto, and these are usually medium enterprises.

Positive

Some customers use different solutions. They use this data, Acronis, and another called Shadow Protect.

If I am talking about just deploying it, setting up the policy probably takes less than an hour. But the whole idea is that I do the backup depending on the size. If not deployment, then having the full Doctor replication takes time. So, if the replication will take a time slot, that's the consideration. Is it complex to deploy? It is quite straightforward as long as I plan it properly.

The ROI is primarily calculated based on downtime. It is all tied back to how mission critical the apps are. When an app is down, I assess the impact on production or the business. The ROI is justified based on the criticalness of the apps.

Primarily, it's VM only. It's more about recovery times and a feature called Zerto Khing, which allows you to group applications. You can do group Doctor, which is an advantage. From a technical perspective, Acronis is not meeting the RPO that I require. This is the primary reason for using it. Zerto is more expensive. In licensing, Zerto is probably double the price of Acronis. It works perfectly well, and I've been using Zerto for the past years. The overall product rating is nine out of ten. I rate the solution nine out of ten.

My original use case was to protect against ransomware and any critical failure in our infrastructure, and that has been carried through to the present day.

It is incredibly easy to use, which attracted me to the product. I have been doing IT for over 30 years, so it did not take me very long at all to learn it. That is a good thing because when you have a solution like this going in, you want to make sure that you are fully confident with it within a short period of time. The learning curve for this solution was very short.

Zerto’s near-synchronous replication is good. Previously, when I tried to do it at a SAN level, which was part of the SAN vendor's portfolio of solutions, I could never get it to work. It was not very user-friendly. It was complex and difficult to configure. In comparison to that, Zerto shines.

Over the years, they have brought in immutable backups. They have brought in cloud migration, though I have not used that due to the nature of the Azure tools I use, but I have used immutable backups. In the past, we replicated from our on-prem site to our data center, and then more recently, we replicated from our on-prem site to Azure. The next stage is to replicate from Azure to another part of Azure or another region.

Zerto has had a very high impact on our RPOs. The recovery is very fast. It is instantaneous. We have already got everything replicated on our remote site, so we can just fire it up. All we have to do is follow through the scripts to change it over.

Previously, our RTO was very much in the order of two days. After we implemented Zerto, it is in the order of an hour.

We put in Zerto in response to ransomware because I had to do quite a lot of manual jumping around. Hopefully, we shut the gate on that problem. We have a solution to utilize.

We are a small to medium organization. We did not do downtime testing before we had Zerto, but now we do. It gives me the ability to test. We never had that option of testing. Usually, you cannot test the system in real-time because you have to turn off the live, whereas Zerto allows you to do it with different VLANs, etc. We can spin it up and effectively test it out. If I was doing a manual test, it would have probably taken me two or three days. I can do that in maybe 15 minutes. There is a 20 to 30 times improvement.

Zerto has had an effect on our IT resiliency strategy. It has supplemented where we did not have a tool before.

The ability to test that my backup regime is actually doing and working as I want it to do is valuable. It provides visibility and comfort. I can see in real-time that things are replicating, and my SLAs for my RPO and RTO are available instantly. That gives a lot of comfort. It is the sort of thing that gives you peace of mind.

Some of the cloud instructions around VNets and peering of networks could be clearer with some best-case examples. It is more complicated once you move into the cloud than running it on-premises. Actually doing these things is quite easy in the cloud and with Azure, but understanding how it fits in my environment can be quite a head-scratcher at times.

I started using it in early 2016 and have continued until the present day.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability. I never had a problem with it.

It has been fine. It has grown with the business as we changed things around. It has been very flexible. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

Their support is pretty good.

Positive

I used EMC SAN. Zerto is 400 times better. The previous one just did not work. I bought the SAN with the intention of having recoverability with it, and I could never get it to work. There was relatively zero support. It does not encourage us to persevere with it. We just ended up using it as a SAN and moved over to another solution.

We currently have a hybrid setup because we cannot migrate in seconds. It takes quite a long time to pick a network and move it into the cloud. It is not as easy as you would hope when you start moving into the cloud. There is a bit of complexity. If you have a network with multi-subscription, multi-network, VNETs, and peers, it takes a little bit longer to try and figure out how to make it work.

Initially, when I first put it on-premises, it took me about a day to get it working. In the cloud, it took a few days to head-scratch through it.

