Zerto Reviews

There are many valuable features. However, the one that sticks out the most is the simplicity of the process to protect or migrate a virtual workload.

It enables protection of a virtual workload to be done by the app, whether single or multi-tiered, with a boot time scheduler. It is pretty awesome.

Zerto has changed how we think about protecting virtual workloads. It has enabled us to think about real time protection with full replication that provides checkpoints every few seconds and enables quick (< 10min) recovery times.

Zerto is solid. However, they are working on a cloud workload protection and protecting virtual workloads to more than one site. This is good stuff.

We have been using the product for more than two years.

Zerto is stable and works as expected.

Zerto scales as you scale your virtual environments. It simply and quickly protects virtual workloads.

Zerto’s support is good. They are quick to contact you back and get working on any issue. This is hard to get from other vendors.

I have been performing DR/migrations/replication for over 15 years. I changed during a bake-off of different products based on:

• Speed to setup and run
• Low to no dependencies
• Simple to use (easy to operationalize)

Zerto simply is the tool for protecting any virtual workload. I have set up and protected:

• DBs (DB2, SQL, Oracle)
• Many apps (Wintel and Linux)
• Virtual appliances.

It is extremely simple to set up and use.

The Zerto setup was straightforward. It is one of the simplest tools I have ever deployed to protect virtual workloads. It works hand in hand with VMware features such as DRS/HA, so there is no issue when your workload moves around.

Zerto’s licensing model has changed a bit over the last year and they are in alignment with others. It is pretty simple and more economical.

We evaluated PlateSpin, Recover Point/Recover Point 4 VMs, VMW SRM, Veeam, and VMW converter.

Put it in place as it will become your default tool for VM protection and replication, hands down!

We use it for DR and general backup. We have snapshots or shadow copies with Microsoft and we do Zerto backups to our other locations so we can always get the data back.

We bought Zerto, in the beginning, to migrate a very important system of the airline from a co-lo that was managed by the co-lo to our on-prem. As an airline, you can't be down because you could cause a ground stop. With Zerto, we were able to migrate all those things across to on-prem without touching anything or losing any time. We took very little downtime.

Also, we've run into some situations where, for some reason, Windows has lost some of the files. I have been able to fail it over to our other data center and they were back up in 10 minutes.

The speed of recovery with Zerto versus other disaster recovery solutions is vastly better. Whereas with the others, I'd have to spin through a lot of stuff and find things, with Zerto I can scroll back in the GUI, find the one I want, and restore it. If that's not right, I can destroy it and go back a little bit more in time.

And our being an ultra-low-cost airline, we don't have staff, so it helps in that way.

It has also helped our DR testing because we can fail over the main part that runs the airline within 45 minutes. The first time, it took me an hour and a half. The second time, it took about an hour. The last time I did it, it took about 45 minutes. That's within the timeframe of one hour where we don't have to do a ground stop.

Moving the VPGs from one location to another is a valuable feature. You just click on it and move it and it's done. We have a stretch VLAN between our data centers so it's really easy: this is IP here and the same IP is there. So if something happens or somebody wants to test something, I can fail it over.

Another aspect that I use a lot is that I can fail it over into its own little bubble and I can install software that I want to test to make sure it doesn't break something. I can do that and then roll it all back.

If there is a mass of changes to a server, Zerto will restart the replication. It would be nice to know why that happens. 

The other thing that I've run into lately is that when I've done a whole bunch of upgrades to systems, so they're offline, they get stuck in a pending state. You can never get them out so you have to delete and start all over again. It would be nice if they could make it a little simpler to figure out what's wrong.

I have been using Zerto for about six years.

It always just runs. I don't have to worry about it or keep checking it. It just does its thing.

It's very scalable. Fortunately, we bought a bunch of licenses when we first bought it and we've been growing into those licenses over the years. It has been very scalable for us.

The technical support has been good, although I've had a couple of situations where they've said some things that were totally inaccurate. But you have that in all organizations.

Positive

Since I started with this airline, we have gone through two other solutions. Zerto is the third and we've stuck with it for quite a few years.

One of the other solutions was a direct product that dumped everything to a storage area in the cloud and it never was consistent. The other was a Dell application backup that no longer exists. That was just too limiting and its backup was never consistent.

Zerto is much easier to use. Once you get the concept down of what it's doing, it's really easy to bring up backups, restore backups, move things around, and test things. It's very easy.

I had one of their sales reps in Colorado help me through the setup. Then we just took it over.

The ROI is in "funny money." It's my time and how long something is down or how long it takes somebody to restore something, and that is much faster.

The pricing seems really good. We're an enterprise customer, so we get all the bells and whistles.

We evaluated a couple of things, but one of our co-los was actually using Zerto so we looked at it as a result. That is what led us to buy it.

We use Zerto for disaster recovery data replication from our headquarters to an offsite data center at another location.

It has replaced all of my legacy backup solutions.

The real-time replication of data is the most valuable feature. It is a vast improvement in scheduled daily backups. Real-time data is streamed to the offsite data center, which allows us to restore our mission-critical applications up to 10 seconds from when the last changes were made in our system. If we enter a sales order or enter any kind of information in our ERP application it is replicated within 10 seconds to the offsite location. So if we were to have a disaster, it takes about five seconds right now if I look at it. If we were to have a disaster, we would not only have current data, but we'd also be up and running within hours at our offsite data center, rather than days if we had a tape backup solution.

We have begun using it for longterm retention. We also replicate our file server. Our file server has archive or historical data that we have to restore occasionally. And restoring from long term retention is applicable to those types of scenarios, versus the streaming of the data, the real-time data. The longterm retention allows us to restore from further back in time. Real-time is more for recent changes to the data, and the longterm retention is for if we have to restore from further back.

It provides continuous data protection. It has been extremely effective. I've done failover testing, and the data is accurate and current. It works.

In terms of ease of use, Zerto is very intuitive. The graphical user interface of the application, both for monitoring VPG replication, longterm retention success, the configuration of VPG for longterm retention, and the analytics feature is intuitive and allows you to essentially analyze any changes to your environment. All of that requires some training but is not incredibly complex. It's presented in a very easy to use format. 

Zerto dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to do a failover. I can essentially do it all by myself and I'm one person, I don't really need help. It allows me to restore our environment fully in a matter of seconds, literally. I can do that on my own from my desk very easily and with no outside help. 

Compared to other products, I would praise the intuitiveness of the product. But I think that can always be improved. The intuitiveness of the graphical user interface, while it is very solid and I don't have issues navigating it. I would say that it can always be improved.

I have been using Zerto for around three years. 

The stability is very solid. It just runs. It has not crashed or had issues. So long as you stay on top of the versions of the application and you have it installed on reliable hardware, you're going to be just fine.

It can scale into the cloud. I know it has that capability, but I have not done that yet.

It's essentially myself and I have one junior person that uses the application, but it's mostly myself.

It's used for all of our mission-critical servers. Not every single one of our servers, but probably about a third of our total servers.

I do not have plans to increase usage. 

The tech support is top-notch. I have an engineer who I work with on a regular basis that communicates with me anytime there is an issue. He has worked side by side with me on any issues, questions, and implementations that I have wanted to accomplish. They by far go above and beyond more than any of my other vendors and I have quite a few so that says a lot about them.

We previously used Asigra. We switched because of the cost, limitations, and complexity.

When we decided to go with Zerto, it was imperative that it provided both backup and DR in one platform. Granted, we didn't take advantage of it for a while but that's entirely my own fault. It was very important to have that functionality.

It was initially set up by a third party. But since then, I've had to re-set it up and it was pretty easy. It wasn't very complicated. It was quick. There were instructions that we followed pretty closely and there were no issues, so it was straightforward. There were a handful of steps, but nothing overly complex. The deployment took around 30 to 45 minutes. 

We haven't had a need to use it in an actual live disaster scenario, but we have that capability, which we did not before. But if we had to use it, it would save us a tremendous amount of money. Tremendous.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. 

We also evaluated Veeam.

It has not saved us time in data recovery situation due to ransomware just because we thankfully haven't had any issues. I've done some testing and in those types of situations, it would be greatly beneficial. But I have not had any of those situations currently.

At this time it has not helped to reduce downtime in any situation.

We don't have it replicated in the cloud at this time so it has not saved use money by enabling us to do DR in the cloud, rather than in a physical data center.

I would recommend Zerto to anybody considering it. 

My advice would be to make sure that after implementing the product, go through and accomplish the training labs so you know how to use a product really well, develop a disaster recovery plan in the event that you should need to use the product, and work closely with your Zerto engineer to ensure that the implementation fits your business needs.

The biggest lesson I have learned is how valuable real-time replication of data can be in the event of a disaster and how valuable that functionality is in the event of a disaster. It has the potential to save the company many days' worth of lost business.

If I could rate it an 11 (out of 10), I would. But we'll go with 10.

Real-time replication for our Disaster Recovery site, which is currently hosted in another on-premise site but will shortly be moving to a Data Center in the Cloud.

I have also used this solution to do point-in-time restores of Exchange mailbox items and to check updates from Microsoft.

This solution has given us the confidence to know that our complex systems are being backed up off-site in real-time and are testable on demand. This gives me a real sense of ease when speaking to Management about our resilience, and being able to demonstrate it includes everyone in the processes to confirm that.

The ability to fully test your entire environment without actually performing a failover is invaluable.

I really appreciate the Mobile app that allows me to monitor, at any time of the day or night, whether the replications are up and running.

Creating Virtual Protection Groups allows us to treat business services as one.

There needs to be more flexibility in the licensing. I've mentioned to Zerto Management that I find the licensing at twenty-five VMs to be very restricting to an SME business, and could there be some flexibility here? Businesses like ours constantly change their IT due to the flexibility of Virtualisation and it would be great to get Zerto on board with that same flexibility.

It has been very stable and gives me minimal problems, especially when compared to other parts of the business network.

I would imagine that the product would not have an upper limit due to its architecture. It seems to cope easily with our own environment of approximately forty VMs.

The person I worked with was very friendly and had excellent knowledge of the product and understood the wider implications of the installation.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup of this solution is very straightforward. The installation and configuration are incredibly easy for someone who is reasonably familiar with IT Management.

We implemented this solution in-house.

We do not consider an ROI analysis to be relevant in this area.

While we find the twenty-five VM license somewhat inflexible, the actual setup costs are minimal as the product is so easy to install.

Before choosing this solution we extensively tested the built-in functionality of our EMC VNX SANs but they didn't function to an acceptable standard so we looked to third parties.

After researching the market thoroughly we decided that this was the one to go for.

I'd strongly suggest carrying out a proof of concept if you're looking at this part of your IT solution.

We use it mainly to move the server alarm between vCenter and the physical center.

I like that Zerto is easy to move and that there is no effect on the user. That is, the user doesn't even know it. We're in the healthcare industry and work for a hospital. We can set up a server in no time whatsoever. It's easy for us to schedule the time because it takes only about one minute.

In terms of ease of use, Zerto is a lot easier to use in comparison to similar solutions.

We have had no downtime with Zerto.

The speed of our upgrade is a lot easier because, for example, when I put the move fail and there's a pullout from the destination, I can cover with something from the source and pick it up from the source in person. I can copy the tag from the server very fast.

Customer service and technical support need improvement.

I've been using it for about five years.

Customer service and technical support need improvement, and I would rate technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We switched to Zerto because it is easier to use, and the users did not complain.

The initial setup was straightforward. You open the firewall, install it, connect to vCenter, and then do all the steps to install the software.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Zerto a seven because of the bad experience I had with technical support.

Our primary use case for Zerto is disaster recovery.

It's very simple to use and configure.

The orchestration and automation of the DR and how it replicates the VMs and then picks them up in the DR site have been most valuable.

This solution could be improved if it met all the requirements that we look for including supporting multiple operating systems. We would prefer to use one solution for DR and backup.

We have been using this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution. We haven't experienced any issues.

We have a small environment so it may not be applicable to comment on scalability. What I can say is we took two of the largest virtual machines in our environment, created a VPG for them, set up the seeding and replication and Zerto easily supported this. If there was going to be any concern, we would've seen it with these two VMs. So far it looks good.

The customer support for this solution is okay. I have only opened up one support case. We were looking for someone to assist us right away. It was a Severity 2 case, with Severity 1 being the highest. They sent me an email but couldn't help me the same day. I was hoping that I could speak with them the same day to get some support.

I would rate them a six out of ten. 

Neutral

We previously tried Veeam's replication tool and it didn't work out too well. That's why we decided to go to Zerto. Zerto is much easier to set up and offers a faster speed of recovery.

The initial setup was straightforward. How the VPGs are configured and adding the VMs is simple and pretty intuitive. It took under an hour to set up. 

The setup was completed by myself and a colleague.

The pricing for this solution is reasonable. 

I would advise others to take extra time before jumping into the setup, to consider the grouping of the VPGs and what makes the most sense for their business. It was important for our business to take that extra time to make sure that we got that right. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We are mainly using it for DR and, in a few use cases, we leverage it for migration as well. It really fits our use cases.

The experience has been smooth when it comes to DR testing, as it has reduced the testing we need to do. 

Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration. It is very simple to use and fast. We haven't run into any issues.

If we have multiple VMs in a VPG (Virtual Protected Group) and one VM is hung for DR, it holds things up. The only alternative is to create multiple VPGs. It would be nice to have one VPG where, if one VM is failing, it does not impact the overall process.

We have been using Zerto for close to a year.

Our experience with Zerto has been good, but I don't know if we have actually saved a ton of time with it. There have been no issues or real challenges so far. We just recently adopted and started using it, so in terms of implementation of real use cases, it has barely been a couple of months. We haven't even done a single upgrade of it yet.

The stability is good.

We right-sized initially and we have not had to scale up yet.

I haven't had to engage support. One of my colleagues handles that. But I have heard no complaints about support.

We have a VMware product, SRM, and we use it in a few data centers around the globe. We started using Zerto in a few locations and, in other locations, we still have other products being used.

We were using SRM in our data centers and what happened was that we had a merger. In that process, the other party already owned some Zerto licenses. That's when we got our hands on it and started looking at it. We figured Zerto would be a better fit for our European data centers. We ended up using Zerto there and then got more licenses so that we could use Zerto more.

We have one other solution that we use for live migrations, VMware HCX, rather than Zerto. But we were not always able to use that. That's where the delta for those VMs is, and why we use Zerto for migrations.

The speed of recovery of Zerto is right up there compared with other solutions. It's good, no complaints in that respect.

Compared to other solutions, Zerto is very straightforward and simple to use. The preparation for DR is fairly straightforward, and the deployment is not very complicated.

Zerto hasn't cut the number of staff involved in data recovery, for us. We had one engineer doing it before and he continues to do it. He wears multiple hats. You cannot go down to less than one engineer.

It is controlling our mission-critical production system as a backup and a failover.

Zerto has taken us from being able to do a failover in four to six hours down to one to two hours.

The most valuable features are

• the continuous streaming
• that it takes very little CPU usage — it doesn't affect production 
• the recovery time is very short.

With the VPG (virtual protected group) it would be nice if you could pick individuals in the grouping instead of having to failover the whole group. 

Other than that, it's a pretty good product.

I have been using Zerto for about a year.

It's very stable.

I don't see a problem with scaling it at all. They could improve setting up for SQL clustering or for SQL Always On. It really is set up for a one-to-one and not for a multiple solution. They could work on that.

We will probably increase our usage in the future. Right now we have a license for 15 VMs through Zerto and we are only using 10.

We haven't worked with Zerto's technical support other than during deployment. Everything seems to be running really well now. During deployment, their support was very responsive. It's just that they did not have a good solution that worked with VMware and Nimble.

Positive

We were using Veeam. We switched to Zerto because it has continuous streaming that would keep us up to date a lot faster. Veeam kept promising they were going to have that, but they never came through on their promise, after waiting for a year. We were able to convince management to switch to Zerto.

The initial setup of the product was very complex. We were using a SQL Server cluster with a Nimble array, so it was very complicated to get everything set up correctly so it would failover correctly.

Our deployment took about six months. We had an implementation strategy for the solution but it failed three times before they could get it to work. Our deployment plan was set up to failover for our SQL cluster and several web servers to a backup location. In setting up with the Nimble, Zerto recommended that we use an RDM. The RDM did not work. We were using VMware with Nimble and the Zerto team had not used that particular solution before. We jumped through hoops three times before we were able to get the right combination to get the cluster to failover correctly.

There are only three of us working with Zerto. I am the DBA, we have a system administrator, and we have our IT director. We learned very quickly how to use the product very thoroughly since we had to rebuild our solution three times.

We were working with Zerto directly. They didn't have a good solution and we had to test out a lot of things with the hardware and software that we were using. They could have improved that. They kept giving us solutions that would not work, so we had to keep trying different solutions.

It's hard to say if we have seen ROI since it's only been running for about four months. I think that we will see cost savings over the next year.

As far as licensing goes, start out with what you need to get started and you can always scale up. Zerto worked very well with us. They have a tool called zPlanner which was able to document how much we needed to get started. That was a very handy tool.

We looked at some other options, but nothing really compared to what Zerto offered.

The main differences were the ease of use, not having to have a dedicated person assigned to watching it, and the automation. A lot of this stuff is taken care of through Zerto without us having to script or put a lot of effort in on the back-end. Everything is automated.

Make sure that they can demo what you want done before you move forward. We had a problem with the SQL clustering. Make sure that the equipment that you're using is certified by all the vendors that are involved, like VMware.

Now that we have the solution working, we're very happy. We've had it working for the last four to five months. We were able to test it with a test platform and it worked amazingly.