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reviewer1953303 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of IT Technical Operations at a non-profit with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Is easy to use, has a faster recovery speed, and saves time
Pros and Cons
  • "Zerto saved us a lot of money compared to the cost of replicating at the LUN level. It also really simplified it and gave us shorter RTOs and RPOs."
  • "I would like to be able to replicate one to multiple without having to recreate every VPG. That would save us a lot of time. When we add a site or move our DR to a different site, I have to recreate everything from scratch. So, it'd be cool to be able to just repoint an existing VPG to a new site without having to recreate everything."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate to a cloud center.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto saved us a lot of money compared to the cost of replicating at the LUN level. It also really simplified it and gave us shorter RTOs and RPOs.

What is most valuable?

We got hit with ransomware about three years ago, so we had to do a full recovery with Zerto. The recovery is the best feature.

When you compare the ease of use of Zerto versus that of SAN, Zerto is a lot easier because you can do it at the actual virtual machine level versus doing the whole LUN. In the latter case, in the event of a recovery, you would have to recover the whole LUN and see what's in there. It is a lot easier to do any operation with Zerto.

We were hit with ransomware about three years ago, and the amount of time that it took us to recover from that with Zerto was weeks less than it would've taken us with our previous DR solution.

When you compare the speed of recovery with Zerto versus the speed of recovery with other disaster recovery solutions, Zerto is a lot easier and faster because you can choose what to recover and when. In the event of a disaster, for instance, you can recover your most important stuff first.

Zerto certainly reduced the staff involved in a data recovery situation. It's so easy to use that one person can do it all in those events. You won't need a guy from the VMware team and another from the storage team. It's all done at the DM level, so, it's easier to recover without having to involve other teams. With our previous solution, we would have needed three to recover, and I was able to do it all myself with Zerto.

It absolutely helped to reduce our organization's DR testing because it's so fast and easy to test without disrupting anything. We can choose what to test, more critical versus noncritical, and how frequently we want to test. About 75% of that saved time is allocated to value-added tasks.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to replicate one to multiple without having to recreate every VPG. That would save us a lot of time. When we add a site or move our DR to a different site, I have to recreate everything from scratch. So, it'd be cool to be able to just repoint an existing VPG to a new site without having to recreate everything.

Buyer's Guide
Zerto
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Zerto. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,145 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using Zerto in mid-2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with stability. It's always up and running. Whenever there's an issue at the DM level that affects it, it'll give an alert.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It seems like Zerto would be good for a big environment. Ours is small and doesn't really grow a lot; the size stays static. However, having worked with it for a few years I wouldn't be worried to use it in a bigger environment.

How are customer service and support?

Zerto's technical support is good. Whenever we have issues, which is rare, they are fast to respond. When we had our major issue, I had a lot of calls with them, and we had to work around the clock. They did a good job of passing us through every time zone and keeping us engaged with someone. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We used the snapshot and replication of our SAN that we used to have. It wasn't necessarily a true DR replication tool, but it would do a snapshot and then put a copy of that snapshot somewhere else. That was our DR plan before switching to Zerto.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was really easy and fast. We had it installed in less than an hour, maybe even half an hour. After that, we created our groups. The time for that would depend on how many DMs you have, but it's easy and intuitive.

What about the implementation team?

We had someone from Zerto walk us through the installation and setup. They explained every step as we went through it, and it was excellent.

What was our ROI?

We certainly have seen an ROI. When we got hit, we saved a lot of money because we were able to recover RBMs. Without Zerto, we would have been in serious trouble. So, it definitely returned the investment many times over.

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

The pricing is pretty competitive to that of other options out there. When we shopped around, it was in line with the price of other solutions.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Veeam and Avamar. At that point, Zerto was the only one that did CDP, and that was the reason we went with Zerto.

What other advice do I have?

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate Zerto a ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1951002 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sysadmin with 11-50 employees
Real User
Has good documentation, is easy to use, and is stable
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability is great; there's very little downtime. I don't have to worry that there will be a surprise update to one of the ZVRAs or the host that I have to contend with. We're given plenty of notice to plan ahead for an update. As far as losing service and downtime, we haven't had that happen."
  • "For special situations, there are options within advanced settings. You don't have to dig too far for them, but they're not quite as straightforward."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for offsite replication.

What is most valuable?

I like how easy it is to run our DR tests with it.

In terms of ease of use, in the user interface it's very easy to tell the different virtual protection groups apart. It's easy to figure out where your virtual machines are and set different recovery IPs. It is a lot easier with Zerto than it was previously.

When you compare Zerto's ease of use versus that of the previous solution we used, Zerto has good documentation. That's probably what made it the easiest to install and configure, and have peace of mind that it's going to do what I expect it to do.

Every six months when I go through my audit, I don't have any stress about whether I'm going to pass any of my audit logs or any of the questions the auditors ask me. That is, I know I'm going to pass.

Zerto helped us reduce downtime.

Our disaster recovery test used to take quite a long time before we started to use Zerto. After we started using Zerto, the speed of the virtual machines' backup when they are going into test mode, is just so much quicker and so much more consistent. When we previously performed tests, we would need a block of about a week. Now, it's two days. The actual recovery portion is just a small part of that, but Zerto cut it in half easily.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Zerto since 2019.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is great; there's very little downtime. I don't have to worry that there will be a surprise update to one of the ZVRAs or the host that I have to contend with. We're given plenty of notice to plan ahead for an update. As far as losing service and downtime, we haven't had that happen.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're a very small shop, but when we did expand to another group of servers that we were going to replicate, it was very easy to go in and just add another virtual protection group, add my virtual machines to it, and set my settings up and go.

We have less than a hundred virtual machines that we replicate.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support staff I've had to interact with have certainly been some of the better ones. I feel that their turnaround time is always pretty fast and that you get reasonable support right off the bat. If my problem is a little more technical, then I may be transferred, but I don't find that to be an issue. I would rate technical support at nine on a scale from one to ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward for the site-to-site recovery or for setting up the VPGs. If you just want to do basic replication and you don't have a lot of special situations to account for, you could have it up and running very quickly.

For special situations, there are options within advanced settings. You don't have to dig too far for them, but they're not quite as straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves after reading through Zerto's best practices, etc.

What other advice do I have?

If you want something that you can set and forget, Zerto is a solution you should look into. If I were to rate Zerto on a scale from one to ten, I'd give it a nine.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Zerto
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Zerto. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,145 professionals have used our research since 2012.
VMware Engineer at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Real User
Is user friendly, has great recovery speed, and has good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "I found the very easy VPG setup, the easy recovery, and failover testing to be the most valuable features."
  • "Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is to migrate VMs. It's easier to use than HCX and SRM.

How has it helped my organization?

Zerto made our migration from different data centers very easy and very smooth. Zerto support and our account manager have always been there to help us out.

What is most valuable?

I found the very easy VPG setup, the easy recovery, and failover testing to be the most valuable features.

It's very user-friendly. You only need a couple of clicks, and it gets the job done. We also have SRM, but Zerto just requires a couple of clicks. You can test with Zerto, and you don't have to commit. So in terms of ease of use, Zerto is better. That's why we use it for migration.

In terms of reducing downtime, we don't actually have any because of seeding and mirroring. However, on the failover, it only takes two seconds of a blip.

Zerto's speed of recovery compared to that of others is great. It's incomparable, and the ease of use is always there.

What needs improvement?

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

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Zerto for three to four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. They have bug fixes. If there's a problem, you can report it, and they immediately provide a solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Zerto's scalability is amazing. If they could do backups in the future, it would be better.

We're in a healthcare environment, so we have probably 30,000 VMs. We only have a couple of licenses, but that's probably going to grow in the near future. We're going to be using it in the cloud as well.

How are customer service and support?

I would give technical support a nine out of ten. I'm taking away a point because, at times, they send emails for me to read when I need something done immediately.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used SRM. We use Zerto because it is just easy to use. You don't need to set up a lot of stuff. You only need to set up one appliance on each site, and you're good to go.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment is very straightforward. You just install the appliance, make sure that all the ports are working fine, test the connection, and you're done. If you have any problems, technical support is always there to help.

What about the implementation team?

We had help from CDI for the initial deployment, and they were not bad. It was easy enough, but we had to use our credits. If it were not for the credits, we could have done it ourselves.

After the initial deployment, my team has been doing all the upgrades and any other setups.

What was our ROI?

We're down to a couple of data centers now, and our data center cost is going down. That is the ROI we have seen with Zerto.

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

The pricing is fair.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated SRM.

What other advice do I have?

You don't have to evaluate Zerto; it just works. I would give it a ten out of ten;
I have no complaints.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1951131 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Made our migration from Hyper-V to VMware, across multiple departments, much less painful
Pros and Cons
  • "There are several valuable features because of the way we use it. The backup and restore features are definitely indispensable."
  • "There are certain things about the user interface that could be a little bit more user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases were designed around backing up and being able to restore our management plan. This isn't something used for our department users. It is specifically for our infrastructure, things like vCenter, vRealize Operations—all those things that we still have to maintain. We wanted something a little more granular than just a standard backup. We needed to be able to say, "Rollback half an hour or an hour," as opposed to following the backup schedule that the larger backup system provided.

How has it helped my organization?

We're using it for migration. Zerto plays a large role in helping us move away from Hyper-V into VMware. We're talking about multiple departments that had to transition their applications and Zerto gave us an opportunity to do it in a much less painful way.

Another key benefit is that our response time has significantly decreased. We're no longer having to rely on the traditional process where you manually execute a backup and hope to God it works okay. And then, you have to run through whatever changes are necessary and cross your fingers that, if you have to restore, it will come back. We don't have that problem with Zerto.

The solution has also helped to reduce downtime for us, absolutely. In most cases, we are able to use Zerto as a momentary backup, run an upgrade or installation, and see whether or not we're going to succeed. We can potentially back it out without anybody knowing about it because it's still within our maintenance window. We never exceed that rather limited time period. That's very helpful. With our existing backup, more likely than not we're rolling into days at a time if something fails. So if our maintenance window was on the weekend, it would roll into the production week and cut into the week by a few days. That would be very problematic.

And the recovery speed is basically as fast as the speed of our pipe, and that's what makes it great. As long as our pipes are fast, we don't have to worry. We can roll in, roll out, or potentially roll back if we have to, within a really small window of time.

In addition, it has definitely reduced the number of operational groups involved in backups. Zerto is not managed by our storage team. It is managed by the team I'm on, which is infrastructure. Because of that, it's all internal to us on the infrastructure team. We don't have to go outside of our team to coordinate with others.

What is most valuable?

There are several valuable features because of the way we use it. The backup and restore features are definitely indispensable.

What needs improvement?

There are certain things about the user interface that could be a little bit more user-friendly. But it really depends on the audience. If we are using it as a technical tool, our team is the audience and we are able to utilize it. But if we were to pass this on to, let's say, the department users, that would become a little problematic. I'm wondering whether or not we can actually expand our offering to those department users. That may be a question.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

As long as our infrastructure is stable, it's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

All I have to do is add managers out there and it expands. What it boils down to is that my infrastructure has to be able to support it. I have to have space where I can send the backups to. As long as that exists, we're fine.

How are customer service and support?

The customer support is pretty good. The bottom line is that the customer service is responsive, whether we're talking about technical challenges or even licensing challenges. They've been very helpful in both ways.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We played a little bit with Veeam, but for the most part, we relied on our storage team to provide us with backups. We switched to Zerto because that team wasn't able to deliver in a timely fashion and they weren't able to guarantee restorability.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. We have an individual who is our infrastructure expert. He took it upon himself to try it out. He told us what he found out when he did that trial and we started playing with it a little bit more and saw how easy it was to use.

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

I don't want to create upward pressure on their pricing plan, but the pricing is good. It's affordable.

The amount we had to set aside for our existing backup solution, compared to Zerto, was astronomical. The way Zerto works, it is so easy to scale up and out. It's not going to end up creating undue pushback as far as the cost goes.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other solutions, with Veeam being one of them.

There's a lot about Veeam that we only just touched the tip of. I can't say with a lot of certainty what specific features Veeam may have. But there's a reason that we only touched the tip of Veeam and jumped over to Zerto.

One of the things that brought us to Zerto was talking to some of the folks that were here, at VMware Explore, years back, about what Zerto did, how it did it, and where it got its origins. That told us it was something that was definitely pretty solid and worth trying. I have to admit that, after trying it, it hasn't disappointed.

Leaving Veeam aside and comparing Zerto with our existing backup functionality, forget it. The two solutions are night and day. There is no comparison whatsoever. There is a lot of overhead with our existing backup feature that we just don't have with Zerto. We definitely have an easier time managing and controlling it. Zerto is definitely easier to use than our existing backup function.

What other advice do I have?

One of the things that I'm finding with Zerto is that we're discovering new uses every day. As we continue to explore what Zerto can do, we haven't even gotten to the point where we say, "We wish it could do X." I'm not quite sure how Zerto interacts with cloud as a target, right now. That's something I need to learn. That's not necessarily a fault of Zerto, it's just me not knowing it yet.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1561263 - PeerSpot reviewer
Resiliency Specialist at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Easy to use, integrates well with vCenter, and it provides a short RPO in case of data center outage
Pros and Cons
  • "When we need to failover or move workloads, Zerto significantly decreases both the time it takes and the number of people involved. It only takes a single person to activate a failover and we can pretty much automate everything else."
  • "Zerto should add the capability to replicate the same VM to multiple sites."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto to replicate data between our on-premises data centers, as well as for replicating data to the cloud. It is used primarily for disaster recovery, and we're not using it very much for backups.

How has it helped my organization?

Continuous data replication is the most important feature to us, and we use it for disaster recovery. We have very short RPOs in the event of a data center outage.

With respect to ease of use, I would rate Zerto an eight out of ten. It is very easy to set up and utilize. The only reason I wouldn't give it a ten is that I would like to see more export capability. Right now, you can export your VPG to a spreadsheet, but you don't have a lot of control over what data goes there. You just get everything and the formatting isn't the best.

When we need to failover or move workloads, Zerto significantly decreases both the time it takes and the number of people involved. It only takes a single person to activate a failover and we can pretty much automate everything else. Instead of a week to recover a major application, we can do it in a day.

Mostly, this solution protects us from data center outages. With ransomware, it gets a little more complicated because depending on what they're doing, you could be replicating the encryption that they placed on you. Then, depending on how large your journal is, how far back you can go and how long the malware has been sitting in your network, it might not save you from a ransomware attack.

That said, it's still a major plus because if you have enough tools in your environment where you can catch the fact that they've been there, then if you've got 14 days, just as an example, in your journal, then you can go back far enough before they place any kind of encryption on your file. But, if you don't have other tools to also help protect you from ransomware, Zerto by itself may not be sufficient.

It's very rare that you have a true disaster where you have to failover a data center. I see Zerto more often being utilized to deal with some sort of database corruption. You can restore your primary site back from before the corruption. We need this Zerto protection, but it happens so rarely that you would actually have a full data center failure that, I can't say that we have had any staff reductions because of it. We have no staff specifically set aside for data recovery.

Beyond your normal path for backup and recovery, and those daily backups and managing that stuff, whether you're using Zerto for your backups or another backup utility in addition to Zerto, it hasn't really changed our staff.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the quick RPO for replication, which is our primary use case.

What needs improvement?

Zerto should add the capability to replicate the same VM to multiple sites.

The export capability should be improved so that it is more customizable in terms of what fields are exported and what the formatting is.

I would like to see the ability for Zerto to handle physical servers, although that is becoming less important to us.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zerto with my parent company for the past several months and had been using it at a previous company for two years before that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Zerto is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is generally good.

We're on an older version so this may have changed, but when it comes to cloud DR, they haven't kept us with the Azure capability. For example, Azure used to have an eight terabyte limit on disk drives. Azure now has a 32 terabyte limit, but Zerto still has a limit of eight. 

That said, when it comes to the number of VPGs and the number of instances, that has been sufficient for us. We have 646 VMs and 60 VPGs that are protecting 650 terabytes of data.

We have about four people who are managing it day-to-day. It is a shared role; our server engineering team is responsible for Zerto, and that team has approximately twelve people. They are all capable of utilizing Zerto, depending on their individual responsibilities, but there are probably no more than four people who currently use it on a daily basis.

We don't have one specific person to manage it but instead, we rely on the team. We're in the process of getting them all trained adequately. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I have been in contact with technical support and I would rate them a seven out of ten. They are similar to a lot of companies, where they're very quick to respond to simple issues that might be in a playbook, yet slow sometimes to get a more complex problem resolved.

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

This was our first true DR tool. Before that, we were just using backup solutions. The one that we were using most recently was IBM Spectrum Protect.

I have a lot of past experience in my previous company with RecoverPoint, as well as with CloudEndure. CloudEndure was used specifically for cloud DR with AWS.

Zerto is much easier to use than RecoverPoint. Both Zerto and CloudEndure are very easy to use.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty easy to do. I was not with this company when they implemented it, so I don't know how long it took them to deploy. However, in my previous company, we initially installed and set it up in a day. We didn't have much trouble.

At first, we only had a couple of small test instances. We started adding things that we needed, over time.

What was our ROI?

Using Zerto has saved us money by enabling us to do DR in the cloud because we did not have to purchase the infrastructure at the alternate site. It's difficult to approximate how much money we have saved because we never built a DR site for the applications that we now have replicated in the cloud. There has never been an on-premises solution for them.

It is relevant to point out that we're not using it so much for day-to-day backups, but rather, we're using it for continuous data protection for DR and we have not had any disaster, so it's difficult to quantify our return on investment from that perspective.

However, from the perspective of being able to do cloud DR and not having to pay for that infrastructure, and even when it comes to the ease of use when we're going from data center to data center, I think we've got a definite return on our investment in comparison to not having a continuous data protection tool.

There is a difference between what we do and what we would have been doing without a tool like Zerto. In this regard, Zerto is a kind of overhead because hopefully, you're not using it day-to-day in a real disaster. It's more like insurance.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated RecoverPoint, but Zerto's better integration into vCenter was probably the reason that we chose it.

What other advice do I have?

We do not currently use Zerto for long-term retention, although we are looking at the feature.

I highly recommend Zerto. My advice for anybody who is implementing it is to go through all of the best practice guides and be sure to review whatever database they have in there. This way, they keep themselves efficient.

Also, it is important to keep in mind that it's only at a VPG level that everything is consistent. So, if you have multiple servers and applications that need to be consistent with each other, then, they really should be in the same VPG.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1456953 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Architect - Cloud at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
We are able to show, at a customer-level of granularity, what a customer's RPO was at any point, in real time
Pros and Cons
  • "Four years ago when we did a PoC between two other vendors and Zerto, there were two features of Zerto that sold it, hands-down. One was the ease of creating protection groups, the ease with which our engineers could create protection, add virtual machines into the Zerto product, and get them under DR protection."
  • "The second feature that sold us was the sub-second RPO. One of the things that made Zerto's product stand out from some of the more traditional solutions four years ago was its ability to maintain sub-second RPO over a group of machines, and that group of machines could be spread over multiple storage hardware."
  • "The number-one area in which they need to improve their product is what I would call "automatic self-healing." This is related to running them at scale... We have 1,000 VRAs and if any one of their VRAs has a problem, goes offline, all of the customer protection groups and all of the customers that are tied to that VRA are not replicating at all. That means the RPO is slipping until somebody makes a manual effort to fix the issue. It has become a full-time job at my company for somebody to keep Zerto running all the time, everywhere, and to keep all the customers up and going."

What is our primary use case?

Our use case is 100 percent disaster recovery between two different geographies. We have a very large private cloud offering. We've got about 1,200 customers and almost 10,000 VMs that are under Zerto protection. Every one of those virtual machines needs to be replicated from Waltham to Chicago, from the East Coast of the U.S. to the central U.S. Likewise, we have a European business with the exact same flow, although it's much smaller as far as number of VMs; it might be a couple of hundred. That implementation is going from Berlin to Amsterdam. We've got one-way protection in two different geographies and all of those machines are under Zerto protection.

How has it helped my organization?

The number-one benefit is that for the first time we could show, at a customer-level of granularity, how a customer was protected, and what their RPO was in, real time. Each one of our 1,200 or so customers has a portion of those 10,000 VMs. For the first time we were able to tell a product leader or product manager what the RPO was on Thursday at 2:00 PM for that customer. We could say, "Hey, it was 67 seconds." Our company is very customer-centric and customer-focused. There's less interest in what the overall health is, and a lot of times there's specific interest in, "Hey, how is that customer doing?" either for performance or for RPO time.

Zerto also allowed us to easily pick groups of virtual machines, group them as a whole, and have that be segregated from the storage layer. That is the storage-agnostic benefit from their product. That agnostic feature with respect to the storage layer allowed us to group VMs by customer and not only report on RPO by customer, but also to more easily sell different RPO plans. We were able to prioritize and say, "Okay, these 10 customers have platinum and these 500 have silver."

What is most valuable?

Four years ago when we did a PoC between two other vendors and Zerto, there were two features of Zerto that sold it, hands-down. One was the ease of creating protection groups, the ease with which our engineers could create protection, add virtual machines into the Zerto product, and get them under DR protection. The other products we were looking at required work from two different teams. The storage team had to get involved. With this product, the whole thing could be done by just our virtualization team, and that was a big sell for us.

The second feature that sold us was the sub-second RPO. One of the things that made Zerto's product stand out from some of the more traditional solutions four years ago was its ability to maintain sub-second RPO over a group of machines, and that group of machines could be spread over multiple storage hardware. It was the storage-agnostic features of the product.

What needs improvement?

The number-one area in which they need to improve their product is what I would call "automatic self-healing." This is related to running them at scale. If you're a small company with 50 VMs, this doesn't really become a problem for you. You don't have 1,000 blades and 1,000 of their VRAs running that you need to keep healthy. But once you get over a certain scale, it becomes a full-time job for someone to keep their products humming. We have 1,000 VRAs and if any one of their VRAs has a problem, goes offline, all of the customer protection groups and all of the customers that are tied to that VRA are not replicating at all. That means the RPO is slipping until somebody makes a manual effort to fix the issue. It has become a full-time job at my company for somebody to keep Zerto running all the time, everywhere, and to keep all the customers up and going. 

They desperately need to work self-healing into the core product. If a VRA has a problem, the product needs to be able to take some sort of measure to self-heal from that; to reassign protection. Right now it doesn't do anything in that self-healing area.

For how long have I used the solution?

My company implemented Zerto in 2016, so we've been live with their product for a little over four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability comes back to size and scale. It depends. If you are not replicating heavy workloads—meaning you don't have a SQL server that's doing thousands and thousands of IOPS, and you don't have multiple SQL Servers on the same very large hardware blade—Zerto is incredibly stable, based on my experience with the product. 

However, we are doing that. There's a one-to-one relationship between the Zerto VRA, which is essentially their chunk of code that does the replication, and a physical server. The physical server is running anywhere from one to as many virtual servers as someone can fit onto it. And that one VRA has to manage and push all the change blocks for all the workloads running on it. So if you've got five or six really heavy workloads running, that one VRA that has to handle all of that and push it to your destination can, and does, crash. VRAs in that situation crash or become unstable. We've worked a lot with Zerto over the last two years on tweaking the VRAs with advanced settings. We've directly been involved with identifying a couple of bugs with the VRAs. When the VRAs are pushed, they can only be pushed so far and then they crash.

It does perform. However, we have VRAs that crash all the time. When we go back and we look at why they crashed it's because we're pushing them too hard. We're doing things that they would say we shouldn't be doing. They would say, "Don't set six SQL Servers on the same blade. That's too much. Don't do that."

Zerto has worked with us very effectively on identifying advanced settings that we can make to the VRAs to make them perform better, and to be more stable in the "abusive" environment that we throw at their code base.

It could be more stable for really heavy use cases like that. But Zerto would come back and say, "Well, our best practices would have you put some sort of anti-affinity rule in place so that you don't end up with that many heavy I/O machines on a single blade." They would say that doing so is not best practice; don't do it. You could say that we abused their product, in that sense. 

But it works. If you align with best practices, it's pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have no concerns about the scalability, although I should qualify that statement. Zerto can scale horizontally extremely well. They've got one VRA per blade and that one VRA is their data plane. You can scale out your environment horizontally with as many blades or servers as you want, which is how people do virtualization and Zerto will scale with you. We've never hit a limit as far as its ability to scale as horizontally.

The caveat would be, as I mentioned elsewhere, the size of the pipe in your infrastructure to handle all of that replication. But that doesn't tie to the Zerto product itself. 

In terms of the issue of VRAs crashing, you want to scale horizontally rather than scale vertically, because if you scale vertically you're packing more and more virtual machines into the same number of physical servers. You're stacking them up high rather than across. If you stack them up high you have concerns about the scalability of the single VRA. The VRAs do get overloaded. Don't pack them too high. Scale out, not up.

Zerto has spread out as a company. They've mushroomed out into other areas. They've started to develop a presence in backup and they've started to develop a larger presence in reporting. Their core product, however, is known as ZVR—Zerto Virtual Replication. We've implemented that core product 100 percent. There's no other way we could be consuming it differently or more effectively.

The newer stuff they've come out with—certainly the backup—we don't touch that at all. The backup product is not ready for prime time. It might be good for a small customer that may have 50 machines they want to back up. But for our use case, with SOC compliance, and having to report on the success of backups for recovery, and although we looked very closely at their backup and where they were going with it, it's not ready for us.

They're starting to go into Docker containers. None of our product right now is containerized.

A third area is analytics and reporting. The analytics and reporting would be the one new area that they've put focus on that we could be using more and getting more value out of. They've got a SaaS solution now for reporting called Zerto Analytics. We do use it. You turn on their core product and you tell it to send your reports to their SaaS offering. We've done that and we can consume the analytics product, but we just haven't really operationalized it yet. That, for us, has been a tool looking for a problem.

How was the initial setup?

It took us about two months to deploy the solution, but that was because we're a very conservative company. We purposely went extremely slowly. If we had wanted to go faster, it could have been done probably in a week or two, to get all 6,000 VMs under protection.

What about the implementation team?

When we deployed it, there were two dedicated people at our company who were involved, paired up with three people from a Professional Services team from Zerto. As a tertiary, we had a full-time person from our VAR, the reseller that sold us the licensing for Zerto. With that help from Zerto and the value added reseller, it only took two of us to install it to about 600 blades and probably 5,000 virtual machines.

Our experience was excellent. Both teams were great. It was a very painless rollout.

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

I'm less involved with the pricing and licensing area now. The last time I was involved was a couple of years ago. In my opinion, their model is somewhat inflexible, especially for their backup product.

One of the reasons why we didn't pursue looking further at their backup product was, simply, licensing. Today we have to buy a Zerto license for every virtual machine that we want protected by their product. We have a lot of virtual machines that aren't production and that don't need to be protected by their product. They don't need sub-second RPOs. They do, however, need to be backed up. But Zerto's licensing model two years ago was, "Well, we don't care that you just need to back up those VMs, and you don't really need to replicate them. It's the same price."

We would have had to double our licensing costs for Zerto to adopt it as a backup solution. It was just not even within the realm of possibility financially. It made no financial sense for us to move off our current backup vendor. Their inability to diverge in any way from that was rigid.

Their licensing could be less rigid and more open to specific companies' use cases.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The other two vendors we evaluated back were Site Recovery Manager by VMware, and whatever Veeam's product was at the time. We also looked at CommVault lightly, but they were never considered seriously.

What other advice do I have?

Zerto can do what it says it can do. It can absolutely provide sub-second recovery point objectives, but with a couple of caveats. The caveats tend to apply to large companies like mine, and by "large" I mean if you have over 2,000 to 3,000 virtual machines, versus a small to medium-sized company that maybe has 50 to 500. Once you cross that barrier, you're getting into a larger environment that you're trying to replicate with Zerto.

A couple things can break down. Zerto's product doesn't control the path between your source production data and the destination you're trying to send it to. There can be tons of bottlenecks on that path; you can be going around the world. If the bottleneck doesn't exist there, their product can absolutely do what it says it does. It's up to the customer. The people using Zerto have to understand that they own the bottlenecks in their environment. If there is a bottleneck between production and the targeted DR, the RPOs are going to slip. You're going to go from sub-seconds to minutes or hours. That's not necessarily a fault of Zerto's product. It's the fault of the design of the customer's environment and what they brought it into.

That doesn't just exist for the pipe between the two sites. On the destination side, the side that's receiving this data, the storage layer underneath needs to be more performant than the production side. That's somewhat of a strange concept for a lot of customers and people coming into the Zerto solution. They see the marketing side of, "10 seconds to RPO" and say, "Yeah, I want that." But what it means is that you've really got to look at your hardware and you've got to have class-A hardware the whole way through that Zerto pipeline, for their product to do what it says it does. Zerto makes that very clear. They don't recommend hardware; they're not in the business of supporting other vendors. But they have a published list of best practices. The best practices clearly say everything that I just said. They also have best practices around managing your workload I/O on the source side, so that you don't overwhelm their product.

But not everyone follows best practices. Certainly, when we implemented it we said, "Yeah, we get that. We understand what you're telling us. We understand that's a best practice, but we're not going to do it anyway, because it's too expensive," or we didn't have it in budget for that year. So we knew it  and we went in without following them. A couple of years later, when we got to a tipping point, we realized, "Okay, we need to go back and align with some of those best practices," things we didn't think that we had the time to align with back in 2016. We've made that journey painfully with their product, but they were very upfront with us on what the requirements for their product would be.

Overall, I would rate Zerto as a solid eight out of 10 for the core disaster recovery offering.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
System Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Helps predict future storage needs by tracking trends in space, journal size, and I/O rate
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto for replication to a DR site of Windows and Unix machines. We like having a testable solution which does not interfere with the performance on our production machines. It has an included feature allowing assignment of a specific LAN or IP address to segregate the machine while testing. We are replicating 56 machines, totaling more than 30 TB, but compressing at 70 percent for space savings. We use the email alerts as a way to monitor replication status. This helps in off hours alerting for potential problems.

How has it helped my organization?

Testing and auditing are required at our organization. Zerto has saved a tremendous amount of time in performing these tasks. I am alerted every six months to retest each protection group. This setting is customizable. All past testing reports are retained and available upon demand. It has also added assurance in recovering servers and/or files. Being able to run tests on a working machine is beneficial. Being able to group virtual machines in order to recover all of them to an exact point in time is a definite benefit.

What is most valuable?

The mobile application is very useful as a real-time monitoring and reporting tool. When management asks the status of our VM backup and recovery, an easy way to answer is to display the status on the real-time Zerto application on a mobile phone or on a local computer 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. It is nice the see developing trends. 

Having a web interface simplifies access by other system administrators.

What needs improvement?

Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms. Zerto support is very responsive when those questions arise. 

There is a comprehensive online training program which is a good start to using the application. But nothing can take the place of actually using the product in your own environment. 

The online search for solutions is very large. This is good, but also bad, as there are solutions present but you have to be diligent to find the answer you need.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for more than three years. My organization utilizes Hyper-V instead of VMware. One big advantage of Zerto is its hardware agnostic. I have used various models of arrays and servers from Dell EMC and HPE with no issues from Zerto.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It picks up nicely where it leaves off (in the case of a reboot).

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It easily grows at whatever pace is needed.

How are customer service and technical support?

In the few cases that I have had, every one was dealt with quickly and by support staff who knew what they were doing.

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

We still use our previous solution because it creates a backup of both physical and virtual machines. However, there was an impact on performance running a backup on a running machine.

How was the initial setup?

There is a slight learning curve when setting up, but nothing overwhelming for a good administrator.

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

Work with your local representative on running a live test to see if the solution fulfills your needs.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Rodney Carlson - PeerSpot reviewer
Rodney CarlsonSystem Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User

Zerto is not the least expensive alternative to software replication, but it is reliable and easy to use.

reviewer1226331 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Simplifies our multi-target replication from remote locations that lack redundancy
Pros and Cons
  • "We use to use VMware replication appliances to attempt to replicate our VMs to remote locations and servers, but Zerto's one-to-many replication options with deduplication have made the process much simpler without having to constantly worry about the versions of each driver."
  • "The number one thing we have found we would like changed so far is the cost per VM. It would be great to get that pricing reduced."

What is our primary use case?

We use Zerto at our remote locations as a backup solution in environments where we don't have the infrastructure for redundancy. It allows us to use two HPE DL380 servers as stand-alone VMware hosts and replicate the VMs without needing shared storage.

How has it helped my organization?

Using Zerto, we are able to replicate / backup our VMs and between servers and locations, without the need for shared storage, which provides redundancy in case of hardware failure.  We are able to fail the VMs over to the secondary host, which also allows us to patch or repair hardware without extended downtime. 

What is most valuable?

We use to use VMware replication appliances to attempt to replicate our VMs to remote locations and servers, but Zerto's one-to-many replication options with deduplication have made the process much simpler without having to constantly worry about the versions of each driver.

What needs improvement?

The number one thing we have found we would like changed so far is the cost per VM. It would be great to get that pricing reduced.

The need for a VM to be spun up on every host is challenging. In our remote locations, it's not a big issue, but as we look to use that in our main data center where we have hundreds of hosts, it becomes more daunting.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In the six months that we have used it, we have not had any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, it looks like it should scale to our entire environment of over three thousand VMs.

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

Prior to this solution, we use to use SRM. We were looking to switch because SRM continues to be troublesome and requires a select combination of drivers and versions across the environment to work correctly.

How was the initial setup?

This initial setup was pretty straightforward with the exception of needing a VM on every single host.

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

The cost per VM is a bit high.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at RapidDR from HPE but it only works on our HPE SimpliVity servers and not across all of our hardware.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zerto Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zerto Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.