It is currently running between on-premises and Azure cloud. We do not split by department. We are not big enough to do that. We run a centralized compute function for the entire business, so it is relatively straightforward and flat as a design. Everyone uses the same environment.

It is used by only IT people. There are six of us in IT, but only three people use it with me being the primary person.

It requires a relatively small amount of maintenance. They have moved over to Linux-based machines, so we no longer have to upgrade them. We can apply a very simple process to update the actual version of Zerto. It needs a little bit of maintenance, maybe for an hour or so a month. I do the maintenance. I just keep an eye on it.

It is difficult to quantify that. I have seen no return on investment because I do not calculate around that sort of thing. If we had any disaster, we would have used it for real and would have seen a massive return on investment. It gives me peace of mind. If I am happy, then the management is happy.

Zerto has not helped reduce downtime in any situation because we have not had any downtime. Most people like me hope we never have to use it. It is like insurance.

It is not the cheapest product; it is not the most expensive product, but it works. It is a mid-range product, and it is justified in terms of being pretty quick and easy.

I would definitely recommend it, especially for people who have no current method of implementing a disaster recovery solution. It is a quick and easy fix, and I would highly recommend it.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten because we need a few more scenario examples when moving into Azure.

We use it for disaster recovery, replication, and backup.

We were able to see its benefits immediately after we deployed it. I used it to move sites. It is a good tool for transferring from one site to another. It does the configuration on its own and the site comes online seamlessly. You just have to commit to it, and it comes online and no one even notices it.

We create a job, which is a VPG, and we tell it to replicate it to another site. I live in Philadelphia. If Philadelphia gets attacked, we could shut it off and then go to the site that it replicated over and turn that on. It will just work as if nothing happened.

All the RPOs are less with our infrastructure because it is VM to VM in less than five seconds. We have never had a spike in our RPOs.

The recovery time of each VM is less than three to four minutes. Once we send a job over, it starts doing its thing. There is an auto-commit button, or we could time it to how much time we need before commitment. Once we bring up a VM and it reboots, we will see all the changes made, such as the IP address. If we go to DNS, we can see that the DNS entries have been updated with the new IP. We then commit to it, and it just comes back online.

Zerto has helped us reduce downtime. In just about five minutes, we are up. We had one incident with a Windows patch update to a server. The server could not come back online. We went in and recovered the VM right before it rebooted and got it back online. It had the same IP and other things, and everything was fine. Even though there was a slight downtime, we were able to get it back 100% before the reboot, and then we took off the update.

Zerto has saved us time in a data recovery situation due to a vendor mistake. We use a vendor for patching. The vendor accidentally mistyped something and took down a couple of servers because of this registry. We were able to get all the VMs back online. It took about three minutes per VM. When we used Veeam, depending on how much data was there, it took us about 45 minutes to an hour.

Zerto has reduced our organization's DR testing. We send it to a DR site from prod and then back to us. It goes from prod to DR and then DR to back in less than ten minutes. We did a DR move. We had about 15 VMs. We moved all the VMs to a different site. We then moved this actual site to a different location and then moved everything back. It did not take that long compared to Veeam.

Zerto has had a positive impact on our IT resiliency strategy. I have never had a problem. The product works very well. Their support is always active. They are willing to solve any problem that you have. Each time I have spoken with them, they have helped with every question to make sure our infrastructure is running well.

The most valuable feature for me is the replication. If I need to fail over sites, it can be done quickly, in less than five minutes. Each backup is implemented in five seconds. If we were attacked, I could revert to a backup from five seconds before the attack, and no one would know we were attacked. 

Once it is implemented with the vendor, they show you everything. Everything is very simple and easy. Replication and Restore are the buttons to focus on. It is all there with just a couple of clicks. It is simple. It is laid out simply so that you can understand it quickly.

I would suggest improving automatic updates. Their software requires updating level by level to keep it current. I was unaware that I was several versions behind, so I needed assistance to guide me to the current version.

I have used the solution for about a year and a half.

It only crashes if there are insufficient resources on my ESX box, which I discovered after overloading it with too many VMs. When the Zerto job tried to run, it crashed due to a lack of resources. I consulted with tech support, and we determined the solution was to move the main workload to a resource-available ESX box. After double-checking, everything has been running smoothly. Having good equipment ensures stability.

