Zerto DR (ZVM)

I am using HPE Zerto Software  to protect almost 50% of our 100% VMware-based environment, with three levels of protection—Silver, Gold, and Platinum—ensuring data safety and consistency.

My usual use cases for HPE Zerto Software  involve operations spread around two geographical locations in Brazil, with one in the south and another in the southwest, about 500 kilometers apart, ensuring our operations and customer operations continue if something bad happens.

As an MSP, I serve customers who use HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery in our infrastructure rather than a physical data center.

Having disaster recovery in the cloud is essential for us because I trust in a hybrid environment design, which our business needs for disaster recovery.

HPE Zerto Software's most valuable features for us are the ease of use and implementation, along with its ability to detect suspicious ransomware situations proactively, which is very useful and differentiated.

HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to grow our business as an MSP, leading to a revenue increase of around 10%, and as a customer, we have not experienced any downtime for the past four years, achieving 100% uptime.

Overall, HPE Zerto Software has significantly impacted our IT resiliency strategy by enabling us to have a cost-effective disaster recovery solution without the need for expensive hardware or data center space.

I believe HPE Zerto Software could be improved by enhancing support for a wider range of hypervisors, as many customers are transitioning from VMware to alternatives, and I need HPE Zerto Software to integrate with these new environments.

I have been working with HPE Zerto Software for around four years, since HPE bought HPE Zerto Software and we started to use it.

I have had situations where stability was tested, but HPE Zerto Software has helped me recover our operation as expected. I would rate the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as a 10, which I believe is fair enough.

In terms of scalability, HPE Zerto Software has shown no limits. I started small and have since expanded our environment significantly without encountering any limitations.

Regarding technical support, I occasionally encountered issues mostly associated with onboarding new environments or integrations, but core operations ran smoothly most of the time, with support usually meeting expected deadlines.

Before using HPE Zerto Software, I was actually still using another solution based on Veeam Backup & Replication for part of our environment. I decided to start using HPE Zerto Software when new needs arose for quicker RPOs of seconds, as my previous tool only allowed hours.

HPE Zerto Software's initial setup was very straightforward, with no significant challenges, largely due to the great support from the vendor.

I participated in the initial setup of HPE Zerto Software, which was impressive, completing a POC in just one day and having it fully operational in less than four days.

HPE Zerto Software has dramatically reduced the headaches I faced with DR testing. Now I conduct tests weekly and sometimes even twice a week. I believe HPE Zerto Software has saved my technicians more than 50% of the time in data recovery situations.

I am aware of the pricing and licensing of HPE Zerto Software. I would say it used to be an affordable solution, but as competitors emerge, pricing may come under pressure.

I evaluated other solutions when searching for disaster recovery options, but I selected HPE Zerto Software because it was the best fit for our needs. In addition to HPE Zerto Software, I looked at Veeam, storage-based replication, VMware's vSphere replication, and Commvault, with VMware replication being the closest in terms of RPO. VMware replication was the closest solution but was limited to VMware, while HPE Zerto Software offered a multi-hypervisor and multi-cloud solution, which was crucial for me.

While I appreciate the time saved, we are always striving for a more efficient operation and aiming for a 70% time savings. In terms of usability, I find both HPE Zerto Software and Veeam to be equally easy to operate. HPE Zerto Software's recovery speed is comparable to other solutions, as recovery speed largely depends on our physical environment. I rate this review a 10.

I used HPE Zerto Software  for replication of virtual machines. I can speak about one special case with one of my customers in the past. This was based in a VMware environment to replicate the most critical virtual machines to the secondary data center, and also to run several tests during the year. The solution was fantastic because it performed correctly and we could recover in the secondary data center. I have used HPE Zerto Software  to help protect virtual machines.

My favorite feature of HPE Zerto Software is the journal functionality. Because we can recover the virtual machine at the last replication, but we can also recover using the journal to recover the virtual machine before a specific event, for example before ransomware. If we have detected the ransomware at one point in time, we can recover before this event.

I think HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is the best in the market for replication. In my opinion, I checked other tools like Veeam and others, and this is the best because it's a specific tool to run disaster recovery and works at one hundred percent.

What I dislike about HPE Zerto Software is maybe the reporting. The reporting is basic. Some customers want specific reports, and we have to connect to other third parties or third tools to extract the information. Maybe this is something that HPE Zerto Software should work on and improve.

Using HPE Zerto Software helps to reduce DR testing because the DR test works properly. However, customers want to get a runbook for the DR test. We can recover virtual machines in order using HPE Zerto Software, but we cannot create dependencies between machines. If we run this first machine, then we could recover machines A, B, C, D in sequence. This is something that customers have requested in the past.

I have been working with HPE Zerto Software for four years.

In my experience with HPE Zerto Software, we do not have any kind of issues.

Talking about the scalability of HPE Zerto Software, it's proper in my market. I'm not sure about enterprise accounts because I remember they have some stoppers since we can scale to several virtual appliances. But in my market and with my customers, it worked properly.

I contacted HPE Zerto Software support and it was good.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give a score of eight to the support of HPE Zerto Software.

The overall support quality and the speed of answers from HPE Zerto Software is standard in the rest of the vendors. It depends on if the case is critical or not, but in my opinion, it's the standard in the market.

