Disaster recovery has become faster and more flexible across diverse infrastructures
What is our primary use case?
I use
HPE Zerto Software for disaster recovery. I use it to solve challenges related to hardware infrastructure on the customer on-premise environment. In the past, we implemented disaster recovery solutions based on data replication on the storage. However, most customers use different types of storage, so we prefer to use
HPE Zerto Software so that we are not forced to use the same storage in the disaster recovery environment. With HPE Zerto Software, we can use whatever storage we have in the disaster recovery environment and perform the replication on the software layer instead of the hardware layer.
HPE Zerto Software is one of the tools that we use for data resiliency, and it is very helpful.
HPE Zerto Software is different from the other products that have been mentioned because the other products are mainly backup and restore based products, while HPE Zerto Software is actually focused on disaster recovery and data replication. The use case is quite different between them. Usually we implement both HPE Zerto Software and other backup and restore software such as Veeam, Rubrik, or Cohesity.
We implement HPE Zerto Software in all these ways: both on-premises with traditional disaster recovery, on-premises to cloud for customer migration or disaster recovery, and cloud-to-cloud for disaster recovery solutions.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is that HPE Zerto Software is very simple to use and to implement. It is quite straightforward, and you can implement and have a full disaster recovery solution in just a few days usually. It also includes orchestration features that allow you to have simplified management of disaster recovery.
HPE Zerto Software has excellent Recovery Point Objective functionality. We have experienced customers with RPO of less than 30 seconds using HPE Zerto Software.
There is a very good impact on our operations. As mentioned before, the RPO is very limited because the replication feature is very efficient. The RTO is also impacted because of the orchestration feature that allows the automation of the restart of the virtual machines.
Usually with HPE Zerto Software, we offer an RPO of less than five minutes and an RTO of less than four hours for our environments. We manage quite large environments with more than 200 virtual machines usually. The four-hour RTO is a very good metric. Obviously, when we perform the exercise and after a few times that we perform the tests, this RTO can be further reduced. We save a lot of time using the orchestration features of HPE Zerto Software. If we compare with classic disaster recovery based on data replication based on the storage itself, we save usually between eight to twelve hours to restore the full operation of the customer.
HPE Zerto Software is an excellent solution.
What needs improvement?
In recent years, the issue related to ransomware has raised concerns. HPE Zerto Software offers limited functionalities in this area because HPE Zerto Software can analyze the data replicated and tell the customer if there are some anomalies. HPE Zerto Software could improve this area and introduce air gap capability and the capability to write to immutable storage. This would further allow the users to be protected against ransomware.
At the moment, we do not have any customers using these features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about 10 to 12 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software is a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software is very scalable. We can easily scale from 100 to 500 virtual machines with much ease.
In Italy, we have approximately 15 to 20 people working with HPE Zerto Software.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am an architect.
How was the initial setup?
My estimate for disaster recovery setup is 50% of the implementation time.
What about the implementation team?
We do have an implementation team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
HPE Zerto Software is cost-efficient. We have a general agreement with HPE Zerto Software, and the fee required for each virtual machine is affordable for most of our customers. I would say it is a cost-efficient solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
At the moment, we do not have any alternate solutions.
What other advice do I have?
We work mainly with
AWS and
Azure.
We serve medium and enterprise customers.
We perform managed disaster recovery solutions for our customers. We also perform the updates, patching, and maintenance.
I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Reliable data replication from remote sites has ensured continuous access and reduced downtime
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is to grab big data from our remote locations. In my daily work, the agents from the remote locations are uploading the data, and with HPE Zerto Software, we are receiving this data in packets available to our main head office, especially since we have limited internet connections availability on our remote locations.
What is most valuable?
We are very happy with HPE Zerto Software, and most importantly, we have a 0% loss in data, which is the great thing we have seen in HPE Zerto Software.
The best features HPE Zerto Software offers for us in our use case are its ability to downsize the data and signatures into multiple packets and send it to the head office due to our limited availability of internet.
This feature of downsizing data and sending it in multiple packets does not impact our workflow because the most important thing is to have data properly available at the head office from a remote location.
The impact of HPE Zerto Software on our organization has been positive, as we have had no issues getting our data from the remote locations, ensuring data availability is always on our location, making our system work very easily with routine jobs ongoing.
Since implementing HPE Zerto Software, we have seen a time save, especially since our main concern was having that data from the remote locations, and there has been no downtime, with everything going smoothly for almost four years now.
What needs improvement?
HPE Zerto Software can be improved. We are happy until now, and obviously, we are not looking for any new features, but we are sure that if new features were added to the software, they would obviously be helpful for us.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for almost four years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software is stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of HPE Zerto Software is nice, as it is scalable due to our many new locations coming into our system.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for HPE Zerto Software is great.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software, as it has saved us a lot of time and money, and the new system and features help our employees learn about new technologies.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good, but hopefully, Zerto will do something with the pricing and the license.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing HPE Zerto Software, we did not evaluate any other options; we went with HPE Zerto Software directly.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others looking into using HPE Zerto Software to consider it because of the stability and cost savings. I have provided a review rating of 10 for this product.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disaster recovery has become multi-cloud ready and protects critical workloads in real time
What is our primary use case?
My use case is basically disaster recovery with the multi-cloud support. That's the main use case that we have.
What is most valuable?
The best features are the journaling as a feature, as well as it being multi-cloud. That's the other best feature about
HPE Zerto Software.
The near-synchronous replication does replicate in real-time. That's another great feature of HPE Zerto Software. The asynchronous replication is valuable because I tried to understand the journaling behind it, and that's one of the wonderful features about it.
Regarding the impact on RTOs and RPOs, definitely, all because of the backend technology, it has really saved my RTOs and RPOs for any kind of recovery. Otherwise, we would have to be very specific about RTOs and RPOs for each and every application. Journaling is one thing which is a good feature about it.
HPE Zerto Software has reduced our organization's DR testing, saving around thirty to forty percent time for us.
What needs improvement?
The documentation is very good. The GUI is kind of an old one. More development on the GUI can be useful for the users.
The areas that have room for improvement include the GUI. The other thing is the VRA portion which is required to be installed on each and every ESXi. A better integration might help us for the VRA monitoring. That might be one of the useful features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for around five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
On the stability front, I rate it nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For scalability, it's fairly fine. I rate it nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
HPE Zerto Software requires some maintenance, and that's the time when the maintenance has to take place when we go for the upgrade.
In terms of maintenance, that's fairly fine.
From one to ten, I rate their technical support ten out of ten. I have had a very nice experience working with HPE Zerto Software.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When I compare HPE Zerto Software with other solutions like Veeam,
Rubrik, and Commvault, every product has their fair advantages, but HPE Zerto Software has an added advantage in that it is not only a backup solution, it's a replication solution also. Plus, it does give you the multi-cloud kind of support.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment of maybe around thirty to forty percent after using HPE Zerto Software for five years.
HPE Zerto Software has helped with RTOs and RPOs maybe around thirty percent.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In terms of pricing, I'll not say HPE Zerto Software is very cheap, and I'll not say that whatever features it provides, it's very highly priced. However, there could be room for negotiation on the basis of features what a customer is looking for. Because it comes with a lot of features, futuristic licenses might be helpful.
What other advice do I have?
The challenge I was trying to solve with implementing HPE Zerto Software was as a replication solution from one DC to multiple DCs. It's kind of one to many. That as an option is very good of HPE Zerto Software.
We have not come across the issue of data recovery due to ransomware or any other causes, but if that kind of situation comes up in the POC, we have seen it's been a remarkably nice set of solution for the recovery.
I prefer HPE Zerto Software.
I would recommend HPE Zerto Software to other users. In the POC, that's one thing that I can recommend. It also gives you a kind of hybrid model. That's also another reason why I will be recommending the solution. It's a one-stop solution for doing your disaster recovery, irrespective of what cloud you are running.
We do use a Cyber Vault solution or immutable data copies to recover from attacks.
My thoughts on the integration capabilities overall is that it's awesome. This is one of the best features about HPE Zerto Software as for the integration part.
I rate this review nine out of ten.