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Reviews from AWS customer

11 AWS reviews

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    Kirk Overby

Real-time information through the portal helps with security

  • January 22, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use it in our data center. We have two data centers, one in Baton Rouge and one in Las Vegas, and we use it for replication. It is all used in the data center.

How has it helped my organization?

We did not have replication previously. Once we got Zerto, we started seeing everything backed up and replicated, and we saw its benefits pretty early. Over the years, we have kept renewing Zerto because it seems to get better. There have not been any issues with it.

Near-synchronous replication works very well. We use pretty big storage with them and never had a problem. If it is close to going over, we always get an email, and it is easy to keep up with all that, which is pretty important here at Credit Union. I have nothing but positive to say about Zerto.

Zerto is easy to use. When we first started using it, we used the emails they sent at the end of the night to see everything was fine. About five years ago, they got their own portal. Since then, we have been able to see everything in real-time. It has been super easy. I automatically get notifications on my phone or email. That has been a real high point for me with them.

We have several VMs, and Zerto has been a part of the protection plan for them.

Knowing what is going on in real-time has helped with breaches and things like that. Recently, there have been no issues. Luckily, over the last year or two, we have not had any security issues. Zerto and VMware are what we count on in our data center. As long as the data center is up and running safely, we are good here at the branch.

We run reports on XDR and get an idea of anything that has been going on. Luckily, we have been safe for the last year or two, but in 2022, there was an issue. Zerto was right on it, and we were able to get it cleaned up. Zerto has definitely helped in the ransomware aspect.

What is most valuable?

The portal is a valuable feature. I am here in Baton Rouge, and I can get into the Vegas data center and see real-time replication on the portal. The portal has been upgraded over the past several years, and it is probably the most helpful part of it.

What needs improvement?

I always get some blowback about the cost. It does not seem too bad to me. We had to upgrade to a premium subscription to get some other features. Maybe a one-size-fits-all option would be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Zerto for eight to ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not experienced any stability issues. We are a heavy usage bank, and it has always been steady for us. I do not have anything bad to say about that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has been good too. We started with the one in Baton Rouge and added the one in Vegas about five years ago. It was very easy to connect them and get them mirroring each other. Scalability has been good for us.

How are customer service and support?

When my staff member went to Vegas, there were some issues with logging into the device. He called the tech line and was able to talk to someone. We have had luck getting in touch with those guys. Their customer service deserves a good score, at least an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

At the previous bank, it was a big Cisco shop, but I have been here for almost ten years, and we have had Zerto for that long. Zerto is what I am used to.

How was the initial setup?

I did not personally do the initial setup. A guy who works for me went to Vegas, called it in, and got it set up pretty well. I do not go to Vegas much, but I have been to Baton Rouge. I have tested it and played with it, and every time I have done that, it seems easy to use. My network administrator has never complained about any difficulty. For the most part, it is easy. They have a good tech support line, and if we have any trouble, they are easy to get in touch with. We are happy with that.

We have a maintenance contract with them, but I did not have to use it except for one instance a few years ago when we thought that we were going to get ransomware. We had maintenance on that. The good thing is that it is a part of the renewal. It is safe to have it, but luckily, we have not had to use it over the last few years.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Price-wise, it works fine for me, but my budgetary team is always looking for ways to cut costs, and it seems like they first look at the data center and the IT side to find savings.

What other advice do I have?

Take advantage of the maintenance plan; even if it is not required, it is definitely worth getting. The techs there are really good. There are local Zerto reps who come around. Use the tech support when needed because they are always very good.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.


    Alan Barrett

Gives peace of mind with real-time backup tests and it's incredibly easy to use

  • January 20, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is pretty good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What was our ROI?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.


    reviewer762012

Replicates data quickly and protects workloads for peace of mind

  • January 17, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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 is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used the solution for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.


    JeffSmith12

An enterprise-grade solution for restoring VMs in minutes

  • January 14, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I use Zerto for backup and restore.

How has it helped my organization?

With both Veeam and vCenter, the restoration process took a considerable amount of time. Zerto bragged about how their restoration was much faster, and it was true. It seemed unrealistically faster when they described and said that they could restore a VM within minutes. With vCenter and Veeam, when we restore a VM, depending on the size of the VM, it can take hours. Zerto proved true, and we have tested it numerous times now. We have done restorations via Zerto, and it truly does a full restoration of a VM within minutes. That was the problem we needed to solve, and they provided the solution. We are very pleased.

We are able to do a restoration so quickly because it backs up in near real-time. Of course, nothing is going to be in real-time, but it is as near real-time as possible. Instead of copying a larger amount of data, it is able to copy just delta data which is in a compressed form so that replication is more frequent. If we need to do a restoration, we will be missing less data.

Its interface is like any enterprise-grade utility. It is complex and not easy to use, but it is learnable.

We were able to see its benefits after some time. That was mostly because we did not have a good opportunity to test it in production. The initial onboarding came with an opportunity for us to do a test backup and restoration, but that was test data. You find the true value of this platform when you use it in a production environment where a stakeholder is involved and there is data that if you do not restore will lead to problems.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. The restoration time is in minutes versus hours. That goes a long way towards our RPO. With our previous platform, it took two hours, and with this platform, it takes five minutes. It has also had a positive effect on our RTOs.

Zerto has helped us to reduce downtime with a restoration time of five minutes versus two hours.

We have not had to use it for restoration because of ransomware. We were using a couple of VMs to test migration to a new database. While testing that migration, we caused damage to the VMs. We then used Zerto to restore them prior to that damage, and it was fantastic. The restoration was quick and effective, and we were back in production in minutes versus hours.

Zerto has reduced the time spent on DR testing but we still do the same number of DR tests throughout the year to make sure. It just takes a lot less time.

Zerto has improved our confidence tremendously, and it has reduced the RPO of any potential restoration needs.

What is most valuable?

I find Zerto's ability to restore a virtual VM much more quickly than Veeam or vCenter's restoration capabilities to be incredibly valuable.

What needs improvement?

I cannot think of any features that Zerto does not have. They probably have a lot of features that I do not even use. I am primarily interested in Zerto as a backup and recovery mechanism, and it does a phenomenal job of that. It is an enterprise-grade tool, and enterprise-grade tools tend to be complex. They can be a little difficult to use at first until you learn them. It is not reasonable to suggest making it easier to use because it is an enterprise-grade tool, and it is very robust. Therefore, it is not going to be easy to use. I just have to spend the time to learn it and become good at it. I am very pleased with it as is, but the ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Zerto for just over a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is 100% stable. We have had no downtime with it, and we are pleased with its uptime and stability. We have great confidence that it will be available and usable when needed.

How are customer service and support?

I have not personally contacted Zerto customer service, but Todd, my sysadmin, is the primary point of contact for Zerto. He has contacted them for issues or day-to-day troubleshooting. When there is an upgrade to be done, he always reaches out to them to get guidance and ensure that he is doing the upgrades correctly. They are very good to work with.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Veeam. There were no security concerns. It was more about performance. The restoration took approximately two hours with Veeam compared to five minutes with Zerto. The benefit was obvious, but there were no concerns about data security in the backups, protection mechanisms, or air gaps on either platform. It was just about the performance.

Neither one is easy to use. They are both very similar. Veeam is probably a little bit more complex than Zerto. Zerto is already doing a slightly better job than Veeam in ease of use, but they are both very complex and difficult to learn at first until you learn them.

How was the initial setup?

Anything new is always going to have a level of difficulty. It was difficult, but Zerto's onboarding development team helped us every step of the way. As we crossed bridges and had problems, that team jumped right in the middle of it and helped us resolve each and every problem until we were a hundred percent satisfied.

To fully set it up, from the kickoff call until I was satisfied that it was fully functional, it took about two weeks. There was probably a month's worth of preparatory work done in advance of the actual kickoff call and deployment, including some information gathering. You could include those 30 days prior as part of that work. Technically, it was about two weeks from the kickoff call to fully deployed and fully functional.

What about the implementation team?

It is a one-person job. One person primarily takes care of it, but we have three of us who are kept abreast and familiar with the process so that we do not have a single point of failure. It is definitely something that one person can handle.

In terms of maintenance, it requires periodic patching and upgrades.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is an enterprise-grade product. When you buy enterprise-grade tools, you have to expect to pay a higher price. It goes back to the idea of you get what you pay for. If you want an old cheap tool, you pay cheap prices to get it. If you want a good-quality tool that is robust and does a good job for you, you have to pay a higher price to get that, and Zerto is no different. We pay a little bit higher than the cheap tool price, but we get our money's worth. I am not dissatisfied with the price.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. There is nothing that is absolutely perfect, but Zerto does a pretty good job of getting as close to perfect as they can.


    reviewer2641974

Enables swift disaster recovery and seamless site transitions with near-synchronous replication

  • January 13, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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

In terms of maintenance, it requires manual updates.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its pricing is way better than Veeam.

What other advice do I have?

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.


    reviewer2621100

Shorter disaster recovery timelines have increased client confidence

  • January 02, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

While we primarily function as a service provider rather than serving a direct use case, our core focus lies in disaster recovery. We employ a rigorous testing process akin to gear testing and actively engage in recovery operations using Zerto for a diverse clientele, including numerous entities in the financial and government sectors.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto is straightforward to use.

We started to see the full benefits of Zerto one month after the implementation.

The effort on the RPOs has been excellent, greatly enhancing our operations. We have a diverse range of customers who are quite satisfied and express confidence in the timeline for recovery.

Even Zerto's RTO is low.

Zerto has helped significantly reduce downtime and helped reduce DR testing by over 45 percent.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of Zerto is synchronized replication, which is very useful. Additionally, the availability of the virtual machines is quite good. Regarding the recovery point, we achieved at least ten recovery points, and the availability of the virtual machines is particularly notable.

What needs improvement?

The main issue with Zerto is its user interface, which lacks flexibility and presents a steep learning curve. To improve usability, the UI should be simplified and streamlined, making it more accessible to technical and non-technical users. Additionally, the UI should be better aligned with the platform's various options and features, ensuring a more intuitive and efficient user experience.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto consistently for almost four and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Zerto continues to be a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We interacted with technical support many times. They were totally fine and very polite. We receive support around the clock, which is excellent.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?


How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Zerto was straightforward, and their customer service was instrumental in helping us achieve a stable implementation within one month.

What about the implementation team?

A team of five implemented Zerto in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

One of Zerto's main disadvantages is its pricing structure, which involves significant upfront costs and limited options for startups with minimal initial funding. Although Zerto offers a comprehensive suite of features, the high cost and lack of flexible payment options, such as pay-as-you-go subscriptions, present a barrier to entry for many businesses. To increase accessibility, Zerto should consider offering lower pricing tiers or more flexible subscription models tailored to startups' needs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated a lot of different solutions.

What other advice do I have?

There are some disadvantages; therefore, I rate Zerto eight out of ten.

We are not a partner, just a customer, but we are trying to collaborate with them as a reseller within one year.

No maintenance has been required as of yet.


    Sachin Vinay

Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features

  • December 24, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Zerto as a disaster recovery tool to handle data transfer between virtual machines. Currently, Zerto is implemented on-premises, as 90 percent of our services reside there. However, we plan to migrate some services to the cloud and utilize Zerto's migration capabilities to move VMs directly from our on-premises environment to the cloud. This is a crucial feature for us, as our virtualization technique relies heavily on VMware, and Zerto allows for straightforward migration of critical VMs to the cloud.

Our multi-campus university faced challenges delivering services hosted in a single location to geographically dispersed users. The extensive data volume and risk of outages due to disasters led us to implement a Disaster Recovery and Continuity setup. This involves hosting primary services in one data center and maintaining a disaster recovery site in another. Zerto's replication technology allows us to continuously update data at the DR site, ensuring data currency and the ability to roll back to a stable version quickly.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss.

One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization.

Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment.

Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime.

Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently.

Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems.

Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages.

Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time.

Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management.

Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features of Zerto is its straightforward cost model. It's essentially a one-time purchase, meaning you pay once and can use the software indefinitely despite the three-year license. This non-licensing-based approach allows for long-term use with a single purchase. Additionally, Zerto offers excellent technical support with responsive and helpful experts.

What needs improvement?

Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses. Its structure limits affordability to approximately five to ten virtual machines. To increase accessibility for small and medium businesses, Zerto should consider a competitive pricing strategy, possibly including subscription-based licensing options. This would enable more organizations to utilize Zerto's services.

I want Zerto to add support for Proxmox.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Zerto for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Zerto is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is scalable; however, the primary concern remains the cost, especially if needing to scale to 300 virtual machines. It is more cost-effective to use fewer virtual machines.

How are customer service and support?

Zerto's technical support is superb. Following HP's acquisition of the product, significant improvements have been made.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?


How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. We implemented it in two geographically separated campuses, setting up one server and adding another for disaster recovery. Zerto's demo provided a solid understanding and clear strategy for the implementation.

What about the implementation team?

We did not use third parties for deployment; our on-premises engineers handled it. Only two to three staff members were needed.

What was our ROI?

The return on investment is evident, as Zerto saves more than 60 percent of time in various operations compared to the previous manual processes. The savings extend to hardware and resource allocation, which were reduced by Zerto’s efficient backup solutions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?


Which other solutions did I evaluate?


What other advice do I have?

I rate Zerto ten out of ten.

Our on-premises firewall provides a basic level of security, but it cannot guarantee complete application security. Therefore, the application, including Zerto, must have robust security measures to mitigate any vulnerabilities. Even with a firewall, loopholes can exist, potentially compromising Zerto and other services. To ensure comprehensive security, we can integrate Zerto with our security firewall, enhancing protection and minimizing the risk of software compromise. Ultimately, Zerto remains our primary solution for software recovery in case of a security breach.

Zerto requires minimal maintenance due to its operation on virtual machines. Three people are required for the maintenance.

We have Zerto on 300 virtual machines in our environment.

Zerto's capabilities would greatly benefit organizations with on-premises and on-cloud setups, as it facilitates seamless migrations. It is highly recommended for anyone prioritizing data security and disaster recovery assurance.


    reviewer2587689

Enhanced IT resilience with seamless hybrid cloud migration and automated disaster recovery

  • October 23, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for seamless migration to our client's cloud environment, ensuring a non-destructive migration with minimal downtime. We focus on cloud adoption and migration, and Zerto assists with the smooth migration of client workloads to the cloud environment.

Additionally, Zerto provides disaster recovery solutions, data protection, and ensures minimal disruption during migration.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto has significantly improved our organization's IT resilience by ensuring security, protecting against ransomware, and enabling seamless cloud migrations.

It has enhanced our flexibility, ensured reliable recovery, and minimized downtime.

Overall, it has increased our ROI by helping secure our digital ecosystem and improving client satisfaction.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Zerto include its simplicity, ease of use, and automated features like failover and failback. It facilitates hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies, providing seamless migration with reduced risks. Zerto automates the complexity of manual tasks, which is beneficial for streamlined operations.

What needs improvement?

Zerto could improve by offering more flexible pricing models, especially for startups. In the Indian context, cost is a concern for many businesses, and a pay-as-you-go model would be beneficial. Additionally, more cloud support is needed beyond the major providers like AWS and Azure, such as support for Alibaba and Oracle Cloud.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable, straightforward, and reliable. It consistently performs well in recovery situations.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As a large enterprise, we find the scalability of Zerto to be very good. It effectively supports our extensive use across many users.

How are customer service and support?

I rate the customer service and support highly. They provide assistance with initial setup and other issues promptly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we used different solutions like vMotion and NetBackup. We switched to Zerto as it provides faster recovery and minimizes recovery time, which was a limitation in the previous solutions.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was smooth and straightforward, with the support team providing help, particularly in configuring work storage.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI has increased by about 15% since implementing Zerto.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would rate the pricing, setup cost, and licensing around a seven on a scale of one to ten. The pricing model could be more flexible to accommodate startup companies with lower budgets.

What other advice do I have?

Zerto is adaptable and straightforward, making it easy for new users to adopt. The solution has significant advantages in recovery and offers good scalability.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of a ten.


    Channel Luke

Provides real-time analytics and monitoring, enabling our organization to quickly identify and resolve issues

  • September 02, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

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

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

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

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

It has positively impacted our IT resiliency strategy.

Zerto enables disaster recovery in the cloud which is important.

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

What is most valuable?

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

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

What needs improvement?

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

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

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

The technical support responds promptly to our requests.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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

What was our ROI?

We have seen a 20 percent return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zerto is priced high.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto eight out of ten.

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

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


    John Dike

The solution makes work easier, but it's too expensive

  • August 20, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I'm a payroll specialist using Zerto to deploy virtual machines, store data, and a little disaster recovery.

How has it helped my organization?

I saw benefits within a few weeks of beginning to use Zerto. It helps us protect virtual machines in our environment and has improved our RPOs by about five to 15 seconds. It has also had a positive impact on our recovery times. Zerto also improves application availability as our business continues to increase our lifespan.

Zerto saves time and helps us reduce the risk of data loss from ransomware. it has also reduced our DR testing time, but I'm unsure how much.

What is most valuable?

Zerto is an easy platform to use. It makes work easier and reduces stress.

What needs improvement?

Zerto could improve its pricing and customer care. I've never used customer care, but I talked to someone who had, and they weren't given the information they needed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used Zerto for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I experienced some lag twice.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto's scalability is just okay. In my experience, the multi-host support and automated scaling can squeeze performance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zerto is expensive. It costs too much for the service they offer.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Zerto seven out of 10.