Scalability is tied to our vSphere environment. By adding more hosts and installing VRAs on each, tasks can be efficiently managed. Increasing the number of hosts allows for more VMs, depending on licensing. The bandwidth is also strong.

I would give their support a ten out of ten. I deal with support often, and online ticket creation yields a quick response. They understand what they need, and I provide it. They analyze the logs, suggest changes, and everything works well.

Positive

We used Veeam, which is more in-depth and requires extra steps for recovery. With Zerto, I just log on to the GUI and click what I need. For a live VM backup or replication, it takes just a few clicks, which led us to choose Zerto over Veeam.

Zerto is the easiest one that I have used. In terms of pricing, it is way better than Veeam.

Our MSP used Zerto to do a project for us. I was in the meeting looking at what they were doing. It seemed so simple to use. I asked them if they could compare this to Veeam, and they said that this is way easier than Veeam. With Veeam, you have to log on to the actual backup program. You have to go to the job that you are looking for and right-click it. There are about six steps after that, whereas in Zerto, when you go down on the bottom left, with just two clicks, a menu pops up, and then you are done with another three clicks.

It is on-prem. It is VM to VM. We are also thinking about a third solution, which would be on their site. Right now, we have VM to VM, but we have two NAS for hot and cold storage, so we are using everything that they offer at the moment, but we probably might head down more in the future.

The installation process was new to us as we started from scratch. After that, it was simple. Installing the VRAs involved pointing to ESX boxes. The NAS storage connection is simple; I just enter the IP address and credentials, and it links via SMB. I just create the job, point it to its destination, and it is ready.

Deployment was handled by one representative and me. I am also responsible for managing it.

In terms of maintenance, it requires manual updates.

Its pricing is way better than Veeam.

My advice to new users is to become more familiar with it. Once you start using it, it is easy to pick up and manage.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten.

We primarily use Zerto for our DR requirements.

Near-synchronous replication is pretty much a major benefit from our perspective. We are mainly using it for DR.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. With the use of Zerto, we now have defined RPOs, which is good.

Zerto has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. It has also enabled us to do DR testing more thoroughly, so it has reduced the time, but it has also enabled us to do more of it.

In terms of its effect on our IT resiliency strategy, from our on-prem environment, it has been the cornerstone. We are now building a new DR strategy around Zerto because of the value that it has.

We were able to realize the benefits of Zerto pretty much immediately. At the end of the day, we had a gap. It had an immediate impact on our ability to recover.

What I like most about Zerto is that it just works at the end of the day. It is almost a set-it-and-forget-it solution in relation to its capability of keeping the DR environment in sync.

Testing is also a good feature. Bubble tests ensure the integrity of those images, and the replication process is also a major benefit.

Its capability to detect anomalies also within the transport layer is valuable. While moving and replicating the traffic, we have a little bit of comfort because of its ability to detect ransomware or anomalies within the transfer.

They should not make it so expensive so that I can buy more of it. Other than that, I do not have anything. We have not come across any issue. We are still fairly new to the product.

Zerto has been in our environment for 12 months.

It has been rock solid.

Scalability for us is based on the licensing count. I would scale it across the organization if possible, but I cannot. At the moment, it is meeting our current requirements based on our licensing constraints.

The only disaster recovery product we used was centered around recovery or restoration from backup. We never really had a disaster recovery product per se. It was managed by other backup mechanisms and replication forms. 

Zerto was put in because we knew we had a gap within our DR strategy based on RPO extensions. It was deployed to bridge gaps within our DR strategy at that moment. 

The initial setup was done by HPE. We went with a turnkey solution with HPE Professional Services and our incumbent tender previously used. They handled the installation and setup. We handle the management of it now, but I cannot comment much on the installation because they did it for us. It worked, and we went through training and have been using the product since.

Its learning has been fine. It has been like any other product. HPE has supported us. They have provided professional training for the team. I have not heard from the team about any issues or gaps. HPE has been very supportive of the implementation of Zerto.

It does not require any maintenance at our end. The installation is still fairly new. Nothing has come to a low yet. Over a period of time, we would probably have to spend more time on the maintenance aspect of it, but at the moment, it is pretty much a set-and-forget.

From a pricing standpoint, there is value in it without question. However, it can become quite expensive when you start looking at the number of workloads you have in the environment and what you would like to do.

