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HPE Zerto In-Cloud Software for AWS

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Reviews from AWS customer

11 AWS reviews

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5-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    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.


    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.


    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.


    reviewer7142983

Competitive price, user-friendly, and continuous data protection

  • August 09, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for multiple use cases. We are using it for disaster recovery, backup and recovery, and data protection. There is an inbuilt feature where we can utilize the Zerto platform in a hybrid model which means we have one instance on-premises and another instance on our cloud for redundancy and for cross integration.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto’s near-synchronous replication works. We have configured near-synchronous replication between two different clusters. One cluster is on-premises, and another cluster is on the cloud. For near-synchronous replication, the value proposition is excellent. We are able to achieve the results for which we procured this solution. Near-synchronous replication is working perfectly. We do not see any challenges with data retrieval, complete replication, and synchronization processes. Everything is working perfectly and seamlessly.

We were able to see its benefits when we integrated it with our HPE GreenLake for DR purposes. It is a SaaS-based platform, so we are able to see the fastest way to recover data and applications. We were perfectly able to meet our recovery point and recovery times objectives through Zerto. On top of that, Zerto is protecting our data from ransomware, cyberattacks, cyber threats, national disasters, or human errors.

We are using a lot of virtual machines on-premises and in the cloud. Our main goal is to protect the complete data that we have in production and non-production clusters with different applications and big platforms.

Zerto is a market leader in continuous data protection technology. Previously, we had RPOs and RTOs in terms of minutes, whereas now, they have changed from minutes to seconds.

Zerto has an inbuilt disaster recovery protection and prevention with continuous replication. Whenever we faced any challenge related to our link being broken or not being able to access the data from the primary data center, all the backups were readily available because Zerto had replicated snapshots. We have not seen much latency or delay in recovery and the ability to get replicated data from different destinations.

We have not had any ransomware type of event. However, during the PoC and testing in an isolated environment, we have seen what would happen in the case of an attack. We could see how Zerto and its policies will take action and isolate that environment within a fraction of a minute or second.

For DR, we were previously using VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) but there was a lot of complexity. It was time-consuming. Most of the time, we saw a lot of human errors happening, and we were not able to test our DR activity. By leveraging Zerto for the past 14 or 15 months, we could achieve all of our desired results. There were no human errors. Everything went seamlessly. We are very happy with this solution.

Zerto has had a positive effect on our IT resiliency strategy. With the earlier vendor, we had a lot of problems. Our data got lost in transit during replication, snapshot creation, and recovery scenarios. By using this robust platform, we could achieve our resiliency metrics. The metrics are stable and never went below the benchmark.

Things are working perfectly. Each and every feature is complete with advanced options. It is a simplified DR operation platform. It has great visibility when it comes to protection from ransomware attacks. It has deep analytics features and robust data recovery policies. Everything is good in this platform.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the resiliency towards cyber threats for data protection. The main reasons for adopting Zerto are data protection and being able to do disaster recovery for site recovery. We can ensure that if the site goes down, data is available to all the users within a fraction of a second. On top of these, we have the resiliency towards malware and other security threats and attacks. Zerto has an embedded feature to protect our data from external and internal threats.

Zerto is very easy to use. It is very user-friendly. It is a GUI-based platform with a centralized dashboard where we can create policies, snapshots, replication policies, and disaster recovery policies. It is very user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

Patch management can be better. Although we are doing patch management on the Zerto platform in an automated manner, it can be improved by leveraging some AI-assisted technology. With the help of AI, things are going to be faster in terms of patching the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Zerto for 14 or 15 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Since we deployed it, there have been no critical issues or major incidents. The platform is working as per the expectations. There was no downtime of any production activity. We are happy with the stability and overall performance of the complete platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is completely scalable in terms of adding licenses, subscriptions, modules, and different sorts of features. Its scalability is seamless, and it is easy to use.

How are customer service and support?

