HPE Zerto Software Reviews

We use Zerto to replicate our Oracle databases from the main site to the other site. I have a number of fairly large Oracle databases, approximately four or five terabytes, and we're replicating to a Doctor site. We're actually moving our Doctor site from Colorado to Virginia, and I'm not sure Zerto can support the move. We'll just have to rebuild the reputation in the new site, but I'll figure it out. I'm not worried about it.

We explored cloud disaster recovery with Zerto, but because of the size of our database, it's not cost effective.

What I appreciate about Zerto is that it's set and forget. It just works. As long as you give it enough space for journaling and things like that, it's really resilient. It doesn't take a lot of maintenance, and I know that it's always going to be available if I need it.

The near synchronous replication is great because I can restore a production database up to a minute, and the granular restore or the brick level file restore option is beneficial. It's great for real-time or store level recovery, too.

We tested it, and it performed excellently. I know it works.

I wish there was a mechanism or a plug-in to do IP failover. We have to change the DNS entry and Infoblox manually, although we can script it, but we haven't gotten around to it.

One aspect I don't appreciate about Zerto is the plug-in, especially when it migrated from appliance from Windows server to the appliance, and you have to configure Active Directory authentication. I think it's unnecessarily complicated. That should be simplified for sure.

I have been using Zerto in my current position since we acquired it three or four years ago.

Support is fantastic. Many vendors, especially after COVID, have seen their support decline, but not with Zerto. Their support is consistently great.

I have experience with Veeam before. Zerto is better. Veeam seems pretty simplistic compared to Zerto.

The setup with Zerto was easy. It's pretty intuitive. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but not significant.

I would rate Zerto eight or nine out of ten.

Our use cases right now are primarily for creating spot backup snapshots and things like that for recovery.

The near synchronous replication works very effectively. We do appreciate it as it's comparable to other vendors in that space.

Zerto has helped to reduce downtime in situations when we roll out a change and the change needs to be rolled back. Zerto has been excellent at being able to recover that prior server before the change, so it has helped significantly in those areas.

Zerto has helped us to reduce the overall DR testing. Zerto saved us close to 90% on DR testing compared to traditional backups and restores. We were able to utilize that time for anything else we wanted to. We needed the time desperately, so it was a big benefit to us.

Zerto has had an impact on our IT resiliency strategy. It has improved our IT resiliency considerably; going from traditional backups to having backups with Zerto in addition was a lifesaver.

We use Zerto to help protect virtual machines in our environment pretty much exclusively. Compared to what we were doing with traditional backups, our RTO and RPO have improved by 90%.

What I appreciate the most about the product is its simplicity. It's very easy to use for my staff.

Expanding the product to compete more fully with products such as Veeam would be a big benefit in the market.

I have been using Zerto for about three years.

We have not seen any instability.

Zerto's scalability is adequate for us. It could expand a bit more to compete with those larger products that are a little bit more scalable. We're not a big enough enterprise to test it. We haven't taken it to the point where we feel the scalability is a problem, but I suspect it probably would be; that's just a suspicion, not anything that I have concrete evidence for.

We have not had to contact the technical support or customer support.

Neutral

I have personally used alternatives to Zerto, including Veeam, Commvault, Veritas, and several other solutions. Zerto competes effectively in the snapshot area for DR and synchronous replication. I've also used the Pure Storage system, which does asynchronous replication. It combines effectively with other products such as Zerto, Veeam, and so on, so I've used quite a few of them in the past.

Veeam is a more comprehensive backup software for an enterprise. Zerto gets most of the way there and would work for a smaller enterprise effectively, but for a larger enterprise, Veeam has capabilities that are beyond Zerto at this point. Veeam is an example of a more complete product.

Commvault also has a more complete product, even though it's not entirely as good. Zerto is progressing; they have a great start and a great product, but they probably need to expand it to compete more fully with those larger enterprise backup systems.

Its deployment is easy. We had it fully onboard and tested in about two weeks.

After the deployment, Zerto doesn't require much maintenance at our end. You have to administer it similarly to any other system, but it's pretty low maintenance.

We put a team on it so that everybody learned together. We put a three-man team on it from a group of seniors who would be responsible for disaster recovery anyway.

It was pretty appropriate. It was not too cheap, not too expensive. It was just about right.

I would rate Zerto a seven out of ten.

My current use cases for Zerto involve the protection of data to ensure that any ransomware or threats will not impact our endpoints. I have used Zerto to help protect virtual machines in my environment. The majority of our infrastructure is virtual, while less than half is physical. 

I've seen an impact on our RPOs and RTOs as our return to service has become much faster. We can return to business as quickly as possible. 

Our DR testing has been reduced. We still do it once a year, but now it's more about checking off boxes because we know what to expect. We must ensure the certificates and all related items are good, examine the return times, RPOs, RTOs, and verify everything is still functioning properly. 

Zerto has enabled the team to focus on engineering and spend less time developing APIs to work with custom solutions and security applications, positively impacting our IT resiliency strategy.

What I appreciate most about Zerto is that we can implement it via cloud now and on-premise. Mobility also stands out to me. The interface of Zerto is much easier to use. 

Zerto could improve the product by lowering the cost. 

I've been using Zerto for about three or four years, implementing it in various scenarios.

I have not noticed any crashing or instability with Zerto.

Zerto scales appropriately for my pretty big company.

I have not had an occasion to contact their technical support.

Neutral

A few years ago, I used an alternative. I prefer Zerto over Veeam, which is why we switched from one to another. It's apples and oranges: Zerto has a much smoother interface and is much easier to use with better features.

It was pretty easy. I do not recall hitting too many roadblocks.

It took around three to four months total to fully set up Zerto, including network configuration, firewalls, and all other components.

Zerto requires basically no maintenance on my end now. It's managed by Zerto tech, so we don't have to test packages and similar tasks. They inform us of product updates, plan for them, and implement them as SaaS-approved changes.

Zerto is not overly expensive. It's worth what we're getting for it, but with tough times, a discount would be beneficial.

I have not yet encountered a situation where I needed to perform data recovery due to ransomware or other causes. I will knock on wood as we haven't had that kind of incident yet. Thanks to Zerto and some other systems we use on the back end, though never say never.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten. 

We have multiple plans across the US. We use Zerto to transfer VMs from one plant to another plant, from east to west.

Zerto is a really great fallback software that gives us the redundancy we need.

Overall, the solution is really efficient. Zerto really helped us prevent the delay in bringing up the VM once it transfers because we wanted to ensure everything works.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication works great. We've had some issues before trying to synchronize VMs across long territory ranges, but Zerto did everything we needed it to do. Zerto's near-synchronous replication is extremely important to our organization. Our production line to uptime is almost 99.99%, so the near-synchronous replication really helps out.

We use SAP HANA with Zerto.

We use Zerto to protect VMs in our environment. The solution helps with recovery and ensures that we can transfer our VMs when we have a host failure. We have plants all over the US, and Zerto has really helped us keep everything running at almost 100% capacity.

Because of its near-synchronous uptime and recovery, Zerto's speed of recovery is ten times better than that of other disaster recovery solutions like Veeam and Commvault.

Compared to other solutions, Zerto's ease of use is pretty straightforward. I'm really excited to see how GreenLake has integrated Zerto and made it even more seamless.

It would be good if we could store a snapshot of the images coming through so that we can always go back and have a vision history.

I have been using Zerto for four years.

Zerto is pretty stable software, and it's always been up when we needed it.

I don't see any issues with the solution's scalability. We have 100 plants across the US and hundreds of other plants worldwide and have never had an issue adding any hosts or notes to the tool.

We deployed the solution through a consultant.

We have seen a return on investment with Zerto.

Zerto is really good software. It has all the features that I need. I love Zerto's integration with GreenLake, and now that we know more about it, we'll start utilizing it more. Zerto synchronized our VMs and delivered reliability by ensuring our hosts in different plants had a reliable backup.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight or 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.

We use Zerto to back up and recover our data servers.

Zerto is easy to use.

The near-synchronous replication is beneficial and simplifies my work.

I saw the benefits of Zerto immediately after we started using it.

Zerto does a good job of helping protect our virtual environment.

We have seen a 30 percent improvement in our RPO using Zerto.

We have seen a 40 percent improvement in our RTO using Zerto.

Zerto has helped us reduce downtime in several situations and has helped reduce the amount of our disaster recovery testing.

It helped save 20 percent of our time during data recovery situations due to ransomware.

Zerto has had a positive impact on our IT resiliency strategy.

The most valuable feature of Zerto is the quick recovery time.

The technical support response time has room for improvement.

I am currently using Zerto.

I would rate the stability of Zerto eight out of ten.

Zerto is highly scalable.

The technical support offers high-quality responses, but the response time is lengthy.

Neutral

I previously used Azure Backup. Zerto is faster and more dependable. 

The initial deployment was straightforward and took two hours to complete. A team of three people was involved in it.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Zerto is expensive but offers many features that make it competitive.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

I use Zerto to monitor replication, configure protection, and manage disaster recovery and performance.

We implemented Zerto to manage disaster recovery and also for faster performance on backups and failovers.

Learning how to use Zerto can be easily achieved with some training and practice.

Zerto has helped us reduce downtime, retrieve backups faster, and manage our workload more efficiently.

Zerto has reduced downtime by 20 percent and helps protect the VMs in our environment.

It is 25 percent faster at recovering data compared to IBM Spectrum Protect.

Zerto has helped save four hours per week in recovery situations and has reduced our disaster recovery testing by 30 percent. We have used five percent of those savings towards other value-added tasks.

It has positively impacted our IT resiliency strategy.

Zerto enables disaster recovery in the cloud which is important.

Zerto provides real-time analytics and monitoring, enabling our organization to quickly identify and resolve issues. 

Zerto makes my work easier. Replicating my settings helps me recover point objectives faster and retain policies.

The most valuable feature is the customization that allows me to set my protection group myself.

While Zerto provides good service, I find the pricing to be high and believe there is room for improvement. I would like to see Zerto implement a pay-as-you-go model.

While Zerto offers scalability, its implementation can be more challenging in larger organizations, indicating room for improvement in its scalability features.

I have been using Zerto for three years.

I would rate the stability of Zerto seven out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Zerto seven out of ten.

The technical support responds promptly to our requests.

Positive

I previously used IBM Spectrum Protect but Zerto provides a quicker recovery time. With IBM the recovery process for particular data is manual but with Zerto it is automated.

The initial deployment of Zerto was straightforward and took two hours to complete. Two people were involved in the deployment.

We have seen a 20 percent return on investment.

Zerto is priced high.

I would rate Zerto eight out of ten.

Zerto is deployed in multiple departments and we have ten users.

I recommend Zerto because it helps recover data faster and improves its overall quality.

We are using Zerto as a disaster recovery solution.

We utilize Zerto for three replication scenarios: on-premises to on-premises, on-premises to cloud, and planned cloud-to-cloud replication.

Zerto is easy to use and implement, especially when performing a failover.

Zerto's near synchronous replication is valuable for our SQL database.

The benefits of Zerto were immediately apparent. After implementation, we quickly realized we were protected against any disaster. Zerto also provides visibility into the health of replication, allowing us to identify and address any potential issues.

Since implementing Zerto, we have observed a positive impact on our Recovery Point Objectives, which have been reduced by half.  Zerto's ability to easily group servers by application and configure protection groups streamlined our processes. Moreover, Zerto's support for on-premises to cloud replication is invaluable. We've leveraged this capability to replicate all systems to the cloud, establishing a robust disaster recovery solution. Zerto has proven to be an effective cloud migration and disaster recovery planning tool.

Our Recovery Time Objective determines how quickly we can restore our infrastructure. Zerto has been instrumental in reducing our RTO by enabling rapid recovery in any disaster recovery scenario.

Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. For example, some servers have a recovery point objective of just five seconds. During disaster recovery tests conducted last year, we recovered 60 servers within eight hours, including server delivery, startup, and operating system verification by our team.

Zerto is our primary tool for achieving all disaster recovery objectives.

Zerto is a flexible and resilient business continuity and disaster recovery solution. Its industry-leading replication technology enables seamless data protection across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments.

Another valuable feature is the failover capability. Unlike many other tools we tested, Zerto allows us to perform a disaster recovery test without risk to our production environment.

Zerto's current reporting capabilities are insufficient for our needs. We require detailed reports to analyze the performance of our environments. To achieve this, we have developed a custom reporting solution using Zerto and other tools to thoroughly assess VPG configurations and overall environment health against specified parameters. Unfortunately, Zerto does not natively provide this level of reporting functionality.

I have been using Zerto for seven years.

Zerto is highly stable, and I do not recall encountering any crashes.

Scaling Zerto is easy. We just need to add additional virtual/appliances servers.

Zerto provides excellent support, but response times to our issues can sometimes be a concern, possibly due to the size and complexity of our environment.

Positive

We currently utilize both SRM and Zerto, but SRM's replication capabilities are limited to data centers, while Zerto offers additional cloud replication options. Unlike SRM, which is exclusively designed for VMware infrastructure, Zerto is compatible with other virtual platforms, providing greater flexibility.

Zerto is easier to use than SRM.

The initial deployment is straightforward. We only need to deploy a few servers to build an environment and start to replicate.

Deploying Zerto in a single region required three months. One contributing factor to this timeline was the time-intensive process of collecting Virtual Recovery Appliances and deploying them across 500 ESXi servers. A team of ten architects and engineers was dedicated to this project.

The implementation was completed in-house by my team and me. As the architect, I oversaw the project's planning, construction, and deployment. We consulted with Zerto to identify potential areas for improvement.

Compared to other options like SRM, Zerto is a more expensive solution, making it primarily suitable for larger organizations. Smaller and medium-sized businesses might find Zerto's cost expensive. While Azure Site Recovery is free for users of Azure cloud services, Zerto offers a broader range of features.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

Our organization takes a unique approach to disaster recovery testing, conducting 15 tests annually to meet policy and audit requirements. Zerto is the cornerstone of our DR testing strategy, enabling us to validate between five and seven applications in each test.