Deploying HPE Zerto Software is very easy.

It took me time to deploy HPE Zerto Software for the first time.

I only had to review the virtual appliance and also check with an HPE Zerto Software presales representative. After that first attempt, I could do it by myself and it worked fantastically.

For the deployment of HPE Zerto Software, we need two persons: one from the partner in my case and in my role, and also one from the customer.

About the pricing of HPE Zerto Software, I'm not sure because I don't remember what the price is. In the past, it was expensive. Not much expensive, but more expensive than other vendors. I tried to close some deals, and the customer felt the solution was good and they wanted it, but they discarded it for financial reasons. Other solutions cover similar functionality but not the same RPO or enhancements. They decided from the financial side and discarded HPE Zerto Software, and maybe this is something to change.

In the past, I used alternatives to HPE Zerto Software such as VMware Replication and also Veeam Backup or Veeam Replication. I used these two options.

My overall experience in this field is two years.

The overall effect of HPE Zerto Software on my RPOs is that the RPO is the minimum that I know with the other vendors. We can recover the virtual machines near to zero, near in seconds. We have to recover the vital virtual machine with the last change in seconds.

HPE Zerto Software has helped me to reduce downtime in various situations.

For example, with the same customer from before, the recovery only takes minutes for the critical machines to be recovered in the secondary data center. The vital machine can start and we can test it and confirm it's working properly and also run the failback. In my opinion, it's fantastic.

I would rate this review a seven out of ten.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software  is data center migration, as I primarily use it for data center migration from site to site and for disaster recovery purposes.

A specific example of using HPE Zerto Software  for data center migration is a recent project wherein Zerto was installed in the remote data center. VPGs were configured, and using those VPGs, the workloads from the remote data center were brought to my own data centers. I have multiple data centers in my workspace and I use Zerto there for disaster recovery purposes, such as setting up bidirectional protection.

I am adding automation into my day-to-day HPE Zerto Software tasks.

The best features HPE Zerto Software offers include quick failover, such as failover from the remote data center to my own data center, which works great without any issues.

The failover feature stands out for me mainly because of its reliability. It is highly reliable, easy to configure, not too complex, and easy to manage.

HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted my organization as I basically take over small organizations, and while taking over those organizations, when the workloads are moved into my environment, Zerto plays a crucial part in moving those workloads from one data center to another.

The reduction in downtime is a very important concept, and it is an instantaneous process. VPGs are configured before the actual failover and the failover time is very low from one data center to another, especially when the VPGs are configured properly. The process is seamless.

Adding more features would be great, such as hardware version upgrades upon failover to the data centers and VM tools upgrades.

Automation can also be improved and made as easy as HPE Zerto Software is to manage. If that automation becomes as easy as that, then it becomes easier to manage.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for more than three years.

HPE Zerto Software is stable, quite cost-effective, and easy to manage, making the work easier.

HPE Zerto Software's scalability is good. Based on my requirements, I can install it wherever required with proper credentials and permissions. It is quite scalable, easily installable, and manageable.

Customer support is quite easy to reach out to. They are very approachable, which makes the work easier.

In my previous organization, I used VMware. In this organization, I also have VMware, but I am using it in combination with HPE Zerto Software. In my previous organization, I used VMware-based disaster recovery techniques.

I have seen a return on investment as fewer employees are needed. Since HPE Zerto Software makes the failover easier, a smaller number of people can do the same job for a maximum number of workloads, and I do not need high expertise candidates to do the work. Hence, the amount of money required for investment decreases.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is easy to manage and install. Licensing is quite cost-effective, and for enterprise-based management, it is great.

Before choosing HPE Zerto Software, I evaluated other options, primarily VMware Site Recovery Manager in my previous organization. Similarly, in this present organization, I compared Site Recovery Manager with HPE Zerto Software, and after all the comparisons, I decided to go ahead with HPE Zerto Software.

My advice to others looking into using HPE Zerto Software is that if you are looking for a solution for disaster recovery or failover, especially from a workload perspective while managing multiple data centers, HPE Zerto Software is probably one of the best solutions to consider. Before going ahead with any other products, HPE Zerto Software should be kept in mind when doing comparisons.

HPE Zerto Software is one of the best software solutions that I have used to date. I have experience with multiple disaster recovery solutions such as VMware, Site Recovery Manager, and others, and based on that, HPE Zerto Software stands out among all as one of the best software solutions I have used. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software  is disaster recovery. For disaster recovery, I use HPE Zerto Software  with set and forget options to protect critical production databases.

HPE Zerto Software offers the best features in that it works reliably, has set and forget functionality, and does exactly what it is said to do.

The particular features that make HPE Zerto Software so reliable for me are replication and failover. HPE Zerto Software has impacted my organization positively because it does what it is supposed to do.

HPE Zerto Software is fine the way it is and does not need improvement. I do not have any additional thoughts about needed improvements.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for six years.

I do not have anything else to add about how I use HPE Zerto Software in my environment. I do not have anything else to add about the features. I would rate HPE Zerto Software an eight on a scale of one to ten because there are some quirks and issues with deployment that keep it from being a ten. My advice to others looking into using HPE Zerto Software is to conduct your research and make sure the product is right for you. My overall rating for HPE Zerto Software is an eight.