I have contacted them multiple times. Their support was good. We got a timely response and a timely resolution.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We were using VMware SRM previously. We switched from VMware SRM to Zerto due to complexity, cost, human errors, and data protection.

The most important security feature in Zerto is protection against ransomware attacks and internal or external threats. These capabilities were not present in the VMware platform. Cybersecurity resiliency and protection are embedded in Zerto.

Zerto is very easy to use, operate, and administer. It is very simple and easy to create and work on any of the policies and rules. It is easy to extract reports and navigate to the other tabs where we can see the health scorecard and other things. We can see all the things. It is very easy to patch the entire system. Everything is good.

How was the initial setup?

We have a hybrid deployment. We have one instance of Zerto disaster recovery and protection running in an on-premises data center, and then we have another instance running on the cloud. Both are continuously replicated so that in case of any difficulty or problem with one, we can leverage the functionality of the other one. The on-premises one is taking care of the on-premises environment, and the cloud-based instance is taking care of the cloud-based environment.

Its initial deployment was very easy and flexible. We did not face any challenges. The solution is quite simple. It is easy to navigate, easy to use, and easy to migrate, although we did not go with any sort of migration. It was a fresh greenfield deployment, so we had no issues at all.

Its implementation took us about 12 weeks. It does require maintenance. The maintenance contract was already placed when we went with the purchase order for procurement. It was a multi-year support contract. It does require maintenance in terms of patch management, updates, health checks, performance tuning, policy updates, and recovery plans and procedures updates. We have a storage and backup team working 24/7 in this environment.

What about the implementation team?

We directly worked with a Zerto system integrator. That integrator was recommended by Zerto. We also worked with the Zerto team for the complete architecture, framework design, implementation plan, and other things. We did not take any help from any third-party vendor or resource.

We had five to seven people for its implementation.

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

Its pricing is very competitive. As compared to VMware SRM, Zerto has reduced our OPEX cost by at least 30%.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten as a platform. With the help of Zerto, we have very enriched features for ransomware protection of all our data repositories. It provides great support for disaster recovery and response. Our RTOs have improved after adopting the Zerto platform, so everything is good.


    Ethan Johnson

Phenomenal recovery time, good scalability, and fantastic support

  • July 01, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for disaster recovery. That is our main use for it.

How has it helped my organization?

Everybody at the top wants to be able to hear about our disaster recovery timelines. The ability to restore our Practice Management systems several states away in a matter of 45 minutes is phenomenal.

I love the near-synchronous replication of Zerto. We are based out of Alabama but we have our off-site disaster recovery in Colorado. Being able to have data very quickly over in Colorado is phenomenal.

Zerto has enabled us to do disaster recovery in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center. Having DR in the cloud is super important for our organization. That is where our business intelligence center lives. Without that data, we do not make money.

We have used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It has been a huge contributor and has made a world of difference in terms of timelines. It helps spin up our Practice Management systems in a very quick time frame.

What is most valuable?

The ease of adding additional servers is valuable. We have a portal that we can go into to add those new servers, and then outside of that, the overall time that it took for disaster recovery simulation is also good.

What needs improvement?

They are doing a lot of great things, but I have heard that Zerto is expensive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate it nine out of ten for stability because we had one virtual machine that was not backing up properly, but we did work with support. We got phenomenal support. They helped us fix it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I like the scalability. Because we are in the acquisition space, we wanted adaptability. As new engineers are coming in and adding more to our data center, they can go through and they can just add it to Zerto. That is a part of their process.

How are customer service and support?

They are fantastic. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We had a different platform previously, and we swapped it with Zerto about two years ago.

We had Commvault. We were not getting consistent backups. We were not getting consistent disaster recovery. Each of our simulations did not match up, and nothing made sense.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten in terms of speed of recovery versus other solutions.

How was the initial setup?

It was super easy. We did partner with Verinext to come in and help implement it, so the swapover was instantaneous. It was super quick.

