Dell NetWorker vs Zerto comparison

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Dell NetWorker

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Dell NetWorker and Zerto compete in the data protection and disaster recovery category. Dell NetWorker has an upper hand in support and competitive pricing while Zerto is preferred for its advanced features and real-time capabilities.

Features: Dell NetWorker offers comprehensive data backup and recovery functionality, scalability, and integration with various environments. Zerto provides robust disaster recovery capabilities, real-time replication, and ease of migration across different platforms.

Room for Improvement: Dell NetWorker needs enhancements in initial setup complexity, a more intuitive management console, and detailed customer support documentation. Zerto could improve its reporting features, strengthen customer support documentation, and expand its platform integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell NetWorker's deployment is complex but has strong customer service support. Zerto offers easier deployment and efficient migration functionalities but has mixed reviews on customer service quality.

Pricing and ROI: Dell NetWorker is more cost-effective with competitive setup costs and good ROI. Zerto has higher setup costs but is considered worth the investment due to its advanced features and capabilities, providing significant ROI in complex disaster recovery scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto Report (Updated: January 2025).

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Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto

January 2025

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Dell NetWorker

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zerto

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

296

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 3.1%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 2.9%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

ErmiasGirma

System and Cloud Deployment Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Offers seamless integration and cost-saving benefits with enhanced recovery capabilities

Currently, in my organization, I am using Dell NetWorker for open-source solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and some large VM environments. It also supports the Dell library and is used for the library archiving system Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting…

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Sachin Vinay

Assistant Manager-Networks at Amrita

Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features

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.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting various open-source databases like PostgreSQL."

"Technical support for this solution is very good."

"The solution offers compatibility with many types of database systems. It is one of the largest backup solutions. Additionally, it gives important information about data domain systems with deduplication."

"The response time of the tech support is swift. The support is fantastic."

"NetWorker is easy to install on clients and servers, and making backups from server to storage and backup devices is straightforward."

"The support for legacy products is very good."

"The most valuable feature of Dell NetWorker is its quick configuration and handling of large databases."

"Dell NetWorker's valuable feature is its ability to configure the network for immutability, specifically for backups."

More Dell NetWorker pros

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

"The product is superior compared to the other vendors."

"The mobile application is very useful as a real-time monitoring, reporting tool. When asked the status of our machine backup and recovery ability, an easy answer is to display the status on the real-time application or browser. The Zerto Analytics tool helps predict future storage needs by tracking trends in space, journal size, and I/O rate. These are reportable statistics making quantifiable tracking easy and accurate. Having a web interface simplifies access by other system administrators."

"The most valuable feature is how quickly it powers down the original source VMs and the speed at which it powers up the new VMs. The amount of time it takes to put up the operating system is valuable. The speed is what I like the best."

"Zerto is truly inspiring."

"We selected Zerto because the RPO is extremely low, so you can get that server back up almost immediately. That was a huge thing. Also, the ability to do failover tests, where you can test your environment, but not have it impact your production environment, was huge."

"There are two main things that I like. One is the fact that my recovery time is now much lower effectively. It is also very valuable that I can test it. There is a possibility to test that failover."

"The continuation to the public cloud has been especially helpful where I can pretty much work with things like hosts and clusters as part of the data center."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"Its console UI should be better. It should also have more out-of-the-box reporting functionalities. It should also have easier cloud integration. They have got cloud boost and things like that, but if you want to directly back up to the cloud, I'm not too sure whether you can do it. For example, you can easily send data from Commvault to AWS, Azure, or a container, but it seems to be not so easy in NetWorker."

"They need more support for image backups."

"We are able to do direct backups, but analyzing the logs is not straightforward."

"It's not easy to integrate. We have to read a lot of documentation in order to configure the solution."

"The team does not have enough knowledge to support you."

"Support is definitely an area of concern because of the time it takes to resolve our issues."

"I am not very satisfied with the support. The interface on the Java application makes it difficult, whereas the web interface is simple to use."

