At the time, we were using HPE Zerto Software for failover of our VMware environment.
HPE Zerto Software for AWS - Disaster Recovery
Hewlett Packard EnterpriseExternal reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Exceptional reliability and robust failover strategy ensure rapid recovery
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The failover features improved our organization by allowing us the capabilities to fail over.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of HPE Zerto Software was its failover capabilities. The failover capabilities were the most valuable feature because, in the event of a disaster, we'd be able to power everything up on the other side.
The aspect of HPE Zerto Software that I liked most was just that capability when you didn't have a hardware platform to perform these functions, you had a software platform to do it.
My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication were good; I could see where it was a little bit better, especially on the testing side of the synchronization. Near-synchronous replication is crucial to my organization due to the uptime requirements of some critical environments.
HPE Zerto Software did save me time in data recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes. You can't put a dollar figure on it; we never ran into any ransomware or other circumstance, but in the event that it did, it would probably save us about 80% of the time necessary to stand it back up.
HPE Zerto Software has helped to reduce downtime in various situations. I can't put a number on how much downtime was reduced, but when it came to patching and updating environments, I was able to transfer everything from one side to the other and update that environment.
Overall, HPE Zerto Software impacted my RTOs and RPOs positively; for an environment where I did not have hardware, it ran really to perform those functions.
What needs improvement?
That could be an area where HPE Zerto Software could improve; it could be easier to use. The setup and maintenance of it moving forward is where I had a lot of issues.
When I compare it to hardware that can also do the same thing, it lacks its luster for the simple reason that the hardware is built to do it.HPE Zerto Software didn't help to reduce my organization's DR testing; I was shocked by it since whenever I actually performed the DR test, it took my environments down.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using HPE Zerto Software for about six years, maybe even longer, before we turned it off.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software was very reliable; I would give it a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
At that time, HPE Zerto Software scaled pretty with the growing needs of my organization; it was very easy to buy the license packs to perform that, although I had to buy it in a 25-license pack when I only needed one at that point.
How are customer service and support?
The support that I received from HPE Zerto Software was very helpful during those times; I'd give them a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was not using another solution addressing similar needs.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment was a little cumbersome. That said, once you understood it and the functionality of it, it was easy to move it throughout.
What was our ROI?
We did see a return on investment from HPE Zerto Software; it was probably two to one.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, licensing, and setup cost of HPE Zerto Software was fair for what functions it performs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered just VMware's Recovery Manager itself, and we found that this product was superior to that.
What other advice do I have?
We are using a different product now.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate HPE Zerto Software in the nine category for a software recovery platform.
Automated recovery functions enable seamless disaster recovery tests
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is disaster recovery.
How has it helped my organization?
By implementing HPE Zerto Software, my organization was trying to solve the challenge of achieving multi-zone coverage, as we have two different data centers, and the SRM we had wasn't very useful without HPE Zerto Software.
It allows us to do DR tests seamelssly at this point.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate the automated recovery functions of HPE Zerto Software the most. These features benefit my organization by allowing us to perform DR tests seamlessly; before, it was a check-the-box process with hope it worked.
It's extremely easy to use with one of the shortest setups I've ever done.
The solution has not saved me time in data recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes at this company, but it did at the previous company. At a previous company, HPE Zerto Software helped to reduce downtime, as we were able to fail over to our secondary data center in about 30 minutes for 400 plus VMs.
HPE Zerto Software has impacted my RTOs and RPOs. Its recovery speed compares to other disaster recovery solutions I've used as being hours instead of months. I don't have current examples because we haven't finished the implementation at the current company.
The solution has helped to reduce my organization's DR testing, as it's now a one-day window instead of a few-week activity. IT is always extremely busy, so any saved time from HPE Zerto Software is easily respent on value-add tasks.
My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are excellent, as we typically see targets under five seconds, which no one else is achieving. The near-synchronous replication of HPE Zerto Software is extremely important to my organization because we run different point-of-sale systems, and if we lose transactions, it would take days, if not be impossible, to recover from.
What needs improvement?
I want to hear more about the Commvault integration that was announced, as I don't know what's included in that one yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about a year at the current company, and overall, I have five years of experience with it from my previous job.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues. I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as excellent.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization very easily, and we haven't hit any limitations.
I have not expanded usage yet. We probably will in about a year and a half.
How are customer service and support?
We haven't had to use customer service and technical support much yet. I would rate customer service and technical support as a ten out of ten since we haven't had to use it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before adopting HPE Zerto Software, I wasn't really using another solution to address similar needs; we had some SRM set up, but it was very limited.
How was the initial setup?
My experience deploying HPE Zerto Software has been easy.
What was our ROI?
I have not calculated an ROI with HPE Zerto Software at this time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software seemed reasonable, though the quoting for the Cyber Vault was probably the stickiest part, as it had to be tailored to our size of company. That's probably going to get better as time goes on for other customers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Since I had past experience, HPE Zerto Software was the de facto option I considered before selecting it.
What other advice do I have?
In my previous role, when we evaluated HPE Zerto Software, the evaluation was sufficient to prove it worked; we set up critical systems and were able to test fail them over in hours, and it speaks for itself.
We are deploying HPE Zerto Software's Cyber Vault in this new deployment; we haven't used it yet. The type of solution I am using is HPE Zerto Software's Cyber Vault, as it comes. The capabilities that were most important when choosing a Cyber Vault solution were the offline copy, which was the real decision-maker when we brought it up for management.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate HPE Zerto Software a ten.
Enables near-instantaneous replication and offers powerful analytics for streamlined global management
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are business continuity and disaster recovery.
What is most valuable?
The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate the most include its core function, where I can replicate near instantaneously, which guarantees that I have X RTO, Y RPO, and that actually works.
The core functionality is what's beautiful about it.
HPE Zerto Software Analytics enables me to see my entire global real estate from one SaaS portal—that's powerful. We are still less than a year into using HPE Zerto Software, currently in the deployment phase, with the plan to have a unified global deployment. It will be a cookie-cutter template for every single site, where based on the application's criticality, that type of provisioning is determined. HPE Zerto Software would automatically inherit the workload, protect it, and create a DR for it.
HPE Zerto Software also works based off of tags, in an automatic fashion, saving a lot of time for my engineers where they don't have to babysit a tool, as it automatically takes care of itself.
HPE Zerto Software's recovery speed to other disaster recovery solutions shows that it's superior. The native technology is stream-based replication, instantaneous replication, whereas the other technologies I've used in the past are purely snapshot-based, which impact the production. HPE Zerto Software is transparent, as the production is not impacted, and it's a live write to a destination.
My impression of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is that it's a great technology, and that's what we're really counting on for the DR teams.
We're still in the process of reducing our organization's DR testing. We anticipate that, since, it doesn't impact production, we should be able to test more frequently on the DR side.
What needs improvement?
An improvement I would like to see in HPE Zerto Software is the ability to start protecting bare-metal configurations, as today it only handles virtualized workloads. I would love to see some progress in bare-metal protection. Several bare-metal use cases also need similar RTO, RPO, and business criticality thinking, which would be fantastic if HPE Zerto Software ventures into the bare-metal space.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for less than a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had any challenges so far, so it's pretty robust. There have been no downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization, as the licensing model is pretty good, and I'm happy with what I have, leveraging economies of scale through my team, making it positioned for us to match our scaling and buy more licenses as we grow.
How are customer service and support?
I evaluate the customer service and technical support for HPE Zerto Software as satisfactory. We have a virtual TAM with a lot of experience in the space, and we have frequent meetings with the technology team, plus the customer support is also very responsive.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using another solution to address similar needs, specifically RecoverPoint for VMs and VMware Live Recovery, which I plan to replace. I'm also familiar with Rubrik.
The factors that led me to consider a change were the core architecture, where one solution utilized snapshot-based replication while another used stream-based replication, and HPE Zerto Software's approach is more effective than snapshot-based replication.
How was the initial setup?
