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HPE Zerto In-Cloud Software for AWS

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Reviews from AWS customer

11 AWS reviews

External reviews

163 reviews
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External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.


4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Joseph Pomerantz.

An effective tool for automation and orchestration of complex activities

  • January 11, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

For one client, the use case was to facilitate data center migration, and for another client, it was for failover and failback of the data center for DR. We wanted to have controlled failover and failback of related applications for DR.

We have not used it for disaster recovery in the cloud. Everything has been on-prem so far.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto helps in automating disaster recovery capabilities. It allows automation and orchestration of complex activities.

We have used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. Zerto’s overall effect on our RPOs has been pretty good.

It has also been effective for our RTOs.

Zerto has helped to reduce downtime, specifically for failover and failback, but it is hard to qualify the time saved.

Zerto has not saved us time in a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes because we have not been impacted by any such issue.

Zerto has helped to reduce the organization's DR testing. There is about 20% reduction.

It has also reduced the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation, but I have not seen any reduction in the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management.

What is most valuable?

Its ease of use and scalability are valuable.

I also find the near-synchronous replication to be valuable. It is extremely important for organizations.

What needs improvement?

There should be more comprehensive cyber recovery capabilities.

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?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. It is deployed across multiple locations. There are roughly about 4,000 VMs.

We might use it to migrate to cloud solutions. It is to be decided.

How are customer service and support?

I have not reached out to them myself.

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

We were using SRM. We switched to Zerto for automation.

Zerto is highly effective in terms of ease of use as compared to other solutions. Zerto is also pretty effective in terms of its speed of recovery.

We can easily migrate data using the Zerto console.

Zerto has not yet replaced all of our legacy backup solutions but it will.

How was the initial setup?

Our setup is all on-premises. I was involved in its deployment to some degree. It was pretty straightforward to deploy.

It took about three months. It was an enterprise-wide solution.

What about the implementation team?

It was a combination of in-house staff and a third party. The third party was a VAR or value-added reseller.

It required just a handful of staff for deployment. It does not require any maintenance from our side.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI, but I do not have the metrics.

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

It is not a bad pricing model.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other options on paper, not physically.

What other advice do I have?

Zerto is an effective tool for automation and orchestration of complex activities.

The biggest lesson that I have learned by using Zerto is the need for application involvement and defining protection groups.

Overall, I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.


    Giovanni Golinelli.

A storage software vendor that specializes in enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) in virtual and cloud environments

  • January 09, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We implement Zerto as a part of a Disaster Recovery process for our valuable customers, in various environments. Most of them consist of two sites owned by the same customer, connected with campus or wan link, but both using VMware virtualization platform.

Recently we realized a dedicated infrastructure in our Datacenter, then started to propose to our customers DRaaS using those resources as a recovery site and including dedicated 24x7 support.

Few customers use the public cloud (Azure) as a recovery site: we could only implement and configure the solution or fully manage it because we are also a Microsoft Gold and Tier-1 partner.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto helps reduce downtime in a wide number of situations because it can bring up an entire environment of 40-50 VMs in minutes.

Zerto helps to save time in a data recovery situation too. Some customers experienced VM or database corruption: using the solution's checkpoint feature, the data recovery happened within five minutes or less. A normal restore would probably be two to eight hours depending on if we had to restore from disk/tape and need or not need to apply logs.

Zerto is great at DR testing. We can spin off critical VMs or an entire environment pretty quickly and have users test against this copy with no production environment impact.

Its overall impact on our RTO has been great. It took a few hours in a very complex environment. The customer was very impressed with Zerto when we started with the PoC and then put it in production. It is great.

Zerto has reduced our downtime. Customers have minimal downtime.

We have been enabled to automate tasks with Zerto. Staff can now be dedicated to other tasks.

What is most valuable?

A great Zerto feature is the non-intrusive failover of the application, similar to an actual disaster recovery test without impacting the services that are currently online. Sometimes customers need to failover to an isolated environment and validate an application without impacting the production environment: we can achieve this goal with Zerto. Again, we can do regular testing in a non-impactful way using isolated testing. For customers of our DRaaS we include once a year, a live test that is more like what would happen if the customer lost the production site.

