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 831,158 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

13th

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

279

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 3.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 2.8%, 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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Shri Sharan

Solutions architect at Kyndryl

Is user-friendly, saves us time, and costs

We encountered some issues during Active Directory recovery. When we implemented Active Directory, we provided feedback to Zerto regarding the challenges of recovering AD from the on-premises environment to the disaster recovery site. Unlike other virtual machines, AD recovery presents unique difficulties due to its active-active nature. It's unclear whether these challenges stem from Zerto itself or limitations within Microsoft Active Directory. However, in our experience using Zerto for AD recovery compared to other technologies, we faced data discrepancies that necessitated workarounds to bring AD online at the DR site. Certain applications we migrated from production relied on Active Directory authentication. To ensure successful application functionality at the DR site, a functional AD environment was a prerequisite to application migration. Therefore, our initial step involved copying and guaranteeing a running AD instance on the DR side before application recovery. However, upon attempting application authentication on the DR side, data inconsistencies prevented successful authentication. To address this, we created an isolated clone of the AD environment and conducted tests. Through trial and error, we were able to develop workarounds to resolve the issue. Notably, these challenges were specific to Active Directory; other VMs didn't exhibit similar problems.

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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

"It has the ability to support all kinds of backups. It can be used to back up databases, operating systems, virtual machines, Lotus Notes, and Exchange. It can also do remote image backups for remote sites. It integrates and works with Data Domain. It is an enterprise-class product that can be used for anything and everything across multiple sites and locations. It is also very scalable."

"The software is quite complicated and useful for large corporations using different information systems."

"The initial setup is very easy. It's incredibly fast."

"It is the best umbrella, serving the best applications."

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

"There are no problems in terms of stability."

"The backup capabilities and the automatization of the backup - along with the potential to make the back up on a virtual machine - are the solution's most valuable aspects."

"Good scalability and virtual environment protection."

More Dell NetWorker pros

"When we use our VMware environment, sometimes the HP hardware is not compatible, and we start to lose data. I like that we can restore our whole application and public-facing system through Zerto."

"The testing features are the most valuable features of this solution. We use the failover test feature not just for testing failovers and disaster recovery, we've also had clients use it for development purposes as well as patching purposes to test patches. We can failover the VM and then we can make any changes we want without affecting production. It's a nice sandbox for that usage."

"I found VM level replication and being able to group the VM levels to be valuable. I like not having to worry about whether a particular VM is in the right storage group; some of those sorts of things would trip us up previously."

"Zerto is easy to use and the interface is very intuitive."

"From a management perspective, one of the biggest benefits is to see the excitement of your engineers having a tool that truly enables them, really making their lives easier. That is something that I love. When we came out of the PoC, their eyes were just wide with excitement of what was possible now."

"Stable disaster recovery solution with a very simple setup and fast failover."

"Its automation and the ability to replicate and keep an RTO of just seconds is valuable. It is all automatic. Everything is pretty transparent on the backend. It is just point-and-go."

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

More Zerto pros

Cons

"The security features need backup and encryption. It would be nice if they added this feature. I would also like to be able to decrypt when restoring the security features. Hackers can sense these vulnerabilities today, and we need to have our enterprise prepared."

"In some cases, solutions are not found in one method of call and it escalates to many levels until an experienced person can join to resolve the issue."

"The graphical user interface (GUI) of NetWorker needs improvement."

"I would like to see the user interface improved, more documentation, faster support, and it could be easier to configure."

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

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

"It could be more user-friendly."

"I would like to see encryption included in the next release to encrypt the data that we are backing up."

More Dell NetWorker cons

"When building out a VPG and doing the machine types within Azure, they were not coming across correctly. It would say it had a CPU and memory of a specific type, but it was not accurate... It was a bug and they were working on it."

"Zerto needs to improve its documentation."

"Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms."

"If the log was more detailed and more user-friendly, we wouldn't have to make the calls to the support to try and figure out where the problem lies."

"It is difficult to manage failing over between sites if you are at the site that was impacted."

"The only issue that I observed was that depending on the number of virtual machines that are being replicated, you will have to provision the appropriate bandwidth for the link that the replicated systems will traverse."

"Right now, if you have an error, it creates a link that takes you to a website to review information about the problem. It would be nice if Zerto could give you information within the app instead of referring you to a web application."

"I want to have an OVF or some local deployment where I can deploy the ZVRA rather than having to push it from the console. Some of our smaller remote sites have relatively poor bandwidth, and they can't keep up with the constant deployment stream from our center console, meaning we have to find some creative hours to get around the bandwidth bottlenecks. If I could push out a small install file, install it locally, and then reach back to the console, that would be excellent."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a relatively inexpensive product compared to one of its competitors."

"The pricing for the telecom, government, and banking sectors is relatively affordable."

"Dell NetWorker is an expensive solution. None of the backup products are cheap. The licensing model offered is usually a five-year one."

"You have to buy the deduplication software separately from the license."

"The licensing model can be traditional licensing or capacity-based licensing."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Dell NetWorker pricing and cost advice

"Zerto does a per-workload licensing model, per-server. It is simple and straightforward, but it is not super flexible. It is kind of a one size fits all. They charge the same price for those workloads. I feel like they could have some flexible licensing option possibly based on criticality, just so we could protect less important work. I would love to protect every workload in my environment with Zerto, whether I really need it or not, but the cost is such that I really have to justify that protection. So, if we had some more flexibility, e.g., you could protect servers with a two-, three-, or four-hour RPO at a certain price point versus mission-critical every five minutes, then I would be interested in that."

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

"Zerto is a little expensive."

"To ensure proper data protection, we require a separate backup solution alongside Zerto for disaster recovery therefore the price for Zerto is high."

"It is not a bad pricing model."

"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"It is less expensive than the full solution that we had previously, but at the same time, it's not an inexpensive product either."

"I would suggest getting a dedicated, well-informed rep."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

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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

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?

I would rate the pricing, setup cost, and licensing around a seven on a scale of one to ten. The pricing model could be more flexible to accommodate startup companies with lower budgets.

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Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 9% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Dell NetWorker product report

Dell NetWorker

January 2025

Download Zerto product report

December 2024

Also Known As

NetWorker

Zerto Virtual Replication

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Dell Technologies

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.

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