The way its architecture is formatted, deployment is fairly easy for us to get started. We can get set up and be production-ready very fast.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup, costs, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software was pretty good and in line with what I expected.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before HPE Zerto Software, I considered other solutions such as RecoverPoint for VMs, VMware Cloud on AWS with the VMLR tool, and a few other industry-standard options, mostly snapshot-based, and a few replication-based, but HPE Zerto Software was the better of all of them. What stood out with HPE Zerto Software is that when making a purchase, it's a combination of great technology and the price matching my expectations, so HPE Zerto Software fit the bill in both cases, which is why I went ahead and purchased it.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding expanded usage of HPE Zerto Software, it's too soon to tell if we will, as we've been using it for less than a year.
I rate HPE Zerto Software overall as eight out of ten.
I won't advise other organizations since everyone has to evaluate their own footprints to understand what's the right fit for them.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Efficient replication ensures swift data recovery for mission-critical servers
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for HPE Zerto Software is the replication of mission-critical servers.
How has it helped my organization?
My organization was trying to solve the challenge of a day loss of data by implementing HPE Zerto Software. Zerto features benefit my organization, since, in case I lose a major server, I can bring it back to life in a matter of 30 minutes to an hour instead of days.
What is most valuable?
The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate most are that it's straightforward, and the console is clear, allowing me to assign it to my staff members who can generally tell the health of the Zerto implementation.
It's easy to use once the setup is done. The updates have become easier over time.
My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are that it works effectively. Near-synchronous replication is extremely important to my organization as I work for a healthcare organization, so we have to keep up-to-the-minute health records; if a provider were documenting a visit and we lost that information, that would be a patient safety issue.
The solution has saved me time in data recovery situations due to a corrupt server, as I used HPE Zerto Software to do the restoration.
I've had a server get corrupt and I used Zerto to do the restoration. It only took a couple of hours. It gives us almost real-time recovery.
It's reduced downtime. I was able to avoid losing a full day of data. The amount of loss and downtime would have been significant.
We've been able to reduce DR testing. If I run a snapshot and I know Zerto's working, I can just pass forward.
What needs improvement?
To improve HPE Zerto Software, it would be helpful to make it more affordable. In the next release, I would like to see additional interfaces with HPE, as I talked to HPE about some storage solutions and know there is something in the works possibly between HPE Zerto Software and HPE that would make my life easier.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for about five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As long as I don't try to replicate a cluster, I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; it works fine.
How are customer service and support?
I would evaluate customer service and technical support as better than average.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were considering VMware Site Replication Manager, but it didn't work as effectively. Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, we tried using our Veeam software for some replication, but it was snapshot-based, which caused performance issues while HPE Zerto Software doesn't do that.
How was the initial setup?
I would describe my experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software as positive.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that it was really expensive.
What other advice do I have?
If you have mission-critical servers that you need to replicate, HPE Zerto Software is probably the best way to go.
We're currently using a Cyber Vault solution to ensure recovery from a cyber threat. We're using an air gap solution using Veeam right now.
I rate HPE Zerto Software ten out of ten.
Drastically reduces downtime and optimizes recovery times with seamless replication
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for replication.
How has it helped my organization?
By implementing the HPE Zerto Software, we're trying to minimize the RTO and the RPO.
This has benefited our organization as we had a catastrophic system failure where we had to bring up a copy of the production environment. We were able to bring up our application in minutes, whereas previously we had to get a six-second transaction. We didn't need to be storing backups or do any rollback. We just brought it up, turning what could potentially be hours of downtime into maybe 10 minutes.
What is most valuable?
One of the features I appreciate the most about the HPE Zerto Software is the simplicity of the replication, which allows the RPO to be in seconds rather than hours, which is what we were used to. The data loss is never substantial, not reaching minutes or hours.
The way HPE Zerto Software improves our RTOs and RPOs is by being by far the simplest we've used. Prior to HPE Zerto Software, our RTOs were in the hours. We've brought that down to an average of about ten seconds. The RTOs, since we're talking about having to bring a standby site, are in the minutes. We just make the DNS change here and there and we're back online, whereas previously it would require restoring backups to get the data. It's a big difference, going from hours down to minutes and seconds.
It's very easy to use. I have had to oversee rollbacks of infrastructure. We're training all of our IT organization, and I found it very easy. I would say it's getting easier.
This solution has helped to reduce downtime in situations, and we've definitely avoided or minimized downtime. I couldn't put a dollar value to describe that. In our internal operations, there's no financial impact if our entire operation goes offline for a day. However, there's internal staffing that we're paying to do nothing. We have contractors we're paying by the hour to sit idle. It reduces a lot of wasted man-hours.
My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's Near-Sync Replication are that it minimizes the loss of data. This solution has saved time and data for recovery situations due to ransomware or other causes, allowing us to go back from hours of data loss to just ten minutes. About five minutes of that was deciding whether to proceed.
With another solution that we used, it would have taken hours to recover. The previous solutions we used were all backup and recovery, requiring us to build new infrastructure, then restore the backups to that infrastructure. This solution has helped reduce our organization's DR testing significantly, making a lot of our testing now just business testing.
We perform a full DR test at the end of the year. It's made the DR testing a shorter exercise. We can test the entire environment in a weekend, failing it all over to the DR site, testing it, and failing it all back again. Prior to HPE Zerto Software, we could never successfully execute a full DR test in a weekend.
What needs improvement?
As for improvements to the HPE Zerto Software, I can't really think of anything as we have a very specific use case for it and don't use all the functionality.
Potentially integration into some of our other solutions would be beneficial, as we're using ServiceNow as a platform. If we could integrate our AIOps solutions and incident management capabilities within HPE Zerto Software, that would be beneficial, as it would enable us to automatically bring the DR site online when a major incident is detected, eliminating human involvement and making the process quicker than manual decision-making.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am familiar with the HPE Zerto Software for a couple of years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues, which speaks to the stability and reliability of the HPE Zerto Software.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of our organization as it just sat there quietly in the background and did its job.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had to use customer service or technical support from the provider, so I cannot evaluate that.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to using the HPE Zerto Software, we were using a Veeam-based disaster recovery solution with cloud, and it was a clunky process.
What was our ROI?
I have not seen a significant return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. That said, the reduction in man-hours of work is probably the ROI we have. The reduction in downtime and standby equipment in our cloud data center means we don't need to keep the equipment running, so there's a cost savings there.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting the HPE Zerto Software, the other solution we considered was Veeam.
What other advice do I have?
I am currently using a Cyber Vault solution. We were using Wasabi for immutable storage, however, that changed in the last couple of months. My experience with the pricing, setup, and licensing for the HPE Zerto Software is positive.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a nine.
Enables seamless disaster recovery with near-synchronous data replication and efficient testing
What is our primary use case?
Our main use case for HPE Zerto Software is for DR purposes—that's disaster recovery—for our separate DR site.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate about HPE Zerto Software is that it seems fairly easy to use, and there are a couple of minor challenges that we figured out. We also found ways around those.
The way HPE Zerto Software specifically benefited us is that when we've had to do some testing to show we can actually bring things up in our disaster recovery site, we're able to do it with relative ease, allowing us to check off boxes on testing for either auditors or some of the other cyber insurance or whomever else that we need to validate that through. It made it a lot easier and gave everybody else a sense of comfort.
HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication is great, just based on the small timeline that's there; that's what I found to be most beneficial. Near-synchronous replication is very important to our organization as it gives us that safety and security blanket of knowing that the data is being mirrored or replicated up to another environment, so in case we were to have some kind of disaster locally, we would at least have another copy sitting somewhere else within a very short period of time.
HPE Zerto Software has helped reduce downtime in some situations; we haven't had to use it officially to bring anything back up, but we have tested numerous times throughout the year for different applications to see how long it takes for us to bring things up, and while we haven't had to actually use that in place just yet, we know it's there if certain things happen.
HPE Zerto Software has saved us time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes; we've been able to utilize it just for doing some work with it. But we've also found that certain situations will not work for us since we haven't finalized the air gap vault in place, and we know that using some simulated ransomware attacks would cause problems, so we wouldn't be able to recover. That's why we're looking and trying to see what we can do to mitigate that issue.