Eventually, the VPGs (Virtual Protection Groups) allow to grouping of one or more VMs into a single entity, ensuring every point in time inserted into Zerto’s journal (a checkpoint) is from the same point in time for all components within the protection group. This allows easy recovery of an entire application and its dependencies to a consistent point in time.

Zerto is also a very easy product to use.

We started using it a few months ago for immutable data copies for a few customers on multiple repositories like HPE.

Zerto's ability for blocking unknown threats and attacks is key in our disaster recovery process. It's the technical solution where we implement all the data. It is also the recovery plan for our customers.

We have tried experimenting implementing Zerto with the the disaster recovery site on cloud. We use an Azure. It's very useful. Zerto has enables us to do disaster recovery in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center.

We've only used Zerto two or three times to migrate an existing data center to a new one because the hardware under the machine was from a different brand. We used Zerto because the environment is quite complex and the migration using other tools did not fulfill the customers' needs. Zerto is very good at data migration.

One of its best features Zerto is the ability to maintain the data of multiple VMs using Vipro Protection Group. We can aggregate multiple VMs in a workload for specific services. They are protected at the same time.

It's very easy to manage and monitor our DR plans with Zerto. It's very easy to learn and operate. It's easier than VMware.

What needs improvement?

Zerto could be considered as a backup product but this is not true. So if we could consolidate and use Zerto for disaster recovery as well as everyday backup and restore for situations where we need to recover something, that would be helpful. Anyway, we think that Zerto will win with no competition in the Disaster Recovery process, so we stay focused on this.

Now we are testing version 10 which include real-time ransomware detection, a new Cyber Resilience Vault and enhanced cloud capabilities and security: we expect more from these features for superior hybrid cloud security.

Reports could be useful for customers. I would like to have a report that shows the latency for every single internal VM. it would be useful for troubleshooting.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started to evaluate Zerto about three years ago, then we implemented it for our valuable customers who need affordable solutions in their disaster recovery processes.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with any of the builds or the virtual managers, especially with the new "appliance" mode. It just runs.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is a very scalable solution. We can create as many protection groups as customers need for their environment even as they growth.

Our customers are mostly medium to small sized enterprises.

How are customer service and support?

We use Zerto Quick Start service for the first installations and we use it in very complex environments: great.

We are very satisfied. We had to use it at the beginning to understand the implementation process and what we needed to do.

They are quick and professional.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used Veeam (B&R + DRO) and VMware (Replication + SRM), but they could not offer all the features of Zerto.

We also sometimes still use VMware Disaster Site Recovery Manager in conjunction with VMware Backup and Recovery.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation is very straightforward. Must be considered security and lay out the network infrastructure to be more efficient.

But from the standpoint of installing and deploying the product, it's very simple.

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

Pricing is adequate at the standard of the product, but there could be "always" some improvement. We would like to see a consumption model that would charge in a DR scenario, where you're failing over and consuming those resources, instead of a per-protected-node model.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to look at what you're trying to accomplish: with Zerto you could combine resilience, mobility, and protection into a single software-only solution. It's hardware and hypervisor agnostic as to whether you're using VMware, Microsoft, or Azure.

We have built a disaster recovery landing zone in our Datacenter and we built an isolated environment so we could do non-intrusive failover tests, and still keep customers' production environment up and running.

We have recently introduced the immutable data copies feature, because of the issue of cyberattacks and because even backup systems could become corrupted and then this is still a bad situation. The ability to look at the data that is being replicated in real-time and scan it, in conjunction with immutable data, and putting that into a vault, would be a great benefit.

The 3-2-1 rule isn't so important for us when it comes to disaster recovery. We consider the backup process and then the disaster recovery process. We treat them as two different workloads that we could implement to our customers to solve different issues.

The majority of our customers use it in a hybrid environment, but they prefer to use disaster recovery in their own data center. In some cases, we provide disaster recovery as a service, where the disaster recovery site is in our data center.

Doing a proof of concept is the best way to implement and sell Zerto. The customers don't always trust our advice but when I start with a POC in their environment, they see it's benefits.


