Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Zerto comparison

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Zerto and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager are two data protection solutions with distinct features and user reviews highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. While users appreciate the pricing and support of Zerto, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is often seen as superior due to its extensive features, making it a worthwhile investment.

Features: Zerto offers robust disaster recovery and backup capabilities, praised for its replication speed and ease of use. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager excels in its comprehensive data protection suite, including deduplication and cloud support. Users find Dell’s feature set more thorough, although Zerto stands out for simplicity and performance.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest Zerto could improve its reporting and user interface. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is criticized for its complexity and occasional performance issues. Despite this, Dell's users believe enhancements in usability could make it an even stronger contender.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zerto is noted for its straightforward and quick deployment process, supported by responsive customer service. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager’s deployment is more complex and requires more time, though its customer service is also highly rated. Zerto edges out in deployment simplicity and support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Zerto is viewed as cost-effective with high ROI due to lower setup costs and efficient operations. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager requires a higher initial investment but promises substantial long-term ROI, justifying the expense through comprehensive features. Despite higher costs, Dell remains a powerful solution for extensive data protection needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs. Zerto Report (Updated: December 2024).

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs. Zerto

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Deduplication Software (7th)

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 December 2024, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is 4.6%, up from 3.7% 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

Pallava Sharma

Cloud Infrastructure Delivery Lead at Johnson Controls, Inc.

A tool that offers good capacity management and product management

I am satisfied with the product. The tool streamlines our company's data backup and recovery processes since the solution fits into our landscape and portfolio, especially with what we have in our infrastructure, and it actually helps us comply with data regulations. The tool protects critical data by dealing with areas like unauthorized access. I don't have hands-on experience with the product to be able to comment on how its UI enhances our company's data management tasks. The tool is majorly used in our company's operations team. I only work on certain projects and help the teams to deploy the product. The tool has the ability to handle growing data volume since my company has not faced any scalability issues since we were able to manage areas like sizing and future capacity expansion. To date, my company has not found any scalability issues with the product. It is a good product that fits in the latest infrastructures very well. If you have legacy products in your environment or data centers, then it is better to consider some other product other than Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. I rate the overall tool a seven or eight out of ten.

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Derrick Brockel

Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Good GUI, easy setup, and fast recovery

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.

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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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integrated approach."

"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helps to reduce the amount of data being transferred and stored."

"I would say flexibility is the most important feature of the product. The performance and speed are the best on the market."

"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and data protection."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is user-friendly and easy to use. it does what it needs to do."

"The deduplication is the most valuable feature because it helps to control the overhead."

More Dell PowerProtect Data Manager pros

"When we replicated our data, I turned up the machine, and it was up in seconds. It blew my mind. I could not believe it."

"The solution's continuous protection is the best on the market. The ability to do the split-write, without any interruption to the production server, and the ability to roll back to any point in time you desire, are two really key features."

"The most important feature is that the recovery point (RPO) is less than one minute. The is really good for our customers, as they can keep their data loss to a minimum."

"The time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great."

"The most valuable feature of Zerto is its overall flexibility, where it can be used for standard DR or you can also use it for server migrations, data center consolidations, etc."

"I prefer Zerto because it's a little more automated. VMware has more requirements... It's a little more click-and-go versus click-and-monitor..."

"The most valuable tool is the dashboard, which allows us to immediately check the DLP status, replication data, and all other data needed to have cleaner and immediate control of the situation."

"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."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"As a new product, there are some things that still need to improve a bit as it matures."

"They should include a feature similar to S3 bucket."

"There is always room for improvement. The compression ratio should be improved as well as the efficiency."

"A lot of improvement is required in Dell's first level of support."

"The Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager reports could improve. There should be different kinds of reports on failures, such as dashboards that we can submit to top management or auditors."

"The solution should enhance its user interface and make it more flexible."

"PPDM requires further development. It is primarily integrated with DevOps systems."

"The tool's scalability has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."

More Dell PowerProtect Data Manager cons

"Zerto's setup process could be simpler."

"Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."

"The performance was generally good, but occasional lag disrupted the flow, leaving room for improvement."

"Increased granularity in how long to keep the journal would be nice."

"It would be great if Zerto could automate replication more."

"It took some time to get to know the solution in general, and exactly what functions each of the features is used for."

"I would like to see improvement on the Zerto Virtual Replication appliances, so that they are a little bit more streamlined as opposed to now where they just span multiple ZVR appliances like there were gremlins... as this thing grows it just spawns unlimited numbers of additional ZVR appliances and you end up with a bunch so that you can't really tell which is which."

"It works only for a virtual platform, it does not support bare metal."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not less expensive than competitors but pricing deals are available."

"We offer monthly or yearly subscriptions. The price could be cheaper."

"The solution is more affordable than other vendors."

"The licensing costs and pricing model are based on capacity and the license is easy to upgrade."

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not an expensive solution."

"The price of Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is reasonable."

"The product is offered at a very competitive price in the market."

"I wouldn't say I like the licensing pricing structure. Every year, it increases exponentially, which bothers me a little. It's worth it in terms of the value, but I worry the price will increase even more often after the Zerto merger. I still think it's worth it and that the solution is cheaper than the others."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"They should adjust the pricing because I feel its price is too much. If they reduce the price, there will be more users and customers."

"Zerto is reasonably price for the product that you're getting. We keep on buying more licenses, so it's a good price."

"In general, it's pretty fair because it is software. In our case, we built our own colo. So, the cost of the colo was very expensive, and that's where a lot of the equipment is. The same thing is there if we were going to spin up in the cloud, but as a solution, in general, it's pretty fair for what you get out of it and how it works. It's not cheap, but at the same time, you get what you pay for, and it's definitely worth the cost. You just have to understand that the cost of the software alone is not the total cost of the project of doing ransomware protection or disaster recovery. It's a piece of the pie, not the entire pie."

"It's a little bit expensive."

"It's very equitable, otherwise you wouldn't do it. It's something that we utilize for the licenses per core as far as what we're backing up. Therefore, it's very cost-efficient as far as the licensing goes. For the amount of stuff that we're backing up and what we're utilizing it for, the licensing is not very expensive at all."

"It was a little bit expensive. It took a long time for us to get DR for our workstations. It's one thing when you have 15 servers, but when we needed to bring on almost another 200 users, and each was the same price as the servers, it was too expensive. But Zerto worked with us and gave us a solution that was pretty decent in terms of price."

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

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

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 do you like most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

One notable feature is its robust backup support for Kubernetes and container environments. Additionally, PPDM stands out for its ease of deployment and management compared to other backup solution...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

The solution's cost depends on the storage. Currently, the pricing for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is more flexible for customers. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not an expensive solution. On...

What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

The tool's scalability has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required. The market and technology-driven factors will let the market know of any requirements of the user...

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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Product Reports

Download Dell PowerProtect Data Manager product report

Backup and Recovery

November 2024

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November 2024

Also Known As

PowerProtect, Dell EMC PowerProtect

Zerto Virtual Replication

Learn More

Dell Technologies

Overview

PowerProtect Data Manager offers efficient data protection capabilities leveraging the latest evolution of Dell trusted protection storage architecture.

With operational simplicity, agility and flexibility at its core, PowerProtect Data Manager enables the protection, management and recovery of data in on-premises, virtualized and cloud deployments, including protection of in-cloud workloads. You can also protect cloud-native workloads across multiple public clouds via our integrated SaaS based PowerProtect Cloud Snapshot Manager.

Modernize how you protect your VMware virtual machines using Transparent Snapshots. Transparent Snapshots simplifies VM image backups for near-zero impact to your VMs or VM resources – and it works with any VMware supported storage. Transparent Snapshots innovation increases backup performance, lowers costs and simplifies management and reduces the risk of data loss.

Streamline data protection directly for applications or Kubernetes containers to Dell PowerProtect appliances and reduce application resource constraints.

Increase business resiliency with PowerProtect Cyber Recovery capabilities to rapidly recover from cyber incidents.

Modular design allows agile delivery of new features and updates. Rapidly evolve to meet future IT demands.

Software defined: Provide flexible data protection and compliance across applications and cloud-native IT environments
Multi-cloud optimized: Extend protection to the cloud with backup to cloud, backup in-cloud, long term retention and cloud disaster recovery
Self-service: Backup and restore directly from native applications
Cloud-Based Monitoring and Analytics: Telemetry, machine learning and predictive analytics to proactively take action and speed time to resolution

Reviews from Real Users

“We keep an eye on the future, and we are confident that PowerProtect Data Manager and PowerProtect DD series appliances will support our transformation project. Both products are continuously evolving and will cover our future needs, including using the cloud for data protection.” – Dimitris Mavromichalis, IT Deputy Manager at National Bank of Greece

“PowerProtect Data Manager combined with PowerProtect appliances – that’s cutting edge. That’s world leading as far as we’re concerned.” – Drew Hills, Infrastructure Analyst at USC Australia

““Most of my wish list came true with the PowerProtect Data Manager plugin for vSphere, which provides perfect integration with vCenter.” – Dave Chapman, Senior Technician at PSC Publishing

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

National Bank of Greece, USC Australia, PCS Publishing, Dell Digital IT, Rushmore Electric, Melanson Health, Arrow Electronics

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