Zerto Reviews

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 use Zerto primarily as a cloud provider to set up either ground-to-cloud or cloud-to-other cloud sites for disaster recovery. 

We also use it as a migration tool to get people's virtual VMs from ground to cloud. 

Another use case is to protect our virtual machines in our environment. We have our own internal IT, and we protect them with Zerto, but the vast majority, probably 98% or 99% or even more, of what we do is with customers since we're a cloud service provider. As a service provider, we're not classified as an MSP. We do resell Zerto to our clients.

What I appreciate about Zerto is the speed to recover. We have two ways that we migrate them into the cloud: one is with Zerto and one is with Acronis. Acronis is a bare-metal restorer that takes much longer to do the restore, depending on the size of the VM. 

I appreciate that Zerto already has the disk synchronized to the cloud, and it just updates deltas every five seconds or so. Should there be an instance, such as a migration, or if the customer has been ransomed, or if they want to roll back for any reason, they can do it because we have their data in the cloud. 

When I was an IT manager, our RPO and RTO were measured in hours or days; now it's measured in minutes, which is huge for disaster recovery. 

The interface and ease of use of Zerto make it easy. We're getting into version 10 now. The version 10 update 4 took really long to deploy, and we had to back off and do update 2 because that seems to deploy much quicker. 

Other than that, it's pretty easy to deploy and manage; we can set it up through Zerto Cloud and update it remotely. 

I see the benefits of Zerto immediately after deploying it. As a former IT manager, when I saw what it did, it was a revelation, and I thought this is excellent for disaster recovery. Zerto's near synchronous replication is fantastic. It helps our RPO and RTO and is beneficial all around. In terms of RTO and RPO, Zerto improves them to seconds. It indicates right in the health of the VPG how many seconds the RPO or RTO is. 

Our DR testing with Zerto is much quicker. We encourage our customers to do testing so they get familiar with recovery processes. We maintain a playbook and a method of procedure, and every test adds something new to the MOP, improving how quickly we can resolve any disaster. 

Zerto has a significant impact on our IT resiliency strategy. We do it for customers, making all the difference in the world. It's not just about me as an IT manager using Zerto; as a service provider, we host people's data in the cloud for disaster recovery, making instantaneous recovery possible that wouldn't be as quick otherwise.

In terms of improvement, Zerto does reasonably with support and responds quickly to help us. I don't know if there's anything they could do better, but we'd prefer Zerto to work with our open cloud product for disaster recovery and migrations. So far, they haven't made their product compatible with KVM, and we would appreciate seeing that.

I have been using Zerto in my career for four years.

I haven't seen much instability with Zerto; it seems pretty stable overall.

Zerto scales efficiently; we have hundreds of hosts, with production and disaster recovery environments. We set it up to replicate, such as from Grand Rapids to Indianapolis or Detroit, so it scales pretty efficiently.

Zerto's support is reasonably good. If they know I'm on the call with a customer, they usually join a Zoom session quickly to help resolve issues. Sometimes it's resolved quickly, while other times it may take two or three sessions, but they're generally pretty good.

I use alternatives to Zerto, as I'm a Veeam engineer certified in Veeam. We use Acronis and Cohesity, but in my opinion, there's nothing that works for disaster recovery quite like Zerto. The main differences between Zerto and Veeam are ease of use and convenience. 

Veeam allows a restore of a server in a test environment while detecting any malware before connecting to the network, which I haven't seen in Zerto. Zerto just replicates what's there without evaluating for malware. Zerto is quick and easy to use while Veeam is more complicated but has more capabilities for backup. I haven't greatly used Veeam's continuous replication feature, but from my experience, Zerto is easier to set up and use, and it's less expensive as.

When I first deployed Zerto about four years ago, it took about 15 to 20 minutes to set up after the client had a Windows server ready. We'd give them the installer and set it up, then pair it with their hosts. After installing the VRAs and setting up the VPGs, once the first VPG is set up, we can do the rest without client involvement. Overall, the total time ranged from half an hour to 45 minutes, depending on how many they wanted to set up initially.

I'm a Professional Services Engineer, which means that I implement projects. When our salesman sells disaster recovery with Zerto to a client, I'm the one who sets it up, creates the VPGs, and ensures all the syncs work properly; the long-term maintenance is handled by another team.

Zerto has a significant impact on our IT resiliency strategy. We do it for customers, making all the difference in the world.

Zerto is easier to set up and use, and it's less expensive.