    Aldo Centino

Provides near-synchronous replication, is easy to migrate data, and helps our users collaborate

  • January 02, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to verify the information being transferred from one data center to another.

How has it helped my organization?

When a site is down, we can continue to use the other site thanks to Zerto.

The near-synchronous replication is extremely valuable because it ensures we can continue working.

The move action between the app and data center is great and we can see the benefits in minutes.

Our RPOs are performing well thanks to Zerto.

Migrating data using Zerto is easy.

Zerto helps our users collaborate during data migration.

Our RTO using Zerto is good.

What is most valuable?

The communication between the VM and the secondary data center is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement?

I would like Zerto to provide more detailed information when there is an issue.

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?

Zerto is extremely stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I have used the technical support of Zerto several times and they are good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Though I wasn't part of the initial deployment, the procedure is relatively simple. Manager rollout is the first step, followed by CPG installation on VMs by the CPG teams and subsequent network configuration verification.

Four people are required for the deployment.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten.

Zerto is a good solution for transferring data between centers.


    Jagadeesh Ethiraj

Is easy to migrate data, helps reduce our recovery and staff time

  • December 21, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for disaster recovery and cloud migration.

How has it helped my organization?

The near-synchronous replication is valuable to our organization.

Zerto's immutable data copies three-two-one rule is great.

The ability to block ransomware attacks and help recover our servers is great.

Since we don't have a backup data center, Zerto's cloud disaster recovery is of the utmost importance.

The recovery point objective for our virtual machines is good. We haven't encountered any significant issues. However, there have been some delays due to the substantial volume of data being written to the SQL server.

Migrating data using Zerto is easy.

Our RTO went from three days to a few minutes after implementing Zerto.

In the event of a ransomware attack necessitating data recovery, Zerto would undoubtedly prove invaluable in expediting the process.

Zerto has helped reduce our recovery time from days to minutes.

Zerto has reduced the time our staff spends on data recovery by 25 percent.

What needs improvement?

The RPO for our SQL server has room for improvement.

On-premises to cloud migration lacks certain features, such as the ability to directly rename virtual machines. In the cloud, renaming resources often requires cumbersome workarounds like cloning and manual renaming.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Initially, we had stability issues with the older versions but now I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The level one technical support is slow to respond and we usually need to escalate our issue to get a resolution.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We previously used Azure Site Recovery and switched to Zerto because it is more user-friendly with more features.

How was the initial setup?

While the initial deployment presented some challenges and took approximately two weeks to finalize, subsequent deployments have been significantly more streamlined.

What was our ROI?

In the event of a disaster, we will certainly see a return on investment.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten.

Deploying Zerto in the cloud saves us costs on maintaining on-prem hardware.


    Derrick Brockel

Good GUI, easy setup, and fast recovery

  • December 19, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

It was a pilot. We did a bake-off between Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. It was to fail over 130 Oracle databases.

We wanted to handle disaster recovery for our data center. Zerto was mainly a failover product. We did not use any security layering.

How has it helped my organization?

When we tested it, it had more functions than what we used it for, but it was a very good BCDR product. We liked the reliability and availability.

Zerto enables you to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud, but we did not use that feature. We used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It was strong in that aspect. I would rate it an eight out of ten there.

Zerto's speed of recovery was comparable. There was no synchronous and asynchronous replication. If I had to give it a number, it would be a seven out of ten. It was the same as others. There was not much difference.

It was easy to migrate data. There was some initial configuration in syncing, but it was easy. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of the ease of migration.

Zerto’s ability to keep our users collaborating with one another during a data migration was good. I would rate it a seven out of ten in this aspect as well as in terms of its impact on RTOs.

Zerto helps reduce downtime in any situation. We can bring up a database in minutes. It probably takes five minutes for the final sync. The cost of downtime depends on the database. It may be 50,000 if you have call center people sitting around. Normally, most of our small outages like that ranged in the tens of thousands.

Zerto did save time in a data recovery situation. We did not have ransomware, but there were times we had database corruption where the users would corrupt the database, and the database would not start. It would do snapshotting. It was not necessarily ransomware, but it was testing upgrades or Oracle upgrades. The data recovery happened within five minutes, if not sooner. A normal restore would probably be four to eight hours if we had to restore from a tape and apply logs.

Zerto helps to reduce an organization's DR testing. You can spin off an extra database pretty quickly and have users test against the third or fourth copy. It saves one to three days of testing depending on test cycles. You could do sequential testing. I would probably measure it more in days than hours. All of that time can be used by a DBA to do something else.

Zerto reduces the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. One person could probably orchestrate it now versus one to three people.

It did not reduce the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management because we are pretty thin. We would not have gotten rid of anybody.

What is most valuable?

Zerto offered a very good front-end GUI for orchestration. The graphic interface was very good.

What needs improvement?

The replication layer can probably be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

We ran the pilot for about nine months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of scalability.

In terms of our environment, we had 130 databases, 35 prods, and 2 data centers. In terms of end users, in our call centers, we had probably 10,000 users who accessed the databases.

How are customer service and support?

They are good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We used VMware SRM. We used Veritas clustering, which was a Veritas/Symantec product. We then went virtual, so we went from physical to virtual infrastructure, and we went from HP-UX to Red Hat infrastructure. Zerto was probably 50% easier than others.

Zerto has not replaced any backup solution.

How was the initial setup?

It is a private cloud deployment. It is all VMware vSphere.

Its initial setup was straightforward. It was not as complicated as any other product. It took two to three weeks.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we wanted to reduce our synchronous synchronization. We wanted a better RTO, so we went to an asynchronous replication on private network infrastructure for faster syncing. There were a few technical aspects, but we took our time to lay out the network infrastructure.

In terms of maintenance, you have to patch it and upgrade it. We have a team of four for backup and storage.

What about the implementation team?

Zerto helped us. They had very good staff. We got great support. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

We had two people working on that project, primary and secondary. We did use some of the networking team, maybe a half-person worth of time, because it is a little network intensive.

What was our ROI?

It is hard to measure an ROI. It is more like an insurance policy. You may or may not use your insurance policy, but it provides comfort to management. There may also be some soft cost.

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

It was a little higher. We were in a corporate agreement, and we had a software package that included RP for VM. It is easy to compare pricing when you are already in a corporate agreement. Zerto lost on the pricing scorecard.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Zerto and RP for VM, which was an EMC product. They were different in replication logic and how they did journaling.

In Zerto, the replication is done through vSphere, and they did not license that product, so at any point, they could have probably lost it. We licensed RP for VM. We felt more comfortable with an EMC replication product because it was Dell and VMware combined or merged. The replication in Zerto was good, but it was using VMware hypervisor replication.

What other advice do I have?

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend doing an architectural design and implementing best practices. Involve your network team early and use Zerto's expertise.

I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten.


    Muhammad Mudabbir.

Reliable with minimal downtime and helps reduce staff

  • November 27, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for data replication. We have it in Oracle. It helps with disaster recovery. We have a primary and secondary server and the data can move between the two thanks to Zerto.

How has it helped my organization?

Right now, I'm having issues with delays when archiving. We're facing issues with RPU and getting 20 or 30-minute delays. That's a bandwidth issue.

We do rely on the replication capabilities. When our one system went down, we were able to immediately replicate.

What is most valuable?

It's a reliable solution - if we have great bandwidth. It offers near-synchronous replication. This is very important. We're a fintech company relying on Zerto for disaster recovery. We tend to only use the replication features.

We use the solution for immutable data copies. The 3-2-1 rule is very reliable.

We can use Zerto to help protect our VMs.

It's had a positive effect on our RPOs. We have virtual protection groups and haven't had any issues. Our production server does need to be replicated in real-time, and everything else can be replicated whenever we like.

It only takes five to ten minutes to switch over or failover. During data migrations, our users can continue to collaborate just fine. It's fine and fast.

The RTO is good. If a machine is storing more than two to three terabytes, it takes longer than ten minutes, but any time the storage is less than that, it takes ten minutes or less.

Our downtime is minimal.

We've saved a lot of time in a data recovery situation.

