HPE Zerto Software is one of the products we usually call the Ferrari of disaster recovery. It is a very refined product with many built-in fail-safes that allow us to control it. HPE Zerto Virtual Manager provides independent logins, and we can trigger disaster recovery directly from that tool. All of the data is being stored and being taken into a different environment. We do not have live to live replication, but we have near-real-time replication. Because we have near-real-time replication, we have a bit of a buffer in the event of an incident. Blocking and keeping out unwanted access is federated through our Active Directory environment so that only authorized users can have access to it. We could do independent access directly to it as well. There are many ways that we could safeguard against unwanted attacks. Because the data is stored in the way it is, we cannot necessarily go back and touch one of those checkpoints or do any attacks embedded in those checkpoints. HPE Zerto Software has a built-in tool and mechanism for letting us know if somebody is trying to do encryption. It constantly checks for encryption. Those are the ways we see how they protect us from unwanted attacks.
I use HPE Zerto Software to protect VMs. I consider anything that is set up for disaster recovery as a protection. When we use HPE Zerto Software for workloads, we use it internally as well. We use it to ensure that if something happens, we have the availability of bringing up the environment within seconds before a disaster occurs. That is how we protect our workloads by having the ability to pull that workload back up in the event of a failure.
Migrating data with HPE Zerto Software is not difficult at all. It is essentially the same way that we process things to set up for a disaster recovery solution for a client. It is the same way we use it to do the migration option. We are essentially copying all that data over. HPE Zerto Software does an initial sync, which is the initial copy of the entire environment over to the new site. Once that is completed, it does changes. Incremental changes are constantly being updated to that journal. Once we have done a gigantic move of data over and are doing those changes, we could actually say we are not ready to switch over yet, but we have the ability to make sure that when we do switch over and migrate, we have the latest version of whatever we are migrating to. This gives that customer the ability to not have to lose data because we had the initial backup and of course, business does not stop. We are always doing things, always making sales, and always saving files. It just helps with that whole experience for the client so that whenever they are ready, they could have almost the last time that someone saved the file available to them in this new location.
We have had an actual client that was hit by a ransomware attack on their local on-premise services, and we were able to restore to a version before that actual attack had happened. One of the things that we try to remember and push to clients is that our journal history does take up space. Every journal spot takes up a certain amount of data. We have to be mindful of when we are mapping out and figuring out the size of the environment that we are bringing over to ensure we have enough in there for a good bit of journal history so that if we do not realize we get hit from a ransomware attack until three days later, we want to be able to try and go back to before it happened. We want to make sure that we have enough journal history points so we could avoid having to be in that environment. The good thing about HPE Zerto Software is that it notifies us when that happens or if there is an encryption thing happening at that time. It will actually let us know. That is definitely one of the highlights for me as well. The encryption notification that something is happening in our environment helps cut down on the guessing game.
HPE Zerto Software saves hours because once we have been hit by a ransomware attack or some form of hack or anything like that, we are scrambling to find out how it happened, where it happened, and what all is affected. Having the ability to say our operations did not go down for two hours but went down for thirty minutes and we are back up and running is a selling point for the client. When they see that type of flexibility, it helps us sell HPE Zerto Software. We do not really have to do too much talking at that point. We are able to get that feedback from the clients and say we were able to be down for only a few hours or maybe a few minutes. When I say down, I mean in their personal on-premise infrastructure because they were unaware of what was happening. But once they found out what was happening, they were able to restore to a point, and the fact that they were up and running is what sets us apart or at least sets HPE Zerto Software apart from other applications. The ability to turn around so quickly is what saves us the most with HPE Zerto Software.
HPE Zerto Software helps to reduce the disaster recovery testing time for our clients. The testing function for disaster recovery within HPE Zerto Software changes the game for the majority of our clients because we could now do a full disaster recovery test in a test environment as if we were doing it in a real-life failover scenario. Because we could do that, we are not limited to only doing this on a weekend. We could do this in the middle of our operation day, and no one is affected. We could test programs, test applications, and test the way that they communicate with each other, ensuring that this happens, that this server comes up first. If we have a priority of how servers load up, we could test all of that. We realize that where back in the day people never did disaster recovery tests (they just had the software and it sat there), we find out that people are actually more functionally testing their disaster recovery. They are actually seeing what happens when they set up a new application because the disruption time is so low. Nothing really prepares you for a true disaster recovery test than an actual true live disaster recovery test. The fact that we could see what happens in a test environment as opposed to the live environment is valuable.
HPE Zerto Software has reduced the staff involved in the data recovery situations. I think it is like a double-edged sword, at least for when we are in IT. Usually we want something that is easy to manage, something that does not require a bunch of hands involved in order to have something done. HPE Zerto Software is that tool. However, because it is that tool, it could affect us as well. If test failover and failovers are that easy, then maybe we do not need six people inside the IT department. It is a really good product, and the ability to operate with that level of ease is remarkable. It is all GUI-based. The client just goes and logs into a portal and could see all of the VMs. Everything is laid out pretty simply. Once we give a client a walkthrough once, they have it and they kind of take it on themselves and do what they have to do. Because it is so easy, it is just clicks as opposed to a ton of work to get this level of disaster recovery done.
The biggest thing to consider is what your requirements are for disaster recovery. If your requirement for disaster recovery is to have little tolerance for loss, if you do not have the ability to say that if this happens, you really do not know where to turn, then HPE Zerto Software is the product for us. It has really fast replication and is really connected. Because it is agnostic, we could have more than one type of environment in it. It is definitely one of the best applications I have ever used. I really see this use case for everyone, but obviously not everyone could necessarily afford a product like HPE Zerto Software. Usually, medium to large enterprises would be the persons that would go forward for this type of application just because of costs. But other than that, I would recommend it for everyone if it was my decision. This review gives HPE Zerto Software a rating of nine out of ten.