We assessed other products in the market but found Zerto to be the best within this particular space. Additionally, Zerto was installed as part of a data center refresh program with HPE. We replaced compute and storage within our on-premise data centers. Considering Zerto is part of HPE, it made more sense to implement an end-to-end solution with HPE.

To new users evaluating it, I would say that if they can afford it, they should buy it.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten, and that is because there is always room for improvement.

Currently, my main use case for HPE Zerto Software is for failover. We have a site in Salt Lake City and another data center in Oregon. We fail over from this site to that site, verify, and fail things back. This is its main purpose as of today.

The feature of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate the most is the ability to pick and choose what to fail over and when to failover. It is really easy to build a new zone and add servers, as well as remove them.

An example of how the features of HPE Zerto Software have benefited my organization was when we lost a circuit. We have a primary circuit from Salt Lake over to Portland and a backup one that runs through several different sites. We actually lost the main one and had to failover. Because most of the servers are in Salt Lake City, we had to replicate those back over to Portland because that is where they make the money. I had a few minor hiccups, but it was not our fault. It was just bandwidth, but we now have a larger pipe. That was a happy accident when we discovered why it was not going any faster - we were maxed out.

I find HPE Zerto Software to be pretty intuitive as it is, and I have nothing to suggest for improvement.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about four years now.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software at about 20. It just works.

HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization. The only issue I have ever encountered was when our developers grew busy and expanded their applications too quickly for licensing. That was resolved with a simple phone call. We received the new key by end of day after discussing how many additional licenses were needed.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as exceptional. They listen first, then ensure they understand the problem before providing multiple solution alternatives. Having been in computing for almost 35 years, they are one of probably two or three companies that truly listen first.

I was using another solution to address similar needs prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, but I am not sure what it was.

My experience with pricing, setup, costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software has been positive. The installers were knowledgeable and completed the installation correctly the first time. When we upgraded from VMware 6 to version 7, we needed to install a new agent. When it did not work initially, technical support quickly resolved the issue with specific instructions in just one call.

I have seen an ROI with HPE Zerto Software through faster recovery. We are getting closer to the five nines. Having the confidence that if something happens, our documented steps will work is invaluable.

I have personally used Veeam before selecting HPE Zerto Software, but having only been with the company for five years, I am not sure what solutions were used before that.

HPE Zerto Software is important to my organization because when performing replication, both systems remain functional during failover until the final switch. This results in virtually no downtime.

HPE Zerto Software has helped reduce downtime by at least 25% through faster recovery. For instance, if we lose an image, we can quickly recover it and power the VM back on, which is much better than retrieving a golden image that could take hours.

The solution has impacted my RTOs and RPOs significantly, saving me approximately two hours per day. It has also reduced our DR testing frequency from every other month to twice a year.

Regarding Cyber Vault solutions, the most important capability would be the ability to isolate a server immediately after a ransomware attack to investigate the incident.

My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to consider its ease of integration. It integrates seamlessly with various networks and works especially with HP infrastructure. The support from both HP and HPE Zerto Software teams is excellent.

I rate HPE Zerto Software 10 out of 10.

We use Zerto for the disaster recovery capabilities that it provides us. It is for our Tier 1 applications. 

Zerto allows us to protect individual VMs. With the other solutions, we are protecting the storage that the VMs live on, which is costly, so Zerto does save us money.

Zerto has near-synchronous replication. It works very well. Our RPO or recovery point objective time was 20 minutes, and we were doing thousands of VMs. We not only met the RPO; we exceeded it. There were many times when it was just seconds behind.

We have used Zerto to help protect thousands of VMs in our environment. Zerto has had a good effect on our RPO. It has helped to exceed our RPO. Our RPO on some of our critical systems is 20 minutes, and we exceed that. Most of the time, we are under 2 to 3 minutes.

It is very easy to migrate data. We ended up migrating from one data center to another data center, and we moved 20,000 virtual machines with Zerto. It was great.

Zerto lowered our RTOs as well. As a part of the solution analysis that we did for the RPO and RTO, Zerto's interface to do a DR test or a DR recovery was the fastest. We had a 24-hour window to recover 5,000 virtual machines, and we were doing them in three to four hours.

Zerto has helped us to reduce downtime multiple times. We had one incident where we used it to do a recovery. The downtime was roughly about 20 minutes. We do not have a value on that because it is customers' health information. I do not know how it affected the end users or customers outside of our company, but it does affect them.

Zerto has saved us time. When files were deleted, we were able to recover the files quickly. While doing OS patching on the servers, when the servers failed on the reboot, we were able to recover all good things when it came to quick recovery on it. As opposed to pulling it from our backup, it has cut our time probably in three quarters.

Zerto has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing. A DR test or a recovery used to take us days, whereas now, it takes us hours. The system that we were using before took multiple engineers to do the DR test, whereas today, a single engineer can do the DR test, and then we need just a couple of engineers to do checks on it, so it saves us a lot.

Zerto has reduced the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. Instead of a group of people, we now just need one.

We used Zerto for immutable data copies. It was good, and they were on a course, but they shifted their focus. They were doing DR specifically, and then Zerto started shifting over towards doing backups. We were very excited about their long-term backups, but when HPE bought them, HPE stopped that part of it because they were directly competing against their solution. At the time they were doing it, we were very excited about it.

The DR testing capabilities that it has are valuable. 

Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feature is great.

While going in, we were looking at the backup tool so that we had a DR tool and a backup tool, but they stopped developing their backup solution built into it. That was a bummer for us, so now, we have a DR solution, and we have a backup solution.

For the actual application itself, we have put in our request for certain features, and so far, they seem to be adding those features. In their latest one going to version 10, they did an appliance, which we had asked about 6 years ago. It is great to see that they are doing an appliance. There would be even more savings for us now because we do not have to pay licensing for a Windows VM.

I have been using Zerto for about 7 years. I have used Zerto a few times at different companies.

We have seen very few issues. It is one of the few solutions that actually runs. If you do your leg work and implement it right and go through all the design and other things, you do not have to babysit the solution. Care and feeding is what it amounts to. That is all you have to do, whereas with a lot of the other solutions, you have to babysit them.

Its scalability is very good. It scales very easily.

They could do better in regards to escalating an issue. I would rate them an 8 out of 10. In defense of support, I know it is hard because they are talking to somebody who has got 28 years of IT support. When I get on the call, I am probably dealing with someone who is just starting out. He has to go through his standard process. However, somebody like me is looking for faster support and would like to get to a real smart guy quicker.

Positive

For disaster recovery, we were using VMware Site Recovery Manager, and it was not able to provide the recovery, the RTO, or the RPO that the company required. I went out and did a discovery for different DR solutions, and that is where I came across Zerto. Zerto replaced VMware Site Recovery Manager, and it saved us millions.

Our deployment model is hybrid. I was involved in the initial deployment. It was straightforward. It was a lot easier than VMware Site Recovery Manager. It took us a week to deploy it.

In terms of maintenance, other than typical patching and upgrades, it does not require any maintenance. VMware Site Recovery Manager required a lot of ongoing maintenance.

We implemented it in-house. There were just three of us involved in its implementation.

The pricing is based on virtual machines. They need to do better in regards to their tiering pricing rather than one price per VM. A lot of times we have VMs that are lower tier, such as Tier 2 or Tier 3, but we pay the same price as for Tier 1. I know they are developing this out, but it would be nice if they could provide a little better pricing in regards to their tiering protection.

We tested four different solutions, and Zerto was the only one that was able to meet our requirements. We did PoC on Zerto and two other solutions. Zerto was by far the leader when it came to disaster recovery.

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend doing a PoC on it. Deploy it in your environment and test it. Most of the problems you are going to see are due to the replication, and that is the site-to-site connection. One of the problems that I have experienced with Zerto has been related to replication, not the solution itself.

We have not used Zerto for blocking unknown threats and attacks. Thankfully, we have not had that. We do not have experience of that, thankfully.

We have used Zerto to do DR to both AWS and Azure, but the ability to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud is not something critical for us because the health insurance requirements for certification do not allow us to put our Tier 1 data in the cloud. Also, because our applications are multi-tiered where they reach out to the mainframe, Solaris, and other equipment outside of the virtual environment, it did not make sense to go to the cloud with it, but we do have it. We have a development environment there. A lot of times, we will use it to refresh the development environment. So, it is important, but in our case, it is not critical for us. 

We have not had any issues utilizing Zerto to support DR on AWS, but AWS is on the slower side. The reason is that for the connection to AWS, even though it is a direct connection, the speed does vary for us.

I would rate Zerto a 10 out of 10.