Our experience with Verinext was fantastic.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI. We had an outage in our data center, and we were able to use Zerto to spin up in Colorado to be able to continue to operate, which is multi-million dollars at 450 animal hospitals.

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

I have heard that it is expensive, but that is not my world.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

N-able was a solution we looked at, but it did not fit our needs. We had previously been using Commvault, and then we found Zerto. Our solutions partners were the ones that recommended it to us. After we saw what it was able to do, we made the swap.

What other advice do I have?

If someone is considering Zerto, I would advise them to go ahead and swap to Zerto. I would share my entire experience with it with them and how it has been phenomenal for us.

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten because of the recovery time.


    Richard_Martin

Offers continuous replication for mission-critical applications and near-synchronous replication

  • June 20, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate our VMware VMs. We have two data centers in our company. We use Zerto to make sure these virtual machines which are VMware are replicated in the other data centres.

We also use Zerto as a backup tool for Windows files.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto is already a leader in its field. I have seen the benefit of knowing that everything is protected. We've only started a disaster recovery program in the last year after running Zerto. The business is now understanding that recovering from the traditional backup software does take a long time, and it's very complex.

Using Zerto, I am the only department that can recover in minutes. The database team takes hours, the IBM platform takes hours as well. So time saving is what we see the most of Zerto.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is very important. It's the reason we're still with Zerto. We collect blood in many hospitals, and some of our data centers are in hospitals with power grids that are not as good as commercial buildings. So, we do have servers that will crash. The servers are in the hospitals for latency reasons. And when a server crashes for any reason, it could be a chipmunk eating wires. We need to have another server with no data loss so that the clinics can keep going without having to do a whole bunch of data entry.

We don't use SAP HANA with Zerto, but we use SAP HANA with an Oracle database. These databases are replicated at the hardware storage level, not with Zerto.

Zerto has very little effect on our RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives). As long as we have the disk space, it works well. We currently have a one-hour to one-day RPO and are extending it to about four days based on recommendations.

What is most valuable?

The continuous replication with a low recovery point objective (RPO) is crucial for us.

We have mission-critical applications that, if we lose data, we lose a lot of money. Zerto's low RPO ensures minimal data loss in case of a disaster.

What needs improvement?

Zerto has the ability for us to suggest features, which we do often. We do see some of these features come to life. Better alerting is something that I feel is critical.

If you turn on the alerting of the on-prem appliances, it bombards your inbox over everything. It's too much. We had to turn that off. We use Zerto cloud analytics for alerting, and we just moved the Zerto ten about a month ago.

Some alerts, such as when one of my virtual protection groups does not have at least one day of logs configured. We find that after we do a disaster recovery failover test we recreate the virtual protection groups. Some of our junior systems admins won't specify. We need seven days of journal logs. So an alert for that would be handy.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Zerto for over eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's excellent. The product has been solid for the entire time we've used it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We use Zerto to protect approximately 300 VMware VMs.

We have not grown Zerto in many, many years. We're likely going to double it. It should not be a problem because it's essentially almost agent-based. I feel that it can grow. We're not a very big client, so I don't know how big it can scale, but I feel that it can.

How are customer service and support?

I rarely need to contact the customer service and support. The product is very good. When I have used their support, I've never had to escalate a call.

There's nothing bad about the support. They are responsive and helpful. A 10 would mean having an experience so exceptional that I would have to tell my family about it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Zerto was deployed before my time, so I wasn't involved in the initial deployment. However, I have been involved in upgrades, which are very simple.

I appreciate the ability to open a case with Zerto support for assistance. For our recent Zerto 10 upgrade, we also had help from Zerto Professional Services, which is a feature that management likes.

Zerto can perform disaster recovery in the cloud, but our company is not cloud-ready yet. We do not have the governance We are still trying to figure out if we were to fail over an application, is the application team aware that they will have to pay additional funding out of their call centers. So we are at a governance stage right now of planning for recovery in the cloud.

We have two active-active data centers that replicate themselves at the VMware level. We use Microsoft Azure.

What about the implementation team?

We used Zerto Professional Services to assist us with the Zerto 10 upgrade. It was a great experience. The upgrade was done in about 15 minutes for both sites. They were well-prepared and knew exactly what they were doing.

What was our ROI?

We don't see ROI in terms of direct financial ROI, as we only started our disaster recovery testing about a year ago. However, based on client satisfaction and our decision to double our Zerto licenses, we see a return on investment in terms of overall client satisfaction.

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

We have a licensing team that manages it, but it seems to be fairly easy to use.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Veeam and NAKIVO.

The business realized the importance of quick recovery and minimal data loss, which are the main reasons why we chose and continue to use Zerto.

From an end-user interface where you use your mouse to click, Zerto is definitely the easiest. However, for the monitoring piece, where my developers have to use the APIs, Zerto is much harder than the other tools that we've used.

Zerto's recovery is the fastest, hands down. Compared to NetBackup, which takes hours, Zerto's recovery is a matter of minutes. We also use a tool similar to Veeam called NAKIVO for non-mission-critical systems, which has a one-day RPO. Nextiva is close to Zerto in terms of recovery speed, but Zerto's interface, orchestration capabilities, and ability to run scripts make it the top choice for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it a ten out of ten. There's nothing that compares to Zerto, nothing that works as well as it. My only complaint about it is the alerting. There are a lot of alerts that come through, and they are legit alerts. It's excellent.


    Joseph Navarrete

The ease of use and the ability to quickly recover our workloads is very simple and easy

  • June 19, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We've used it for disaster recovery. We also use it for file recovery. We extended our journal to more days, so we were able to back up a more detailed timeline. We recently did migrations.

How has it helped my organization?

One of the biggest benefits is the migration. We had to move out of a data center very quickly. We were able to failover to our disaster recovery site and run our full production there for almost two months. We then fail back over to the production site using Zerto.

What is most valuable?

The ease of use and the ability to quickly recover our workloads is very simple and easy.

The near-synchronous replication is great. It allows us to failover and run production.

Zerto helps protect VMs in our environment. Zerto's overall effect on our RPOs has been excellent.

The speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions is night and day. We use Veeam for backups and the amount of time that it takes to recover is so much quicker mounting with Zerto. That's why we extended the journal so that we could capture a few more days and make it easier for us to recover files.

What needs improvement?

The amount of storage that it takes up for the journals could use improvement. Outside of that, it's been great.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

They're very stable. We had been with them for a while before HPE acquired them, and they're still going strong now. We haven't seen a lot of big changes in the way they operate, so that's always a good sign.

How are customer service and support?

Support is great. Every time we have an issue, which isn't very often, they're very responsive. We get in touch with somebody very quickly and they help us through it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We use Veeam and we've used Datto. We chose Zerto for its ease of use. It was simple, and then we found out once we got it in-house how valuable it was. We just extended it from there.

We used Veeam, and we switched because Zerto was a lot easier. From implementation to actually protecting our VMs, it was so much easier.

Zerto is on top. Zerto is the best out there.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with Zerto on the deployment.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen ROI.

We had to move out of a data center very quickly. The data center we were in filed for bankruptcy, and we had two months to move out. The ability to flip over to our recovery site in one day, and then being able to ride that until the next time we came back up, then move all of our data back to the new data center was huge for us. That would have cost us a lot.

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

The initial pricing seemed a little high, but once we got into it and found out what it could do and how it benefited us, it proved itself. We didn't feel that it was too far out of the ordinary. We've increased our licensing to cover our entire environment whereas before we're only covering critical servers.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten. When we started using it, it was very easy to use. It was easy to implement. Throughout the years, it's continued to be that same way. They've proven themselves. We've had the data center move, we've had failures, we've had different issues that happened in our environment, and they were able to meet all of our needs.


    reviewer2506527

Enables disaster recovery in the cloud and has good migration features

  • June 19, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

One of our biggest use cases has been migrations. We migrated the virtual machines in one of our data centers using Zerto.