We do switchovers from time to time to test DR. We do switchovers every three months. It only takes half an hour. It saves us about one hour at least. We can allocate the time we save to any other activity or task.

It's reduced the number of staff needed for DR by three or four people.

The solution did replace some legacy solutions. It replaced small backup solutions. It's helped us save on the costs needed to manage them. We've saved around two resources so far. I'm not sure how much those tools cost. However, we needed four infrastructure and two or three database people looking after those. Now, we don't need to.

What needs improvement?

We don't have great bandwidth. When we don't have good bandwidth, it doesn't work so well.

We're not fully satisfied with the support team.

The first time, it's difficult to migrate data. However, after that, it becomes easier.

They need to give more options, such as more archiving options.

For how long have I used the solution?

The company has been using the solution for around one year. I've used it for three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable, from what I have seen.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have around 100 direct Zerto users. We have around 30,000 to 35,000 end-users. We have 10 production servers, Linux machines, five development servers, and five Unity servers.

It is very scalable. We can scale up to 200 machines and have maybe around 80 right now. I'm not sure if we will scale more in the future.

How are customer service and support?

Support has dropped off. When I joined the organizations, they were very active.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We also use Oracle. I used it in my previous company. In this company, we use HP, and it works well with Zerto.

Zerto is very easy to use, and the GUI is very comfortable. We can configure, replicate, and sync right from the GUI.

How was the initial setup?

We have Zerto on an HP machine.

I was not involved in the deployment of the solution.

Maintenance is necessary, and we have two people handling maintenance tasks.

What was our ROI?

The solution is worth the cost. Having disaster recovery is necessary. If we ever suffer from a hardware failure, we can easily replicate in one click.

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

The solution is a bit expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd recommend the solution to others.


    Bayu Jayasukma.

The RPO during testing can be done under 15 minutes

  • November 16, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Zerto for disaster recovery.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto ensures a smooth transition during a disaster when we need to automatically switch from our primary environment to our recovery one. Zerto offers us disaster recovery in the cloud, which is essential because we don't need to pay upfront costs for infrastructure when doing the DR process. Zerto helps to protect our VM-based applications.

The solution has also reduced our RPO. The RPO during testing was less than 15 minutes. Zerto reduces the amount of work we need to do because some of the steps are automated. It takes about five to 15 minutes to test. Zerto has decreased the number of staff needed for backup and DR. It only requires one or two.

What is most valuable?

The core backup and disaster recovery features are the most valuable. The near-synchronous replication ensures we will be able to keep the business running if something happens.

What needs improvement?

There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Zerto nine out of 10 for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Zerto eight out of 10 for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Zerto support eight out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We are using Zerto and Acronis.

How was the initial setup?

Our IT team handled the deployment, but I don't think it was complicated.

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

Zerto is a little expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Zerto eight out of 10.


    Gaurav Sharma.

User-friendly, easy to set up, and offers good speed to recovery times

  • October 26, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

The solution was primarily used for disaster recovery for clients. If there was a major issue in the data center, it allowed the client to move to the second data center. It was also used for migration to virtual machines.

How has it helped my organization?

My customer recently (a few years ago), had a major issue in one of the data centers. It was a virus attack that destroyed the servers and virtual machines. We could not recover those servers or virtual machines. After that, we decided to remove the corrupted data center and get everything recovered using Zerto. We were able to do that with the agreed-upon RTO and RPO for the customer.

What is most valuable?

The replication between data centers is great. It allowed us to ensure all data was replicated from one side to another.

The near-synchronous replication is great to have. It works better than other solutions.

It's very user-friendly and straightforward. There are no bugs in the software.

The disaster recovery features are the best I've found.

This product allows us to do disaster recovery in the cloud rather than the physical data centers. We have multiple customers who are on a hybrid cloud. Some are on a private cloud and some are on a public cloud and Zerto allows us to provide the functionality whereby we can cover both as well as across physical data centers. We use Zerto for AWS, Azure, and GCP.

It was nice to use with AWS. Everything was in place on AWS and the functionality is well documented. We've done a POC on it. We have not yet had a chance to do a real disaster recovery just yet.

Zerto has helped us protect VMs in the customer environment. The overall effect on the RPOs is good. We can do it at a maximum within 15 minutes, however, often we can do it within five minutes, or even one minute.

The speed of recovery is very quick compared to other tools.

It's easy to migrate data with Zerto. It's simple. Even non-technical users can see what information is needed in order to enable the replication from one site to another.

Users can still collaborate during the migration process in Azure. It depends on how much data you are including from your data center. The bandwidth connectivity between two data centers is very high.

The RTO is pretty good. We typically give our customers a heads up it will be eight hours, however, it's often less.

It's helped us reduce downtime. For example, when I was using another solution, we wanted to restore a VM. It took more than eight hours to restore ten virtual machines. In contrast, Zerto only takes 45 minutes.

We had a corruption at one point on 20 to 25 VMs, that were critical from the customer's point of view. They had already spent so much time trying to troubleshoot. We decided to use Zerto to restore the machines and give them the latest backup. We were able to give them everything in less than one minute.

For the customer to recover using a different solution, it would take much longer. Zerto takes far less time. For example, compared to VMware SRM, it takes almost double the time compared to Zerto.

We've been able to reduce DR testing. When we used to give RPO and RTO time to our customers, two hours for RPO and eight hours for RTO, once we started using Zerto, we reduced RPO to 15 minutes.

It's reduced the staff time involved in a data recovery situation. When we initially set up Zerto, it immediately starts replicating and does incremental replication as well. Therefore, at any given point in time, the latest data is already available on the recovery side. We just have to trigger it and everything will be restored as per our configuration. We likely save three to four hours of work during the disaster recovery period. And, in the disaster recovery phase, every minute is crucial.

It's also reduced staff involvement. It's not complex and very straightforward. Since tasks are reduced, we do not need so much staff.

What needs improvement?

Previously, it was not compatible with the public clouds. However, now that it is, it's helped a lot. One of the most challenging aspects in migrating items from private to public.

We'd like to be able to migrate data without its operating system or any other functionality and without having to go through a virtual machine or server.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution since 2015. I stopped using it around 2022.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is absolutely stable. We have customers that have used it since 2016 without any concerns.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product can scale.

How are customer service and support?

We haven't had to engage with technical support.

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

I'm familiar with VMware SRM.

Not a lot of people in the market are aware of Zerto. They need to market it better.

However, Zerto is pretty simple and straightforward, compared to other options on the market.

Replacing the legacy solution has helped customers remove compatibility issues and reduce costs.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment of the product is straightforward. We have, for example, more than 100 VMware ESX-site servers and there are two agents in terms of virtual machines that get deployed on all of them.

To deploy the solution, it only takes 30 minutes. You only need one or two resources to manage the implementation. The maintenance is minimal. Once it's set up, it's fine.

What was our ROI?

Our customers have witnessed an ROI.

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

The product is cost-competitive and less than other options. I do not have too much data on the exact costs, however. However, we are definitely saving costs when we compare Zerto to VMware.

What other advice do I have?

My understanding is we have a partnership with Zerto. It provided free training to our employees and we have done multiple certifications.

We did not use it for immutable data copies.

We don't use it for blocking unknown threats and attacks. We don't use it for security purposes. We have other security protection services for our customers, including firewalls and antivirus. We use Zerto only for disaster recovery.

I'd advise potential users to pay attention during the initial setup and watch what you are replicating from one side to another. After the setup, you will not have to put a lot of time in - as long as you pay attention during the initial phase.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.


    reviewer1953303

Easy to set up and use, offers reliable performance

  • September 18, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate all of our production solutions. We replicate to cloud storage.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto works really well. It's simple to set up and works well. Moreover, disaster recovery to the cloud for our organization is very important. We actually had to use it three years ago, and it worked out well for us.

It replicates a lot quicker than what we were using previously. We did see a reduction in the time it takes to replicate. We were using SAN replication, and Zerto works in about a quarter of the time.

We use Zerto to protect our VM environment.

What is most valuable?

Zerto works reliably and that is simple to set up and manage.

Moreover, Zerto's Near Synchronous Replication is fast. It lets you recover to a very short point in time, so you don't lose anything. It's really important because we don't want to lose any of our data. We want to be able to recover as much as we can. So this feature helps us do that.

Overall recovery time objective (RTO) with Zerto is really good. It's within seconds for us.

What needs improvement?

When we migrated to a new virtual infrastructure, we had to set up Zerto all over again which took a long time.

It would be nice if Zerto had some sort of migration tool where you could migrate all of your virtual machines to a new infrastructure without having to set up Zerto all over again.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Zerto for about four and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It works really well. We rarely have any sort of issue with it. You just set it up and it does its thing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are a smaller environment, but it seems like it would work well for much larger organizations too.

We protect 36 virtual machines right now.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support are really good. They reply quickly and they usually resolve the issue in a very short time frame.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We looked at Veeam, Veritas, and some other storage-level replication solutions. We chose Zerto because it was just simple to set up and had good reviews. It works well and is pretty simple to use.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty simple. We had it set up and replicating in about three hours. It's really quick to set up and works pretty simply.

What was our ROI?

We definitely have seen a return on investment from Zerto. We were able to recover from an incident that would have been a lot more serious without Zerto.

Without Zerto, our organization would have lost several million dollars in financial damages from data loss.

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

The solution is a bit pricey for sure. But the licensing is simple to understand, which is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?


What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.


    reviewer2278527

Easy to use, scalable, and fast migration and recovery

  • September 18, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I used Zerto in my last company for disaster recovery. It was a hospital, and now, I work for a bank where we use it for both disaster recovery and migration. We are doing a major migration.

Currently, we are doing disaster recovery only on-prem, but down the road, we will also go to the cloud. We are planning to go to Azure, but we do not know what we will actually use at that time.

How has it helped my organization?

We can recover a VM at any point. It probably takes five minutes, which is very important for us because if I lose my active node, I will have my production up in a couple of minutes.

We did reduce the migration time. I do not have a number, but it is better than VMware SRM. We are a big VMware shop, and we have now started buying HPE.

In terms of Zerto's effect on our RPO, I do not have the numbers because I am an implementation engineer, but the numbers should be good.

What is most valuable?

The migration and ease of use are valuable. It is easy to set up and easy to flip. We just need to click on Move. It can Re-IP at the same time. This is something very useful for us. Disaster recovery is also valuable.

What needs improvement?

Its user interface is good. I have no complaints. The only complaint is that if I remove a host from a cluster, it does not like that. If I move and put the host in maintenance mode to fix it, and vRA is down, Zerto does not like it. Zerto should figure out that this host has an issue and it went down. Zerto should then let me upload that vRA information to another vRA.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, we have not seen any issue. We will know more down the road as we use it more and more, but right now, we are okay.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. That is why we did not go for Veeam. We went for Zerto.

Our environment is very big. I work for a large bank.

How are customer service and support?

I have not yet called their support. I did not have to call them.

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

We switched from VMware SRM to Zerto. VMware SRM is good, but if I do not do error-level replication and I do only vSphere replication, it is not good. The vSphere replication is not as good as the Zerto replication. Zerto is faster. It takes less time.

How was the initial setup?

I did not do the implementation, but my team deployed it. Because I have used it before, my guess is that it is not complicated to deploy.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI. If I do a vSphere replication from vCenter to vCenter, and of course, we can do long-distance vCenter migration these days, it would not be as good as Zerto replication.

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

There is a lot of confusion with Zerto licensing. They have a migration license and a replication license. They should simplify the licensing process.

The migration license costs a lot of money, and it is only on a one-time basis. If you use that license, it ties to that VM. I might re-migrate that VM in the next five to ten years. It is another environment, but my license is stuck there.

The replication license is fine, and I have no issue with its pricing model, but they should simplify the migration license. It should not be tied to a VM. They can reduce the price because a lot of people do not buy it because of the price. A long time ago, Double-Take Software used to do what Zerto is doing now. It is another replication software.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not in that group, but they did test Veeam. I also used Veeam in my last job. I am not sure if I am qualified to compare, but Veeam seems to be for a small to medium company, whereas Zerto is an enterprise software.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten because we do not yet know everything.