Zerto requires ongoing maintenance and a dedicated person monitors it daily. However, we must still test and deploy updates into our production environment.

Potential users should be knowledgeable of virtual environments and clearly understand their disaster recovery needs, including the required replication type, desired recovery strategy, and whether Zerto aligns with their specific requirements.

We do many data-related activities for various government ministries in India. We use Zerto to back up and recover data in many training and capacity-building activities.

We implemented Zerto to address challenges with data centralization in our complex platform environment. Previously, pulling data from a central source was impossible due to the need to feed it into an internal location before deployment. This limitation hindered customization and integration efforts. Additionally, integrating our primary data source, previously used with IBM, into the new platform proved difficult due to compatibility issues. Zerto's capabilities were seen as a potential solution to these problems.

The remarkable benefits of Zerto have yet to manifest fully. The software operates efficiently without significant bugs or issues, and Zerto's customer support has been responsive. While real-time reporting is a standout feature compared to other trial products, its impact on our ongoing projects remains to be determined. A full assessment of Zerto's potential will require an additional six months.

Zerto has significantly improved our Recovery Time Objective, particularly regarding project timelines. The expedited turnaround during critical project phases has been instrumental in streamlining our processes. By accelerating these stages, we've reduced the need for additional developer resources and eliminated time-consuming tasks associated with establishing essential parameters and metrics. As a result, projects that previously took six months can now be completed in as little as four. This accelerated timeline has enhanced profitability and optimized resource allocation, allowing us to maximize project revenue.

Zerto has significantly reduced our disaster recovery testing efforts. By consolidating software and streamlining processes, we've dramatically decreased the required manpower. Multiple teams efficiently utilize a single platform, eliminating the need for disparate services and reducing costs. This centralized approach has markedly decreased the time and resources invested in disaster recovery testing and pre-testing activities.

Zerto's greatest strength is its speed. We never encountered lag or interruptions, even when working remotely from home or other locations with potentially limited internet bandwidth. The software's streaming performance was exceptional, without buffering or connectivity issues. This was a primary factor in our decision, as Zerto emphasized its ability to operate effectively on lower bandwidth connections during the initial demo. Deploying the software in any remote location is straightforward and hassle-free.

The primary concern expressed by all server users is the lack of robust integration features. While Zerto offers some integration capabilities, the smooth and efficient data flow between portals remains a significant challenge. The support and technical teams know this issue and actively seek user feedback, but progress has been slow. The current process, involving multiple platforms and a database management system bottleneck, is time-consuming and inefficient. Additionally, while reporting and dashboard features exist, real-time reporting and mobile functionality require improvement. The user interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly. Customization, a critical requirement for government clients, is another concern. Implementing requested changes is often time-consuming and expensive, hindering adaptability. Addressing these integration, reporting, user experience, and customization issues is essential for improving customer satisfaction and retention.

Currently, Zerto only offers an annual subscription, but it would be beneficial to provide quarterly and semi-annual subscriptions to help retain clients.

I have been using Zerto for one year.

I have not encountered any performance issues, such as lagging or crashing. The system operates efficiently and reliably under various conditions, even with significantly lower bandwidth. Zerto has consistently demonstrated stability and high speed, ensuring uninterrupted application performance.

Approximately 50 to 60 individuals within our ecosystem utilize Zerto directly or indirectly. Given its operational efficiency, which I estimate to be between 95 percent, I confidently assert its scalability. While we haven't encountered a scenario within our ecosystem that necessitates testing its scalability limits, its exceptional performance thus far strongly suggests its capacity to handle increased demands.

Zerto uses a ticketing system and offers support through a help desk accessible via chat or phone. A dedicated technical team is assigned to address customer issues, which are typically resolved within 24 hours. We have not experienced any significant delays in issue resolution.

Positive

We find the Zerto pricing fits our budget.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

Maintenance is required quarterly. The Zerto technical and business teams collaborate with us on the backend to remove all the repeated queries that make the system sluggish. This service is charged additionally.

I strongly recommend that anyone considering purchasing Zerto begin with the 30-day trial, which can be extended to 60 days. This ample timeframe allows a thorough evaluation of all features and functionalities. Understanding Zerto's customization and integration capabilities to align with specific business needs is crucial. Had I followed this approach and shared my feedback earlier, the outcome might have been different. Therefore, it's essential to fully explore the trial version before committing to an annual subscription. Close collaboration with the Zerto technical team is vital to ensure successful implementation. While sales teams often present an optimistic view, real-world experiences from existing users provide the most valuable insights. I encourage potential customers to connect with other Zerto users through industry networks to gather honest feedback before purchasing.