How has it helped my organization?

We're in the middle of a migration that Zerto has made much easier. We also use it for many standard disaster recovery cases. It constantly keeps our services running.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is a key component. It's essential.

Zerto enables disaster recovery in the cloud, which is very important. It creates another level of protection to have an alternate location outside of on-premises.

It helps protect VMs in our environment. It's certainly better than a traditional nightly backup.

What is most valuable?

I've found the migration feature very valuable. It starts like a disaster recovery scenario where you're just replicating the VMs. Then it all gets synced up, and you decide when to make the cutover.

This is instead of having to do a more traditional conversion of the VMs or shutting them down and migrating the data, which is less efficient.

The seamlessness of a cutover is very helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for around five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It offers good stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't scaled it too much, but in our experience, we haven't had any issues with it.

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

We still use a different disaster recovery solution but for different use cases.

Zerto didn't completely replace our other backup solutions.

What was our ROI?

There are cost savings for the migration in particular.

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

From the migration standpoint, they're flexible with the licensing. You own the license and can apply it to a machine and then pull it back, apply it to another machine, and so on.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

For the migration piece, we evaluated different solutions but not for the disaster recovery replication. We knew from the migration piece that it would work well.

What other advice do I have?

For me, it's a ten. I haven't had any issues with it so far.


    Ted Balagtas

Fast RPO and RTOs, gives us the flexibility and offers disaster recovery as a service

  • June 19, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

A lot of use cases involve how we effectively manage our DR and make sure there's not a lot of manual effort. On the business side, we proved the solution worked and showed the analytics on the DR report afterward. Those are the requirements.

How has it helped my organization?

At one of the banks I worked for, we used it for our merger and acquisition to replicate a legacy application that was no longer supported. Rather than try to rebuild it, which would have taken days or weeks, we could use Zerto to replicate it to our data center and join it to our domain. That was one of the biggest use cases we have had.

Another use case is for disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and to migrate service to a public cloud.

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is great. Not a lot of solutions can do that, and most organizations don't know that Zerto can do it. Once you have that near-sync capability, you can see how much more you can recover and be more resilient.

At the end of the day, we're trying to protect our data and not put the company at risk, whether it's from a cyber attack or just any sort of DLP data loss.

In financial services, data is paramount: protecting it, making sure you don't lose it, and integrating it. Having that near-sync ability is useful to any organization.

Zerto helps protect VMs in our environment. It really increased how many points in time we can recover, and not only the time to do it but where we want to do it too.

Generally, we choose a point in time because they're simulated tests and controlled. In the event of a true disaster, I'm sure I'd utilize one of the closer points to have more recent data, but it's good to have that option. Luckily, I haven't had to use that option.

It's night and day. With other solutions, you're locked into specific RPOs and RTOs based on how that solution works. Zerto gives us the flexibility to choose which we want to use and recover effectively.

What is most valuable?

The main valuable features are the fast RPO and RTOs we could achieve and the analytics behind that.

In my role these days, I have to make sure I can prove to the executive team as well as the business lines why we chose this solution and how it can help us.

One of the projects we're working on is DRaaS service. Once that's implemented, we'll test that solution. The whole premise of using Zerto is to replicate one-to-many and then test that scenario.

What needs improvement?

Zerto should continue adding new features. When I used it at the other bank, it wasn't good with replicating VDIs and automation. They've made a little more advancements in automation and scripting since then.

At one point, it was custom, requiring professional services. Now, Zerto has more built into its engine that will help with the failover of virtual desktops.

For how long have I used the solution?

I was an early adopter. I worked for a managed service provider in New York City back in 2009 and was introduced to Zerto near the end of 2010, early 2011. That's when we started implementing it for our clients. I've been bringing Zerto wherever I go ever since.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is great. Sometimes you have network blips, and you can be out of sync, but it'll catch up eventually. There are very minor issues, if any.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. For example, there's a tertiary site that we're building for the DRaaS service.

We just go to initiate the one-to-many and replicate up there. It's easy.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support are responsive initially, and then they help you solve your problem. There was only one time with the custom scripting for the VDI that they wouldn't help because it was custom, and they wanted more money for that. They incorporated that into their solution a few years later.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

In the past, I have used a different solution. I've worked with SRM, Double-Take (which is terrible), and BMC Recovery Point. Ever since I got hooked on Zerto around 2011, it's been pretty much Zerto.

How was the initial setup?

The installation itself is very easy. Any problems I've run into, either when I was managing it or doing the installation myself, support has helped every step of the way and has been very easy to work with.

It's on Expedient's cloud, which might be AWS. I'm not sure. I just know we're doing it through a third party.

What was our ROI?

A lot of the ROI is with engineering hours. If it took eight hours of overtime to pay one or two engineers to do a DR test, now we can do it in one hour.

We can factor in how many DR tests you do and calculate the cost savings. That alone is a good ROI.

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

The pricing is pretty fair. It increases with the number of VMs you have. When we had about 600 VMs at my last bank, we did an enterprise licensing agreement that helped cut down the cost. It required signing on long-term, but it was the most effective.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it a ten out of ten. I've used this solution for so long and have seen it mature. It's just easy. In IT, especially in a managerial role, we want things to work. We don't want it to be complex. If it serves the business goals of data resiliency, then that's all I need.

Definitely do a proof of concept (POC) and make sure it fits your use cases. On paper, it will, but every company is different. Sometimes, for some reason, it won't work. Or not that it won't work, it just doesn't fit what the business is trying to achieve. So do the POC and see for yourself if it works.


    Brent Wagner

The overall effect on our RPOs has been fantastic

  • June 18, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for backup and disaster recovery.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the disaster recovery capabilities. The fact that we can have a clinic across the country backup in as little as 45 minutes is incredible.

Zerto has enabled us to do disaster recovery in the cloud. This ability is very important because we have over 419 hospitals across the country and being able to quickly get a hospital up in Colorado while I'm in Alabama is impressive. The speed is impressive and it's easy to get it back up.

We use Zerto to protect VMs in our environment. Zerto's overall effect on our RPOs has been fantastic. Coming from our C-suite level and getting reports of how long hospitals are up versus if we do have disaster recovery, the amount of time to recover using Zerto is fantastic. We can have them back up in as little as 45 minutes. I don't have to hear all the bad sides of it, they're very happy when the hospital's back up and making money.

The other company we used before was Commvault, and we had had multiple issues with them with fragmented backups. Some backups weren't taking properly, and we did have a DR situation with them, and they were not able to recover all the data. That was our big push to find something else, and that's where we found Zerto.

Zerto's ease of use compared to other solutions is a ten out of ten.

What needs improvement?

As one who is implementing it, my biggest gripe is the ticketing system. Zerto has since upgraded that, so right now, I have no complaints about it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for around one year but my company has been using it for about two.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is a ten out of ten, we haven't had the issues with them like we did with Commvault. I have no complaints.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is seamless. We're able to add another server and within the hour build on top of that.

If we're ever out of licenses, I could just send an email out and say that we need to add some more, and it's done.

Our environment is large. We have 419 hospitals across the country.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is a ten out of ten. I have not had any issues with them. It's been fantastic every time I've had to deal with them. They've resolved all of my issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was easy and seamless. We put in a ticket. They get our new servers added and within an hour we have new deployed servers on the solution.

What was our ROI?

We see ROI in the uptime of hospitals that had a disaster recovery scenario and how quickly they're back up and making money at those hospitals.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten.