Zerto DR (ZVM)

I recently used HPE Zerto Software for one of my government customers who are looking for DCDR along with the regional data center also to be protected; we are going to protect almost 250 VMs with this solution, and the deployment happened in December 2025, successfully.

Our main use case for HPE Zerto Software is the automation of DCDR, where we have 20 different locations from which we are going to replicate to four regional data centers; from there, we replicate to DC and then to the DR site, making it a distributed architecture where HPE Zerto Software is very important from the automation perspective.

This specific example of how we used HPE Zerto Software for automation in this distributed architecture is an active-passive DCDR setup where we required minimum RPO and RTO, using the underlying VMware infrastructure; with vSphere replication software, we manage the replication, while HPE Zerto Software is used for integrating with the APIs due to the many applications we have running in this setup that require these integrations to orchestrate the required RPO and RTO of a minimum of five minutes and an RTO around 30 minutes.

We are using HPE Zerto Software for a 100% on-prem solution with no cloud connectivity; essentially, we are doing VM-to-VM replication without any storage-to-storage replication, and possibly in the future, we may go for the active-active setup, but for now, we are focused on the active-passive perspective; it is very user-friendly, allowing any Windows admin to manage HPE Zerto Software administration effectively, which is significant from an OPEX perspective.

The best features HPE Zerto Software offers include fast failover and failback, which is important because sometimes customers use DR as a DC; for instance, we may run a DC setup for six months and switch to DR as a DC for the next six months, and the automated protection feature significantly helps reduce OPEX costs since we do not have to configure everything repeatedly.

My experience with fast failover and failback in HPE Zerto Software significantly benefits my customer, a sensitive government organization needing this functionality in critical scenarios; due to geopolitical situations, customers may require location changes and user relocations, making fast failover and failback essential.

An additional important feature of HPE Zerto Software is continuous data protection, delivering near-synchronous replication, which, while not 100% zero RPO or zero downtime, is very close to synchronous replication; we also experience real-time encryption detection, which is crucial since data is critical for every organization.

HPE Zerto Software positively impacts our organization by providing app-centric protection; previously, we used other vendors' DR software, but now, customers with different applications on every virtual machine benefit from the app-centric protection and API integration provided by HPE Zerto Software, which the previous solution lacked.

App-centric protection and API integration with HPE Zerto Software have improved my customer's operations significantly, allowing us to eliminate dependency on app vendors for DR configurations, resulting in a uniform platform where any HPE Zerto Software representative can assist with applications, making it manageable for normal Windows admins or simple system engineers.

HPE Zerto Software needs improvements regarding its dependence on storage vendors; the rising hardware prices lead to numerous vendors entering the market, and HPE Zerto Software must enhance its API integrations continuously as new storage vendors emerge across different geographies.

Further improvements needed for HPE Zerto Software include necessary API integration with different cloud vendors, especially in regions like India where local cloud vendors seek integration with DR software; HPE Zerto Software may even charge for these customizations, but this flexibility should be available.

Regarding HPE Zerto Software's AI capabilities, while AI is beneficial for online solutions connected to the internet, improvements are necessary for on-prem solutions completely devoid of internet connectivity, as it presents challenges in importing AI intelligence on a regular basis.

Additional improvements for HPE Zerto Software are essential, particularly to address the needs of critical defense and government organizations that operate within air-gapped networks with no internet connectivity.

I have been working in my current field for the last 25 years, specifically as a presales consultant for the last 20 years, and in my current organization for the last four years and four months.

HPE Zerto Software is stable.

HPE Zerto Software demonstrates excellent scalability; initially used for 50 VMs, it now protects almost 250 VMs, with plans to expand to nearly 600 VMs in the future without encountering challenges.

The customer support for HPE Zerto Software is fabulous; we have a contact point for sales who connects us with the relevant support team, and due to the remote and isolated environment, HP arranges for a support engineer from the partner side when necessary.

We previously used Site Recovery Manager and switched to HPE Zerto Software due to the need for app-centric and better API integration.

We experience a return on investment through time saved, as the customer previously used SRM Software, Site Recovery Manager; while the costs remain comparable, the time savings are significant.

I find the pricing of HPE Zerto Software good compared to Perpetuity, Carbonite, and Dell Rackware, especially from the perspective of Dell.

Before choosing HPE Zerto Software, we also evaluated other options alongside SRM and vSphere replication, including Perpetuity and Dell Rackware.

My advice for others looking into using HPE Zerto Software is to first list your applications and their dependencies regarding replication, then decide on your replication software; you should determine whether to use the native hypervisor replication software or an alternative, and finally, define your automation policy in alignment with your organization's compliance requirements.

I choose a rating of 8 out of 10 because HPE Zerto Software integrates well with many hardware and software vendors, but I occasionally face issues with Dell and Cisco handshaking with HPE Zerto Software, highlighting the need for better collaboration with them, especially since most large data centers utilize a mix of HP, Cisco, and Dell equipment.

The accuracy and reliability of HPE Zerto Software's AI output are around 80%, with the remaining 20% requiring a human touch; this local and customer-specific context applies equally to the outputs from HPE Zerto Software.

Overall, I find HPE Zerto Software good; I expect HP to release the hypervisor, HVM, HP Virtual Hypervisor, alongside their servers, and I hope it will work similarly to how it is functioning with VMware hypervisor, which is my expectation.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is disaster recovery. A quick specific example of how I use HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery is to recover from hardware, files, or user file deletions in a disaster situation.

HPE Zerto Software offers excellent features including point-in-time recovery to just before a disaster occurs. Point-in-time recovery helps my team day-to-day by allowing us to recover key data that may be lost due to a disaster event.

HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted my organization by keeping our data always available and business operations running. This has led to specific outcomes for our business, resulting in near zero downtime.

I believe HPE Zerto Software can be improved by providing more clarity on roadmap features coming.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for five years.

HPE Zerto Software is stable.

HPE Zerto Software is very scalable.

The customer support is top-notch.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is good.

In most of the companies where I have seen HPE Zerto Software deployed, it is primarily used for DCDR purposes. It is very easy to test failover during audits to demonstrate the capability to auditors, and during disaster recovery scenarios, it is very easy to failover from one site to another. HPE Zerto Software is quite a GUI-friendly tool.

The failover feature in HPE Zerto Software is quite easy and intuitive, and the best part is that once your workload is migrated to another DR site, it automatically picks up the VLAN and gets powered up so your production is up and running there.

Sometimes the virtual private group that is created in HPE Zerto Software is sluggish. Searching all the VMs, categorizing it, and filtering it are areas where HPE can enhance more to make it more user-friendly.

The live synchronous feature is what gets used everywhere in HPE Zerto Software. The workload VM and the DR VM are in live synchronous mode at all times, with approximately seven milliseconds of latency, so both workloads are in near-sync.

HPE Zerto Software has made operations quite easy. Before using it, there was manual intervention required for everything. For example, with the SRT tool I used previously, I had to migrate VMs from the DC to DR for DR testing and then power them on manually, attach them to the correct VLAN, and handle all those configurations myself.

On many occasions when there are slowness issues in one of the regions, we need to quickly migrate workloads to another paired site, and we use HPE Zerto Software for that purpose. Otherwise, I would have to power off servers, procure new servers to support those workloads, migrate them to a newer server, coordinate with the network team to configure VLANs, handle DNS configurations, and manage many other tasks. With HPE Zerto Software, none of this is necessary, and instead I can use it to migrate workloads to the paired site.

The virtual private group that is created in HPE Zerto Software is sometimes sluggish. Searching all the VMs, categorizing them, and filtering them are areas where HPE can enhance more to make the interface more user-friendly.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for more than three years now, as it was being used in my previous company and continues to be used in my current company.

HPE Zerto Software is pretty much up and running consistently. Every time I access it to check anything, it is always up and running. Unless the underlying infrastructure is having some issue, HPE Zerto Software from the OS perspective and VM perspective is quite stable.

I cannot comment much on scalability based on my experience, but for the workloads I have seen, there are more than 100 to 150 plus servers that are being kept in synchronization at all times, and I think HPE Zerto Software is quite stable for that scale.

The customer service is quite fast and responsive. I would rate them a nine because sometimes it took time for them to understand what my issue was, but once they grasped it, they were swift to respond.

I have used the SimpliVity recovery tool, which is also being used here. The SRT tool does the same thing, but it is very basic and not as rich as HPE Zerto Software is. Many times it needs manual intervention for tool maintenance.

With HPE Zerto Software, I have not seen anything our team needs to do on the HPE Zerto Software end because I have used it for more than three years in my previous company and here as well, and no maintenance has been required as far as I know.

Recovery time objective and recovery point objective are important metrics. HPE Zerto Software is something that is quick and fast in achieving these. The live synchronous feature always keeps my workload in synchronization, so anytime a disaster happens or any sort of incident occurs, my workload is up and running on the other side. Users working with and utilizing the systems do not feel any difference in the backend.

HPE Zerto Software is very easy to learn. The HPE Zerto Software website has proper documentation similar to how VMware provides an HOL lab to try out and test products. HPE Zerto Software provides very elaborate documentation with guided steps, and they even provide basic certification to start with. The GUI that they have makes it very easy to understand.

For everything, I would rate HPE Zerto Software an eight overall. It is a quite good and rich tool. I do not understand why every other company is not using it more often. HPE Zerto Software is now into the cloud as well, so if you want to have a DCDR setup with your DR in the cloud and DC on-premises, you can use HPE Zerto Software during your disaster recovery situation. However, I think this capability is very little marketed.

My overall rating for this review is eight out of ten.

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.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is to achieve disaster recovery.

I can provide a quick specific example of how I use HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery in my environment. It is very good software to achieve disaster recovery because it provides very low RTO and RPO. We have multiple critical systems in our environment, and we try to find the best scenario or best solution to get that result. With HPE Zerto Software, we achieve those numbers. We did scenarios for drills and carried out real scenarios for disaster recovery, and HPE Zerto Software was the best approach to go with.

In the beginning, we faced some issues during failover and failback. Sometimes HPE Zerto Software did not remove or delete the folder for machines in the main site, and when you fail back, it causes conflicts if the folder name still exists. When you fail back, HPE Zerto Software just adds a suffix to that new virtual machine, which causes issues with backups or when you want to migrate the data store for those virtual machines. After failover, you have to make sure to search for any existing files and change or delete them. This is the big issue that arose from HPE Zerto Software; otherwise, it has been a very good solution.

The best features HPE Zerto Software offers are that it is very easy to use, and it is not complex software. I can do the installation and start the implementation for the virtual machine to replicate and for the disaster recovery site in maybe just one day. It does not take much time for me to understand how this software works; it is very good and easy to manage.

The simplicity of how easy it is to use and set up HPE Zerto Software really helps me day to day. Compared to other tools I have tried, HPE Zerto Software was easy to install the management server. They provide an OVA, and you simply need to add some information, such as server name and IPs, and open some ports. Then you install it on every ESXi in the main site and disaster recovery site, and that's it. You just need to add the virtual machine that you want to replicate.

Our team is very concerned about how we can achieve a disaster recovery scenario with our critical systems, which are based on security tools. With HPE Zerto Software, when we achieve that scenario to fail over and stay there for a long period, and then come back and fail back to the main site, it has had a huge positive impact on our management.

We have two topics to improve with HPE Zerto Software. First, when you fail over, you have to make sure that files for the existing virtual machine are cleaned up. Sometimes when we fail over, HPE Zerto Software deletes some files and keeps others, leading to disputes when failing back. Second, during failover, sometimes you have to ask HPE Zerto Software to shut down the virtual machine, and it can take a long time. HPE Zerto Software will wait for maybe one or two minutes, or sometimes five minutes. If the virtual machine doesn't shut down in that time, it just powers it back on and cancels the failover. These two things should be enhanced and developed to improve the process.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software since one year ago.

HPE Zerto Software is very stable.

HPE Zerto Software is really easy to scale. It can be done by extending the license or installing it for more hosts. I believe it offers very good scalability.

Sometimes I find very good engineers that support us and provide more information to help solve issues. Other times, it takes a long time with engineering to find a solution to problems. I would rate the customer support of HPE Zerto Software as seven out of ten.

Before switching to HPE Zerto Software, I used Veeam. Everything was fine, but to achieve a large number for RPO and RTO, switching to HPE Zerto Software was the only solution that could meet our needs.

HPE Zerto Software was easy to install the management server. They provide an OVA, and you simply need to add some information, such as server name and IPs, and open some ports. Then you install it on every ESXi in the main site and disaster recovery site, and that's it. You just need to add the virtual machine that you want to replicate. The simplicity really helps me day to day compared to other tools I have tried.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software is that it was a little expensive. I have Veeam which we use for backup, and it has a replication feature that is much cheaper compared to HPE Zerto Software. HPE Zerto Software focuses solely on disaster recovery and replication, while Veeam provides backups, replications, and copies to other locations with multiple features at a lower price.

I don't remember all the options I evaluated before choosing HPE Zerto Software as it happened about a year ago. When I looked at other software, I found that HPE Zerto Software might be the best approach to meet our disaster recovery needs. After the POC, I confirmed it as the correct choice for our disaster recovery scenarios.

We achieved an RPO of just seconds for the systems, and when you fail over, it takes just three minutes, or maybe less than one minute for some systems. For others, it depends on how quickly you can shut down in the main site and fail over those systems. I would say three to four or five minutes maximum. For us, it was really no downtime or data loss.

I rate HPE Zerto Software as nine out of ten because, as I mentioned previously, it caused me some trouble during drills, which helped me learn how to deal with those issues. However, HPE Zerto Software deserves more; it is really very good software. If you are looking to achieve very good numbers with RTO and RPO and want to conduct smooth disaster recovery scenarios, I really advise you to use HPE Zerto Software.