"The initial setup is complex."

More Dell NetWorker cons

"It is crucial for Zerto to collaborate closely with VMware in order to promptly test updates."

"In terms of improvement, it would be helpful if the implementation team had a better best practices guide and made sure things like the journaling are very clearly understood."

"There should be an automatic installation in a cluster. When I add a virtual client or ESX source to the cluster, it should automatically install that. There should be automatic installation. Currently, I have to do that manually."

"I had a couple of questions after deployment, but nothing major, about a couple of ways I could tweak it."

"The ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially."

"There are a lot of features that it has that we don't use since we are on prem."

"In future releases, doing backups of the environment we need to be able to do hot backups of the database."

"It would also be nice if they could find a way to make it where one VM does not impact the entire journal history of the VPG."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Earlier, users had to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the product. The licenses were expensive but users used to get the best device to use."

"The solution follows a subscription model for licensing. We pay annually to use the solution and the price is high."

"It is excellent from the pricing point of view. It is free with Data Protection Suite. Similarly, when you purchase Avamar, Dell EMC NetWorker is free with one terabyte license capacity. Its price is very competitive."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Pricing is cheaper for this product, compared to its competitors."

"The price of the license could be cheaper and it would be a benefit if they came up with a new pricing model. The competitors here in Oman sell universal licensing where a number of virtual machines are hosted at the customer place which can be licensed, or you can license the CPU sockets in those servers. However, NetWorker offers only CPU sockets or overall storage capacity to backup, but there is no universal licensing where you can provide a number of VMs. They should offer more options to stay competitive with other solutions, such as Veeam."

"The pricing of this solution is very good."

"We do need to purchase a license, but sometimes, it comes as a part of the Dell Data Protection Suite (DPS). It has a capacity-based licensing."

More Dell NetWorker pricing and cost advice

"There is a one-time cost for maintenance and support. We have a three-year contract that we will have to renew when those three years come up. There is also licensing on top of that for whatever product you are using it for."

"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"I do not have anything to compare it to. It is expensive, but I am not going to squabble about the price when I bring the system up in a disaster. It is what it is."

"From a customer perspective, the price is okay. From an investor's perspective, however, it is a little bit high."

"Zerto is like a Ferrari. It's very fast but not the cheapest solution. You're paying a high price for quality and the assurance that you will have the environment up and steady."

"Zerto is slightly expensive, but we do see the value in it."

"License-wise, we budgeted $1,000 per VM. The minimum spend on it, in the beginning, can sometimes be a little bit of a headache for people, and they might have to budget creatively to get there, but once you're there, the renewals are worth it."

"It works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

it_user159711

Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 9, 2014

VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto

Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?

From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...

What do you like most about Dell NetWorker?

The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell NetWorker?

NetWorker has a high price compared to other solutions. Pricing is a major concern.

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?

Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...

What do you like most about Zerto?

Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?

It is not the cheapest product; it is not the most expensive product, but it works. It is a mid-range product, and it is justified in terms of being pretty quick and easy.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell NetWorker

Comparisons

Compared 29% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 13% of the time

Dell Avamar vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 13% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell NetWorker Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 15% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 9% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

More Zerto Competitors

Product Reports

Download Dell NetWorker product report

Dell NetWorker

February 2025

Download Zerto product report

January 2025

Also Known As

NetWorker

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

Built on a reputation of efficiency and reliability, thousands of customers trust Dell NetWorker to protect their data and applications across multiple environments, from core to edge to cloud.

Inherently flexible, NetWorker helps you deploy and leverage the data protection that fits your needs. NetWorker protects both physical and virtual environments, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as cloud workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

NetWorker is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. NetWorker is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

Zerto is used for disaster recovery, business continuity, data migration, and ransomware recovery, providing continuous data protection and near real-time replication. Valued for ease of use, efficient failover processes, and versatile integration, it enhances organizational efficiency, reduces errors, and boosts productivity.

Sample Customers

Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies