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OpenText Data Protector vs Zerto comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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

OpenText Data Protector
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
102
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
309
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of OpenText Data Protector is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen Vranckaerts - PeerSpot reviewer
Though a highly stable tool, it needs to be made easier to use and configure
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten. OpenText Data Protector is complex to configure correctly, but the areas concerning the data and compression are good. Once you get the product to work, it works, but it's much too complex to configure and troubleshoot, as it takes a lot of time and energy, making it not so efficient. Once the tool is configured in your environment, it provides good backup and compression features. In my company, we use OpenText Data Protector as a backup for our servers, and we have a team of 20 people to take care of the data backup using the tool. My company doesn't use OpenText Data Protector as a backup for our client's computers. In my company, we have scheduled the process related to backup, which makes the tool run daily around 30 to 40 times.
Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's user-friendly and not overly complicated to configure."
"The initial setup was relatively easy."
"It's supports Unix, Linux, all of the OS's. It's very stable software."
"Backup of SAP/Oracle -- they are more robust than the competition."
"It's a good product that's pretty easy to use."
"It is very easy to use and the interaction with various systems is very handy."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"I like that Micro Focus keeps a separate catalog of our data."
"The customer service and support are very good. Every time we have problems, they're ready to help us."
"Zerto is fast to restore our mission-critical servers when needed."
"The portal is a valuable feature. I am here in Baton Rouge, and I can get into the Vegas data center and see real-time replication on the portal."
"The ability to fully test your entire environment without actually performing a failover is invaluable."
"Failover using Zerto is simply a one-button click, and it does everything else in restoring the VMs at a different datacenter (recovery site)."
"The most valuable for us and for my company is that we are replicating most of our production customers to the DR site, and we can do testing whenever we want."
"There are a lot of valuable features. The basics of what it does to replicate and recover things within minutes is awesome. It's far above anything that any of the competition has. We offer other disaster recovery software but primarily use Zerto for recovery times and the number of recovery points because of how fast and easy it is. It's so much better."
"The main purpose of this tool is to allow failover between different data centers and different locations. When one site is unavailable, we can start the failover activity and perform the failover task. When a primary location is unavailable, or there is some hardware or logical issue at the primary location, it allows us to resolve the problem. We are able to start services at safe locations. We handle the disaster recovery process, and this is the main function for which we are using it all the time."
 

Cons

"Faster VEAgent Restores"
"The product can be developed by including functionalities like DR, CDP, and SureBackup, which are currently unavailable in the solution."
"We face challenges with its stability."
"Integration with the market applications must be improved, such as MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, SAP and Oracle. Other backup tools are more efficient with the integrated backups."
"In terms of what can be improved, I would say integrations with MongoDB. We use MongoDB and we need to go to scripts to do backups. We need more integrations."
"We're not satisfied with the robustness and stability of the software since Micro Focus took it in-house. The GUI is one thing they could improve. It's still a bit archaic. Data Protector needs a more functional, user-friendly GUI."
"We faced some certification issues after we upgraded to version 10.2."
"Micro Focus Data Protector must improve its overall evolution record. They need to focus on hardware based instant recovery, client recovery, and cloud ability. Now there is no cloud ability."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The reporting could be improved in terms of the reports that you can show to auditors to prove that you have done the testing. I provide the reports that it generates now but, it would be great if, at the end of a DR test, it would generate a report of everything that Zerto did."
"We had a situation where we had to relicense VMs once they were moved over. We later found out that that feature is built-in, but it's not easy to find. The way it's done is that you have to go to the target site to turn it on. If that were explained a little bit better up front, that would be helpful."
"It is a little expensive."
"It has a file restore feature, which we have tried to use. We have had some issues with that, because the drives are compressed in our main file system. It is a Windows-based file server. So, it compresses the shares and can't restore those by default."
"Zerto can improve by offering bare metal recovery for our physical infrastructure."
"Zerto could improve its pricing and customer care. I've never used customer care, but I talked to someone who had, and they weren't given the information they needed."
"Zerto is solid. However, they are working on a cloud workload protection and protecting virtual workloads to more than one site."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing structure provides cost savings to business."
"Our licensing is on a capacity basis."
"The pricing is acceptable for enterprise level companies, but it's not acceptable for small- and medium-sized businesses. Micro Focus Data Protector is not an enterprise level solution, and it should cover small- and medium-sized businesses with acceptable prices."
"The license for the solution is very expensive compared to the other products in the market."
"The licensing cost is too high."
"Pricing for Micro Focus Data Protector is reasonable."
"They have two types of licensing, one is for storage capacity and the other is client licensing. The capacity licensing here is a bit expensive."
"It is more affordable compared to other vendors."
"The pricing is slightly above average, but the immediate and comprehensive support makes the price acceptable."
"Zerto is a little expensive."
"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."
"When we purchased Zerto, we felt it was worth the cost as it would protect us from any potential problems and give us peace of mind knowing that any critical items could be recovered quickly."
"When they changed their licensing model, pricing might have gotten a little more expensive for some use cases, but it has been pretty straightforward."
"The licensing costs are not cheap. It is kind of an expensive product. However, I am a get-what-you-pay-for kind of person. After using this product, I can understand why the licensing costs are high."
"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."
"We're getting our money's worth with Zerto."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Data Protector?
I haven't experienced any crashes while using the solution...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Data Protector?
The solution is expensive as it requires purchasing all features without the option to negotiate based on client numbers, unlike Veeam which offers flexibility in pricing.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Data Protector?
OpenText Data Protector is not user-friendly, especially for cloud backup. It lacks functions and facilities compared to Veeam, which offers more user-friendliness for virtual machine backups. Ther...
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?
The setup is somewhat expensive. I'd rate the pricing seven out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Data Protector, Data Protector, OmniBack, HPE Data Protector
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GSK Vaccines, Repsol, Vodafone Group, Siemens AG, Medium Enterprise Transportation Services Company
United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Data Protector vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.