We use alternatives such as Acronis and Cohesity.

The recovery process depends on the customer. Zerto is one of those things that we set up and monitor, but if the customer isn't monitoring their VMs, it can complicate things. 

We had one customer who made a decision to protect only a few of their VMs and then got hacked, which wasn't Zerto's fault or ours; it was their decision.

However, for customers that have everything protected, we've had quite a few successful recoveries. There have been situations involving ransomware or data recovery situations when we used Zerto. I haven't personally been involved in one, but our company has had multiple incidents where we were able to recover without paying the ransom.

Zerto does require maintenance on our end. We register the client in the cloud, and if they move away from us, we unregister them and remove their tenant. We also have updates to do, including the Zerto virtual manager and the virtual replication appliances on the hosts. With hundreds of hosts and multiple data centers, we have a lot of work to do, which is why we have someone dedicated to updating Zerto. 

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Zerto a 9.

We use Zerto at a very large public sector undertaking in India that manufactures power equipment. 

It is being used for continuous data protection, replication, and recovery. We have a consolidated data center in Hyderabad, India, and we are replicating the data to another data center in Hyderabad. For replication and continuous data protection, we are using Zerto between both sites.

It simplifies management. The console provided by Zerto is very simple to use. With the click of a button, we can do the failover and failback.

It helps with business continuity. We can easily failover from one site to another and back. We are able to do most of the operations very easily.

It does asynchronous replication. When the data gets modified in the main data center, the modified data is immediately replicated to the other data centers. It helps to maintain minimum RPO in seconds and the RTO in minutes.

We have a number of virtual machines for databases, application servers, web servers, Internet servers, and proxy servers. We are using Zerto for the complete replication of these VMs to the other data center.

Our RPOs are in seconds, and our RTOs are in minutes. That is critical for the applications. Earlier, we were using another replication software from IBM. We did not get the same RPOs and RTOs. Zerto is helping us a lot in preventing data loss. The data loss is minimal. It is only in seconds. This is a very important feature of Zerto, where it maintains RPOs in seconds and RTOs in minutes.

In November 2024, we faced a ransomware attack. With the help of Zerto, we were able to identify the journal entry that was malicious. Zerto gave us an alert, and we were able to identify the clean copy by going backward. We went back a few seconds. It maintains journal entries every five seconds, so we were able to identify a good copy of the data. We were then able to do the failover. Because of Zerto, we had minimal data loss. We were able to identify a good copy of the data and do the failover to the main data center.

With Zerto, we have become more resilient and scalable. We were able to scale from a few VMs to about 250 VMs. Our scalability has improved a lot because of Zerto. The ransomware resilience feature has made us more resilient. We chose Zerto over VMware Site Recovery Manager because VMware Site Recovery Manager did not have the ransomware resilience feature. In November 2024, when we faced an attack, with the help of Zerto, we were able to recover within seconds with a minimum amount of downtime. We were up and running quickly.

The features I find most beneficial about Zerto include continuous data protection, easy configuration, and simplified management with a user-friendly interface. We were able to configure it easily for our needs. Continuous data protection between our two data centers is also valuable.

I also like its scalability and flexibility. We have scalability from a few virtual machines to more. We can increase the number of VMs according to our requirements. Zerto scales very easily with our increased number of VMs.

Zerto also provides ransomware safeguards. While doing the continuous data replication, Zerto creates journal entries. When the data gets transferred to the other site, Zerto checks whether the replicated data is malicious or clean. If it is a good copy, it makes a journal entry. If there is any malicious code, it immediately gives an alert. We are very happy with this ransomware protection feature of Zerto.

Its pricing could be better. Also, Zerto needs to improve its reporting capabilities and provide better dashboards. A number of times, I had to contact Zerto for more reports. They are very customer-friendly. They helped us and gave us some customized reports, but its reporting capabilities could be better.

I have been using the solution for about two years.

It has improved scalability significantly. I was able to scale from a few virtual machines to about two hundred fifty virtual machines.

The support team is very customer-friendly. When I raise a ticket, they respond quickly with minimal waiting time. I often get a call within half an hour. Their customer support is reliable and fast.

Positive

Previously, I used some other replication software from IBM but did not achieve the desired RPOs and RTOs. This led me to choose Zerto.

The deployment was very easy. With a few clicks, we were able to configure Zerto for both of our data centers in Hyderabad. It was very easy to configure. It has a very intuitive classical user interface. The configuration was done with minimal clicks.

In about one hour, we were up and running with the first replication. We were able to do the first replication within an hour from our main data center to our secondary data center in Hyderabad. It is efficient and reliable.

Its maintenance is being taken care of by Zerto.

I am the main database administrator, and two of my colleagues also participated. Three of us were involved.

Zerto is definitely more costly compared to its competitors, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager. It may not be suitable for small and medium-sized industries.

We considered VMware Site Recovery Manager but did not opt for it because it did not offer the ransomware resilience feature like Zerto.

Overall, I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. The software is exceptional in terms of continuous data protection, resilience, scalability, agility, and ransomware protection.

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.

Right now, I am using it for disaster recovery and file recovery, with all the different components of it. It is just site-to-site replication from one site to another. I have done server moves, and I will also do server moves in a couple of weeks.

I use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. That is 100% of my use case. It helps us to commit to the recovery point as per our standards. Our RPO is under five minutes for everything I have got in there unless there is a sync happening at that point in time. It has greatly reduced RPOs and made them stable and knowable. 

Our RTOs are even better. We are also a Cohesity customer. Our tier one, two, and some tier three are in Zerto. For everything else, the plan is to bring it out or restore it from the backup in case of a DR or an event where there is an issue with the server. We know that bringing something online in Zerto is dramatically faster. It is a night and day difference. Restoring everything from the backup would take days or a week, whereas with Zerto, as soon as I make the change, everything will automatically come online at my other location. For example, I have a file server that is 50T. Restoring that from the backup took three or four days, whereas in Zerto, we can flip it over, and it would be up and running in seconds. 

Zerto helps us reduce downtime. If something happens and we need to bring a server up that is in Zerto, it will only take the amount of time required to commit and make sure that everything is functioning as expected, changing or updating IPs and names, and making sure that is good to go. It takes five to ten minutes. 

For auditing and other things, we can do a controlled VR test where we bring up all the necessary components in an isolated bubble with networking for just that bubble and bring it online. We can test SQL Servers, Exchange Servers, Active Directory, connectivity, authentication, and applications. We can bring it all online in that bubble while production is still going on without impacting anybody. In the event that we flip the switch and have to go, everything is going to work. In addition to meeting auditing needs, we have been able to refine the process so that in the case of an unfortunate event, we know we will be able to do it. We will be able to do it quicker than coming in cold and having never tested it or done it. 

Zerto has had a big impact on IT resiliency strategy. We know that as long as our boxes are protected by Zerto, we are covered. We will be able to spin a box up at our remote DR site and bring it online. It will be functional, and all the data will be there. It is not just about fulfilling an audit request; I sleep better at night knowing that we are protected, the data is there, and there are not going to be any issues. Zerto has near-synchronous replication. It works very well. I have been fortunate enough not to have to use it in a production environment, but I have used it to restore files. 

From the server moves, I know that I can cut over in a couple of seconds and all the data is there and ready to go. There is no lag. There is no waiting. I just have to update the IP and register that in DNS if the IP changes, and it is good to go. It is fantastic.

What I like most about Zerto is that it makes my job much easier. I have peace of mind knowing that it works. The replication time and the minor amount of time it takes to sync a new server outside of any of my huge 40-terabyte boxes is ridiculously quick. When I add a server, it is there in 15 minutes. I know it is protected. It is fantastic. There is peace of mind knowing that the workloads I put in there are protected. It is very easy to use. In day-to-day usage, it is very simple and easy to set things up or monitor it. I check it every morning and keep track throughout the day of what is going on and if there are any issues.

I am an advocate and a fan of the product, and I have had great success. The only negative I would give is that with the latest version of the appliance, setting up authentication was a bit of a challenge, but that is just a matter of using Keycloak and how things have changed. Other than that, I have had no complaints.

I have used the solution for seven years.

I have had no complaints. It has been running very well.

I have contacted customer service many times for various issues. Overall, they have been good, and I would rank them in the higher percentile of the support I have dealt with. Sometimes, I have had to get through a couple of techs or work solidly with somebody, or I have not fully explained the issue correctly. Once we get on the same page, the issue has been quick and easy to resolve. Nothing has hung up for too long. 

I would rate them a ten out of ten. I have never had an issue that was not resolved, and I have never been in a situation where they did not respond. They are very responsive. They do get back very quickly. That is another very nice thing. It is not like Microsoft where things go into a queue and disappear for weeks at a time or a week at a time. They are also knowledgeable.

Positive

The initial setup was very easy. The documentation was good. I am a stickler, so rather than giving Zerto full rights, I went through the vCenter and allowed just the rights that were specified by the documentation. Those have always been correct, and I have not had an issue. 

The actual implementation of the software went smoothly, bringing everything in. I remember upgrading it. We had a major revision from Windows to the Linux appliance, which was not a full redo, but it was a pretty major changeover. Things are done differently there, and documentation for everything, except authentication, worked very well, and we have had no issues. 

It does not require much maintenance from our end. We mainly need to take care of upgrading and verifying any issues. The software itself runs fine. Every once in a while, I may have too many servers on the same host causing an issue and overloading the VRA. I just separate things.

Overall, I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten. The software has been awesome. It has made my life easier and my sleeping at night better.

We're currently doing a two-tiered on-site and off-site replication, with one long-term retention being displaced into a cloud and one long-term retention being displaced to a third data center. We were looking to make our recovery solution more streamlined and efficient, that's why we implemented this product.

We're not as huge as everybody else. We just have large devices. We have four SQL servers running, each of which is about six terabytes, so our continuous replication is a lot larger than others. We also have multiple secured file storages in the two-terabyte range, so we replicate around 140 terabytes continuously, utilizing about 60 VM servers. Our primary and secondary production is VMware, and our third-tier backup area is a hypervisor. 

The most significant improvement is the reduced stress of running our operation. Before deploying the solution, we had two people on-call 24/7, one on-shift and one off-shift. Now our workload has been reduced, and we only have to give support over the phone, which rarely happens.

For this deployment, I realized the benefits very quickly. I already knew how the solution would provide a reliable safety net and offer a better risk-reward profile for our cybersecurity insurance. I knew this three deployments ago. The main selling points I presented for this deployment are the continuous replication, plus the reduction in man-hours and cybersecurity risk.

The whole package is valuable. The most useful feature for the company is the rapid RTO, which offers a faster return to operations and brings us back online quicker. The last time we had an issue, we recovered within about 36 minutes, which was probably the most valuable thing for us because, previously, it took four to seven days.

I've worked with Zerto since the beginning; I think it was when we were still on version one. Having that continuous replication, as we call it, where we have just a small delta point is paramount to being able to create that multiple mine backup solution or recovery solution. It's absolutely the product's selling point. 

Zerto is the simplest disaster recovery and data recovery solution I've ever deployed, and I've been doing this for 30-plus years. 

We have used Zerto to protect VMs in our environment. That's the entire solution for us; it's all virtual. They can even calculate a number now, and I have 30-day testing documentation that gives them real-time data that shows a 15 to 40-minute recovery. It's astronomical because they now have a number they can guarantee to the stakeholders. 

There isn't much comparison with other disaster recovery solutions, though it depends on the configuration. A more dramatic or complex multi-tiered recovery would expand the time, but we went from four to seven days down to under an hour. For that reason, it's almost incomparable to other solutions. Depending on the deployment, even the VMware Site Recovery Manager takes four, eight, or even 12 hours. We can bring things back online in under an hour. I don't know any other solutions that can do cross-breed virtual environments or multi-hypervisors with VMware, with different types of cloud. We can go with Microsoft Cloud, VM Cloud, or Google Cloud. It's not even a comparison. If you have a good product seller and a buy-in from your network engineer and your software engineer, it's an easy sell. 

We currently have over 600 days of saved downtime. It's almost two years now without a single moment of downtime, because we utilized the failover to do maintenance cycles.  

Our last collapse was when we were hit by ransomware just about two years ago. It took out 80% of our systems, and we were back online in 36 minutes. 

I use the orchestrator for DR testing. I run a simulated test every 30 days, and we do two live tests a year. Before my arrival, they had never done a test, but that's what we do as a standard now. It only takes two members of staff, me and one other, for the entire test. It's very low-volume in terms of staff requirements.

The solution dramatically reduced the number of staff involved in recoveries. Before my deployment of Zerto in this organization, they had one disaster recovery and had to hire 19 people to do it. When we had the ransomware attack, two of us recovered the entire solution within an hour without having to hire anyone. The previous recovery costs were around $20,000 for the staffing alone, not counting the loss of revenue. I implemented the recovery during my regular work shift.

There are quite a few elements in the long-term retention areas that I wish were better. The bio-level recovery indexing of backups is the area I struggle with the most. That's probably because I desire to do tasks that ordinary users wouldn't do with the solution. The standard medium to the large customer would probably never ask for anything like I ask for, so I think it's pretty good the way it is. I'm excited to see some of the new improvements coming in the 9.5 version. Some of the streamlines and how the product presents itself for some of the recovery features could be better.

We have been using the solution for two and a half years, and I've assisted in the deployment at three other companies. I personally have close to ten years of experience with it.

I've been using Zerto for close to 10 or 11 years, and the stability is probably in the 95% to 98% range. That's pretty good, and I give it an A.

This is the smallest solution I've ever deployed. It scales very well across multiple platforms and at a long-range. It's very scalable; I've implemented substantial deployments and deployments over huge areas. I'm impressed with the solution's scalability, especially the integration with vCloud environments.

I dealt with them recently, and they're pretty solid. The process is mainly automated, they connect remotely, and I don't have to explain much as they can look at the logs. With that capability, it does work very nicely.

Positive

I replaced the VMware Site Recovery Manager and a Symantec backup solution when I came in. I also replaced the third-tier snapshot replication, which they had never successfully tested or recovered from.

We switched because I begged them to. I've used Zerto extensively, and the amount of fluidity and flexibility it offers is necessary. It gives me peace of mind and allows me to sleep well at night knowing it will be alright, which is uncommon in this business. I said as much to the company and was able to convince them within about six months.

I used Veeam and some other bare-metal backup solutions before. Since virtual servers have been in place, Veeam and SRM are pretty much the two standards, with Symantec being the tape backup solution or virtual hard drive backup solution. Since Zerto came around and I saw what the product could do, it's all I ever push for when I get called in for a company that needs a DR plan.

I designed it all and already knew what I wanted to accomplish and what the product could do. Once we knew what direction we were going in and where the critical applications aligned, it was just a point of picking things up and putting them into placeholders already in the required image I designed for our purposes. It was pretty easy. It might take a little longer without prior experience and an idea of what I want to accomplish. It would still be pretty easy as Zerto provides excellent documentation. This is one of the most straightforward designs out there. End-to-end, with testing and approvals at each step, I think it took two and a half weeks.

I implemented the solution on my own.

I can't give an exact figure, but I would say that protection from Ransomware tech alone paid for the initial startup process and most of the maintenance needed. 

I wouldn't say I like the licensing pricing structure. Every year, it increases exponentially, which bothers me a little. It's worth it in terms of the value, but I worry the price will increase even more often after the Zerto merger. I still think it's worth it and that the solution is cheaper than the others. 

We evaluated Symantec, and NetApp, and we brought in Veeam.

The main differences between Zerto and the other solutions are the continuous replication capabilities and the ability to have two continuous replications simultaneously. These were major selling points for the company. With snap replication from NetApp or even Veeam, there isn't that consistency between multiple divisions. I showed the company we don't have to have VMware at the low MBR; we can have a hypervisor at a much-reduced cost, as the price was the last hope for the other solutions. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. I don't give anybody a ten, as nobody is perfect. The best score I give is an eight, and they get that.

We don't necessarily use Zerto for immutable data copies as it's never been a requirement. I know it's there and what we can do with it if we need to.

We only use the physical solution because of the nature of our business, but we do long-term retention in the cloud. It is nice to have that long-term cloud retention, as it gives us another tier of data available for worst-case scenarios. 

I wanted to replace our legacy solutions, but we still have old-school solutions for legacy data recovery. We use Symantec for backup exec. on our bare metal, but I don't think it's critical because it's more for our legacy data recovery. After all, we're not like most companies. We have to keep our data for 24 years. 

We use Zerto for disaster recovery automation for our most critical, highest priority, and time-sensitive failovers.

I understand that Zerto can enable disaster recovery in the cloud rather than in a physical data center, but that's not the use case that we have here.

We primarily use Zerto as a disaster recovery product, but we haven't had a disaster. It hasn't allowed us to minimize downtime. However, it helped us avoid the need for downtime during testing scenarios. 

Zerto helps to protect virtual machines in our environment, and that is our primary use case. Zerto provides the most aggressive RPO in the industry, and it really is one of the only products that can give you near real-time recovery.

We use VMware as a hypervisor platform to run all of our virtual workloads. Zerto is the replication service that I use to automate the failovers between my environments without having to have expertise in bringing application replication up, like a SQL cluster would require or an Exchange cluster would require, because the entire VM comes over. It helps us to reduce our overall VM footprint because we don't have to run resources in two different data centers. We can just shift them between the two using Zerto.

The ability to test a failover non-disruptively with Zerto is valuable, as it doesn't create any downtime for the business.

Near-synchronous replication works effectively, and it's important for our databases because that's going to give us the least amount of data loss on the failover.

I run a very dense VM-to-host ratio in my environment. Whenever maintenance is being performed on a host, all the VMs on that host have to be powered down and/or moved off to complete that maintenance cycle. It is frustrating when the protection of VMs doesn't get relocated to another host before the replication appliance powers down. It sometimes works great, but if the host has a lot of VMs on it, there may not always be enough time to relocate all of the VMs from a protection group standpoint to other hosts before the replication appliance that Zerto uses to manage that powers itself down. In such a case, you are breaking replication for the duration of that maintenance, and that can cause some support issues when you bring it back online, where you have to go in and manually recover it. I know they added improvements over the years. It's not as bad as it used to be, but at times, I still end up breaking replication when I do maintenance on my hosts.

I've been using Zerto in my career for about six years.

I've never had any stability issues with Zerto, as the management console has always been reliable, though there are occasional web timeouts. You just have to refresh your browser session to log back in if there's a stale browser window open or something like that, but it has always been easy to log in. I never had to open a support case to use the product. It has been more along the lines of a configuration change or replication. It is very reliable.

Zerto is quite scalable, as they added functionality where if you need to attach more disks and storage, it spins up additional replication appliances automatically. It doesn't require anything from the user to manage those. It happens automatically. I've been able to scale up as needed, with hundreds of VMs without any issues.

I've contacted Zerto's technical support. I've always had a good support experience with Zerto. The engineers are knowledgeable and respond quickly. When I open a ticket, I usually get a call within an hour or two. It's definitely good and better than other vendors that I've worked with.

Positive

I was previously using the VMware Site Recovery Manager, but it was very difficult to keep it functioning. We could not rely on that kind of uncertainty for a disaster recovery product. We needed something that's just going to work and not require a lot of assistance to keep it running, whether it's compatibility or upgrades. We needed something that was going to run when needed. Zerto is very reliable. It has definitely been a very stable product for me.

Zerto is the fastest among the solutions I have used. It usually takes less than five minutes to have a full recovery of the VM.

The initial setup with Zerto was easy. I did a proof of concept and got it running within the same day. Deploying it into production was again a very quick experience. The time required depends on how much of the initial configuration you want to do for the VMs you want to protect.

It was just me handling the setup and implementation of Zerto.

I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove to the business that it was worth the investment. We started with 15 VMs so that I could show the product does what it needs to do, but ultimately, we needed to protect all of our SQL workloads, so we quickly scaled up from there. 

It's cost-prohibitive for non-critical workloads, so we wouldn't put development servers or any non-business-critical systems in there because we wouldn't need the aggressive RPO and RTO that Zerto gives us for those types of workloads. I accomplished those failovers through other replication technologies.

Overall, I would give Zerto a ten out of ten. 

We implemented Zerto because we wanted a flexible and quick tool that allowed us to recover in different situations. This purpose was successfully fulfilled by Zerto during the proof of concept phase, so we implemented it.

Zerto helps with quick recovery and integration with other processes. Providing as a service approach allows end-users to operate and perform recovery operations on their own assets based on their requirements and schedule preferences. It helps not only with recovery but also with DR tests that need to be executed at specific time frames, such as out-of-business hours. We had a few different requirements during its implementation, and Zerto helped us very well with all these needs.

Zerto has some specific options for replication, but it is mainly for virtual machines. We mainly use it for virtual machines. Zerto is not suitable for physical servers, but it can be used for virtual solutions such as OpenShift, Kubernetes, etc. In terms of its effect on our RPO, as I have not used a similar solution previously, the RPO value that we are getting is very good. It fits the requirements that we have from our customers because what we provide to our customers needs to be proven by the tests that we perform. Usually, their expectations are much lower than what we receive from Zerto. For example, we have application owners for whom 24 hours duration is enough to recover the business as compared to the 10 minutes that I have using Zerto. We use Zerto in real DR exercises and ask our customers to verify the results and the status of the recovered system and answer if the recovery was successful. We provide them the time needed to recover their system, and often, it is much quicker than what they require, so from our perspective, Zerto is very good. However, we cannot verify everything because we have some limitations in our DR test scenario. I can be 100% sure of the results of recovery only in the case of a real disaster on my infrastructure. At this time, based on the DR tests, it meets my customer needs.

We conduct DR exercises at least twice a year to measure the downtime we would have in the case of a real disaster. We simulate the disaster in a controlled environment and perform all related exercises. Once all activities are performed, we measure the time needed to recover systems from the data center that is down due to a natural disaster or technical issue. We get an idea of the downtime but the actual downtime varies depending on the issue type. It might not always be predictable or reduced through tooling as network or server issues can arise. In some specific scenarios, the downtime could be lower by using Zerto, whereas in some cases, Zerto would not help much. Based on the results of disaster recovery exercises and the RTO measured not only for one application but for recovering all of the applications in affected data centers, we can say that the time we need to recover the full data center is much lower than using traditional backup recovery solutions. Recovery with Zerto is much faster because we can recover in parallel many systems.

I am quite familiar with the user interface. It is easy for me to operate and perform different operations because I am an experienced user. In my opinion, the user interface is easy to understand and operate. The user interface is user-friendly.

Another important feature is the tool's automation capabilities, as it provides an external API to integrate with other tools and processes. This allows for a comprehensive IT ecosystem within a single dashboard, tailored to specific needs. Some operations can be limited for end-users. All of this can be provided not only through the GUI but also using the API. You can create your own application, integrate it with Zerto API, and develop features in your own application. You can use the API to integrate with your application and provide only the features that you want to end-users, facilitating custom application development. You can split the responsibilities based on the roles provided as well as based on your requirements. It is very flexible. From my point of view, the end-user experience is very good as an administrator of the tool and as the person responsible for the disaster recovery process.

As a user who used Zerto for eight years, there are specific issues that it cannot address. For instance, recovering physical servers is directly connected to the virtualized solution in use, meaning your infrastructure needs a VMware or Hyper-V solution. It cannot be used for bare metal physical server solutions. One improvement could be addressing the market segment related to physical servers. I understand this is a limitation of Zerto's technology. Still, from a customer's perspective, I would ask the vendor to find a solution to use Zerto for virtualized physical systems, such as physical servers. 

A second area for improvement relates to the speed of implementation. There should be a more streamlined process for enterprise applications.

I have used Zerto for about eight years.

I did not encounter any issues during the operations, so I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability, so there is room for improvement on the vendor's side.

From my perspective, given the size of my infrastructure and the limitations based on the vendor's requirements and documentation, it fulfills my needs. Therefore, I would rate it a ten out of ten because I have not faced a situation where I needed more than what it provides.

It is being used at multiple locations.

I have the opportunity to use Zerto support, and I have used it many times for various questions and solving different issues or problems I encountered in my infrastructure. I would give them a rating of ten because it represents the highest level of support based on the technical knowledge of the support team, response time, and effectiveness of the provided resolutions.

Positive

Zerto was the first tool I started using once I took on the disaster recovery manager role in my company. I did not have experience with other tools.

The speed of implementation is an area for improvement. While deployment on straightforward infrastructure is easy, an enterprise company with strict access and vulnerability limitations requires manual configurations. This is neither easy nor quick. 

Implementation depends on the environment and customers. From an enterprise perspective, I expect a more streamlined implementation process, as many steps require manual action. This challenge is specific to my company due to limited access and port blockages. Implementing such tools is a one-time task. My intention is to provide feedback related to the installation process, not the operation.

I do not have much experience with different tools, so I cannot directly compare Zerto with other solutions. While conducting our proof of concept, I compared prices with just one other vendor. At the time, the price for Zerto was more favorable. Since I only use this tool and I do not have the need for others, it is difficult to compare the price now.

Zerto is an asynchronous replication solution. It provides what they call near-zero RPO value. There is a delay of a few seconds depending on the parameters of your infrastructure, such as the bandwidth, the workload in your infrastructure, the distance between data center latencies, and the speed of the network connections. There is no one solution that meets all the needs. You need to decide whether you need a synchronous or asynchronous solution. You should be aware of the pros and cons of both and the requirements of your organization. Synchronous replication might be risky in some specific situations. What looks good on paper might not always be good in reality. Zerto meets our needs for flexibility. It mitigates different problems related to infrastructure, even though there is always the possibility of losing some data.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten considering the features, support, feature development roadmap, and the frequency of new features provided to customers.