In testing, I wouldn't be able to come up with a number right now as we take our time to ensure we don't miss anything. Usually, we can normally do that within a day. HPE Zerto Software has definitely impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively; they have come down considerably.
In comparing it to other disaster recovery solutions that we've used in the past, I would say that since we own and use HPE Zerto Software, it clearly beat out any of the competitors we had looked at previously. We're not yet using a cyber vault solution or immutable data copies. I can't say how HPE Zerto Software can be improved just yet; I want to see us get the vault in place first to test that out, so we're hoping to look at it here sometime soon. Our DR testing will probably save about 50% of the time.
What needs improvement?
The only thing I could suggest for HPE Zerto Software would be better support for detached drives in a clustered environment, as it's currently not supported very well unless everything's running on a virtualized VMDK file. If it's detached an iSCSI drive, it doesn't work, so that would be about the only thing I would suggest.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using HPE Zerto Software for six to seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software has been stable and reliable every time we've had to go through it thus far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software has scaled with us thus far.
How are customer service and support?
The support we've received from HP Zerto has typically been very good, and they normally answer any questions we have; we're looking at a couple of gaps we found, and we'll be testing that out to see how that's going to meet our situation.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to using HPE Zerto Software, we weren't actually using anyone for a similar type of situation; we were relying on backups.
How was the initial setup?
For the most part, it's very easy to set up, and the time it takes for it to keep things in sync is very small, which has also been a huge benefit. We've seen that work out very well when we've had to test part of our DR situations.
What was our ROI?
I've seen a return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. I've been able to see that return based on the time it saves us for recovery and testing for DR testing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I can't say what those competitors are since we've had HPE Zerto Software for about six to seven years now, and I don't remember which ones they were at the time.
What other advice do I have?
Initially, HPE Zerto Software has helped us deal with many challenges. We have had a couple of bouts where it did cause a problem, however, part of this is due to the fact that we haven't implemented the new air gap solution yet, so we run into some difficulties there. We are reevaluating that through our rep and also talking to them now just trying to get more information on that.
Our deployment model for HPE Zerto Software is all on-prem; we keep everything on-prem with our primary data center to a disaster recovery location located out of state.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give the product overall a big nine, probably over nine; it's not perfect. There's always going to be some pieces that are missing.
Reliable near-zero recovery ensures seamless disaster recovery testing with significant time savings
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for HPE Zerto Software include providing near-zero recovery. We're replicating several of our VMs for instant recovery purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
Zerto features benefit my organization. I've never had to use HPE Zerto Software in a real disaster scenario, however, we test it every year and it performs its job effectively.
What is most valuable?
It's easy to use, setup, and configure. It's also very easy to do a recovery.
The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate most include its integration with our VMware environment, which makes replicating VMs really easy. My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication capability are that it's one of the main features why we purchased it, as it allows us to restore from anywhere from basically five seconds ago to three days ago.
HPE Zerto Software has impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively by providing near-real-time replication and instant recovery, which has definitely reduced our RPOs and RTOs.
The solution has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing as it allows our DR tests to proceed very quickly. We conduct several tests each year, with the process being very seamless. The saved time has been allocated to value-add tasks because it's one less thing we have to focus on when we can easily perform a DR test.
Although we have not had situations involving ransomware or other causes, HPE Zerto Software has saved us time in general-purpose recoveries.
Fortunately, we've not had to use HPE Zerto Software to reduce downtime in any cases, but we know that it works effectively.
What needs improvement?
My only suggestion for how HPE Zerto Software could be improved would be to integrate with other virtualization platforms, as many organizations are moving off of VMware, so having options there would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HPE Zerto Software for probably close to eight to ten years, since before it was an HP product.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would describe the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as consistently stable over the years. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with HPE Zerto Software.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software scales effectively with the growing needs of my organization as we just have a small footprint where we use it in our most production-oriented VMs, and it has scaled fine for our needs.
I have expanded the usage of HPE Zerto Software; it's a relatively small footprint, but it has grown a little bit over time, and it's been easy to include more VMs in our recovery.
How are customer service and support?
I cannot specifically evaluate customer service and technical support because I'm not usually the one to call support, but I've never heard complaints from others at my company who use it. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as probably a nine or ten, although I cannot really answer that since I haven't been the one to contact support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using traditional backup systems, which obviously don't have as low of RTOs and RPOs.
How was the initial setup?
It's easy to set up, configure, and performing a recovery is very straightforward with simple steps.
What was our ROI?
I have seen return on investment with HPE Zerto Software as it is affordable and definitely prevents us from needing to purchase other similar software.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of HPE Zerto Software has been that the product has been affordable for us, so I have no complaints from a pricing standpoint.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, I considered other solutions, however, it's been so long ago that I don't remember. However, we have been consistently happy with it so we haven't shopped around.
In my evaluation process, what stood out positively was the ease of use, as the setup was simple, and performing the actual DR recoveries was extremely easy. My experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software has been smooth, particularly the setup with our VMware environment.
What other advice do I have?
We didn't really change from anything in particular, so the factors that led us to consider HPE Zerto Software were more of an add-on to a traditional backup system. My advice to other organizations considering HPE Zerto Software is to ensure it aligns with your needs, and to try to get a demo of it and go through a proof of concept.
I rate HPE Zerto Software a nine out of ten.
Workload mobility ensures uninterrupted operations during weather events and reduces recovery times
What is our primary use case?
The main use cases for the HPE Zerto Software include DR and Disaster Recovery.
How has it helped my organization?
The challenge my organization is trying to solve by implementing the HPE Zerto Software is being able to restore in a disaster quicker. During a weather event, we were able to move certain workloads from one data center to another with the HPE Zerto Software so that we could maintain operations.
What is most valuable?
The features I find most valuable about the HPE Zerto Software include the ability to move workloads from one location to another.
The near-synchronous replication used by HPE Zerto is crucial to my organization's business continuity, as many of our applications are customer-facing. With the ability to shift those applications without downtime, we can continue to access our applications.
The solution has helped me reduce downtime in situations where, during a weather event, we were able to maintain 100% of our operations.
Zerto has impacted our RTOs and RPOs, and these times have definitely decreased in our case compared to other disaster recovery solutions we have used.
I assess the solution's ease of use as fairly simple, particularly in terms of failing over workloads once I am able to configure the applications to do so. We utilize a store-once solution as our cyber vault, or immutable data copies, to ensure recovery from a cyber threat.
HPE Zerto Software has helped reduce our organization's DR testing from multiple days down to a single-digit day in terms of a full DR test, allowing us to test individual applications by themselves and decreasing our recovery times in order to have a shorter DR test.
What needs improvement?
I'm unsure of what can be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the HPE Zerto Software for about five years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of reliability, I describe the stability of the HPE Zerto Software as pretty solid, as I have not experienced any downtime, corruption, or performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The HPE Zerto Software scales fairly easily for my organization since we don't grow as fast, as long as we have the licensing in place.
How are customer service and support?
I evaluate the customer service for the HPE Zerto Software as overall very high in terms of support, including response time and technical expertise.
On a scale of one to ten, I give it an eight. The people I've worked with have been readily accessible and very knowledgeable.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
What stood out to me in the evaluation process when comparing other solutions is that Zerto seemed to offer more options in terms of platforms, both positively and negatively.
How was the initial setup?
My experience deploying the HPE Zerto Software involves some initial setup hurdles.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for HPE Zerto Software was that the pricing and setup cost were very manageable and cost-wise, it's manageable for small business.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting the HPE Zerto Software, we were looking at leveraging the native replication technology as potential solutions.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the HPE Zerto Software overall as a nine out of ten, and my advice to other organizations considering the HPE Zerto Software is that if you're looking for an application that is easy to configure and has active-active type performance where you can have your applications set up for disaster recovery, it's a good tool.
Ensures disaster recovery with real-time replication and dependable failover capabilities
What is our primary use case?
Primarily, my main use case for HPE Zerto Software is disaster recovery for a specific set of VMs to another site that have no ability to run active-active.
How has it helped my organization?
Zerto features have benefited my organization by providing peace of mind for our disaster recovery team to know they have a way to ensure that if something were to happen in a data center, they would be able to run and bring that load back up in the other data center.
What is most valuable?
The features I have found most valuable in HPE Zerto Software are the replication using the virtual VPGs.
My impressions of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication are that it can stay real-time, which is how we want to run it. We don't usually worry about data points in time for multiples.
The real-time capability is what we're looking for. The near-synchronous replication is important to our organization for disaster recovery; since we're a medical center, we want to have the most up-to-date data possible before a disaster occurs.
The solution has not saved us time in a data recovery situation or ransomware cases since, luckily, we haven't experienced one. However, this is something we must build for to ensure preparedness.
The solution has impacted our RTOs and RPOs positively; most of our others were replication of LUNs themselves, which would have required the storage team to bring those LUNs up active.
It has allowed us to handle it ourselves at our administrative level. The solution has helped reduce our organization's DR testing thanks to how easy it is to do a failover test or failover move to the other site and run it there briefly. We set up reverse replication and then fail back. It makes the process easy and seamless, with short downtimes that help teams have confidence they could get systems running fairly quickly if needed.
I would assess the solution's ease of use as fairly easy to use and administer. The interface is intuitive, and for unknown aspects, research makes everything clear.
What needs improvement?
Outside of disaster recovery, we are looking to leverage HPE Zerto Software for converting from VMware loads to Hyper-V. We have been doing testing and have concerns that support for Hyper-V ending with 9.7. Now that Broadcom has created an opportunity in the market, we're looking at Hyper-V. We also have a Microsoft ELA. Continuing support on Hyper-V is something we would want to explore.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The system has been stable and reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The software has scaled with the growing needs of my organization. We initially started with less than 100 different VMs, and now we're up to around 300, so we've tripled our usage.
How are customer service and support?
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support or customer support that I received between seven and eight based on our previous experiences.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, we were not using another application; we were using array-based replication.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment was fairly easy. The upgrades are okay. We've run into minor things before. If we can't figure it out, usually, support has been very, helpful about getting us enough and running. I've heard no complaints. It's easy to work with, and if we need to exceed the license and true up quickly, we're not inhibited.
What was our ROI?
On the technical side, I have seen a return on investment. The amount of time for doing the DR test helps with the administrators when they're working with the application support. It saves us time since it's easy enough to do, and with our documentation, our admins can typically complete the process.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of HPE Zerto Software has been indirect. The feedback I receive indicates it is simple and easy. We don't purchase many licenses as we do a specific set of workloads.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting HPE Zerto Software, we were primarily using array-based replication for DR, and our team wanted to move away from that approach.
What other advice do I have?
The challenges my organization was trying to solve by implementing HPE Zerto Software include handling failover from one data center to another and having resiliency if there was a failure since they could only run it in one location. While we haven't had a disaster, we do conduct failovers and they work effectively.
Everything we put online goes through a test process to ensure functionality.
The solution has not helped reduce downtime as we haven't needed it for that purpose. It has served as an insurance policy.
We are currently working on a Cyber Vault solution. The most important capabilities when choosing a Cyber Vault solution include ease of use, resilience, and a proven track record. HPE Zerto Software met these requirements for us. For a Cyber Vault solution, we're exploring different options based on specific requirements.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the product overall as an eight, mainly due to considerations regarding Hyper-V support if we were using it to move workloads, not just for DR. Additional capabilities in these areas would be helpful and potentially generate more business.
Failover and data protection ensure reliable disaster recovery
What is our primary use case?
Our main use cases for HPE Zerto Software are disaster recovery and replication to the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
Zerto features benefit our organization by protecting us in times of need. I work in Louisiana, so in case of any natural disasters, we have the protection that we can fail over to the cloud quickly if needed.
What is most valuable?
The feature I appreciate the most in HPE Zerto Software is the move or the failover buttons. It protects the data without requiring a hard cutover or failover. It shuts down the server and ensures all data is protected before moving it from on-premises to the cloud or back from the cloud to on-premises.
It's easy to use. It's simple. You just put the server you want in a VPG and make sure it's replicating and moving to the cloud and you hit protect.
The solution helped reduce downtime for DR testing. It would have cost my organization significant downtime as we would have had to find alternative methods to fail servers from one data center to another data center, and we would have needed more help. We probably would have had to bring in consultants if needed.
HPE Zerto Software has impacted my RTOs and RPOs with amazing results; they're in seconds. Compared to the other DR solutions I've used, the others seemed slow, manual, and clunky. HPE Zerto Software is fast, simple, and fits in our hybrid cloud model.
The solution has helped to reduce our organization's DR testing time. DR used to take hours to fail over servers. We fail over 800 servers for our DR test, which would take hours with older or legacy DR solutions. Now, it takes minutes. We can leave it up there, get our test smoke test in the isolated environment and it just works.
I have a really good impression of HPE Zerto Software's near-synchronous replication. It works very efficiently. Sometimes it gets choppy, but once implemented, it's fast. Replication is fast and the journal copy allows picking minutes and seconds for failover timing.
Near-synchronous replication is very important to our organization. In the healthcare industry, there are three main things: care, claims, and trust. If you can't process claims or do transactions, the company is in a bad state. The solution has saved us time in data recovery situations due to moving from on-prem to Azure.
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues over the last three months. However, over my eight years working with HPE Zerto Software, I have experienced some downtime and crashes during upgrades.
What needs improvement?
HPE Zerto Software can be improved for automation. I would appreciate more integration with vCenter in the next release and how we can protect our production servers and automatically get them put into a VPG. That's what I'm working with right now to try to build automation for it. If HPE Zerto Software has it built-in where we're going to vCenter and you click on it, it will build the VPG and indicate configuration requirements, that would be amazing.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using HPE Zerto Software for about eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would assess the stability and reliability of HPE Zerto Software as very stable. We had a rough patch during the migration from Windows to Linux. Now it's great. It's very stable and easy to use, and it helps me whenever I'm in a bind.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
HPE Zerto Software scales with the growing needs of my organization very efficiently. If you need to add anything, either memory or CPU, you can shut down servers while everything continues replicating in the background. As long as you have your VRA set up correctly on the host, you're good. We have expanded our usage significantly. We have about seven servers on-prem, and we have about 15 servers in Azure. Before that, we had four. We just had to add three more recently to keep up with what the firm wanted.
How are customer service and support?
I would evaluate customer service and technical support as having had a rough patch. Since the beginning of this year, it's been amazing. I would prefer more customer service focused in the Azure realm. I've found there aren't many cloud, Azure, HPE Zerto support techs. Other than that, it's been great. I always get help. Someone always knows what to do, and if I have any issues, I bring the issues to them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting HPE Zerto Software, I was using VMware to address similar needs. It came down to performance, cost, support, and scalability. HPE Zerto Software handled all of these factors.
How was the initial setup?
I would describe my experience with deploying HPE Zerto Software as easy. Going over to the OVA, setting the IP address, and going straight to the webpage to start building your VPGs is straightforward. If you have a server on Windows, you can install the OVA on Windows as also. The OVA setup process involves putting in your IP, setting it up, getting your IP address, putting your subnet mask, and proceeding from there.
What was our ROI?
I can't speak of return on investment with HPE Zerto Software. My understanding is it has provided value through helping with our disaster recovery testing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing and setup cost for HPE Zerto Software is great. I've had help with Sean, Avishai, and Ashton Meyers. They have been tremendous with helping with the licensing and pricing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've looked at many different DR solutions before selecting HPE Zerto Software. I've used solutions from Microsoft and VMware, and HPE Zerto Software has been the best so far. What stood out to me in my evaluation process were the speed of recovery, cloud flexibility, and the way that it can keep up with the changing pace of my company.
What other advice do I have?
Any company looking for a disaster recovery solution should give HPE Zerto Software a try. The ease of use and multi-cloud capabilities with AWS, Azure, Google, and private cloud integration are valuable features. Now that they're with HPE, they remain hypervisor agnostic. Companies should conduct a POC to see how it works and how easy it is to use.
I rate HPE Zerto Software nine out of ten.