Zerto Reviews

For all the most important applications, we are using Zerto as a hot site in case something were to go on with our on-prem data center-based applications. We can immediately resort to Zerto as a failover.

It's deployed for replication from our data center into the public cloud.

The most important thing is the mean time to restoration. When anything goes wrong, we should be able to rely on the failover data that is available, and we should be able to restore it as quickly as possible. We have been able to reduce that mean time to restore the data pretty significantly with Zerto. It's gone from a few hours to a few minutes.

There are two things that are keeping us with the solution:

1. It does a very good job of keeping the data in sync at all times. 
2. In the event of a failover or in the event of a contingency, we are able to retrieve the data very quickly without any issues.

Both of these points are valuable to us because we have application data and it means we keep the data in sync. It is very important for us to know exactly where we left off in the event of any disaster or contingency. We can always rely on, or resort to, the data that we have as a backup or a failover. Also, in the event of a contingency, or even for doing a mock contingency exercise, the speed of retrieval of data and the speed of getting back up and running — minimizing the downtime — is important. That's where the second feature comes into play.

There are two areas which I would recommend for improvement. One is when we are trying to upgrade any virtual machines, we have to stop the virtual machines that have been replicated in Zerto and then upgrade or update to the virtual machines onsite. Instead of having to do it manually, there should be some way of automating that particular function.

And when it comes to AWS failover, the documentation has a lot of scope for improvement. It's come a long way since we implemented it, from the scantiness of documentation that was available to do a failover into AWS or recover from AWS, but they could still do a much better job of providing more details, how-to's, tutorials, etc.

In terms of additional features that I would like to see included in the next releases, if they could provide us some kind of long-term storage option, that would be the best thing. Then it could be a storage and a failover solution combined into one.

I have been using Zerto for two-and-a-half years.

It's a very stable solution.

It scales very well, in terms of the data size and the number of sites that we want to add on. It has scaled very well, at least in the last two releases.

We have plans to increase usage, but as it is we are using it for about 75 percent of the data at this point. The balance of the data will come onboard by early next year.

We have about 25 people using Zerto, and they're mostly database and storage administrators, infrastructure people, and security people. 

We have not used the technical support. One thing I can say is that they have a very friendly team of engineers. If you have a problem, they are at your beck and call. You can call them and get it resolved.

We were using another solution but I don't want to name it. The primary reason we switched was the ability to restore the. Our main goal was not only to have good replication of data, but to be able to restore the data as quickly as possible in the event of any contingency, whether planned or unplanned. 

From that standpoint, when we put Zerto against the existing product, what took us a few hours in that product took us a few minutes with Zerto. That was primarily the goal. Even though this product was a little more expensive than what we had prior to going with Zerto, we still went ahead with Zerto.

The initial setup is very straightforward compared to a lot of others. The user interface is very simple and very intuitive. It goes one step at a time so you can logically follow through the steps to set it up. Whether it's a small site or a big site, it doesn't really matter.

Overall our deployment took about two weeks. We had a detailed project plan, as we always do with any new products or projects that we come up with.

It doesn't require any full-time staff to deploy and maintain the solution. Once you turn on the process, all that somebody needs to do is just monitor the schedule and see whether it's doing things the way it has been programmed.

We have absolutely seen return on our investment with Zerto. We do mock disaster recovery exercises and, in every such exercise since we've gone ahead with Zerto, we've been able to restore the data within a few minutes, very easily, without any business loss. That gives us the confidence to say that, even in the case of a real disaster, we should be able to restore the data.

We didn't evaluate any other options.

Know your use case and then do a thorough proof of concept with your use case to see whether the solution works for your environment and your specific use case. Have a well-defined project plan and negotiate your way with the vendor.

The biggest lesson our organization has learned in using Zerto is that you should understand the product very well. You should understand what the product is capable of doing and leverage the options and features that are available in the product to the optimal extent. 

Virtualization, and Zerto improves business continuity and disaster recovery tremendously.

• Continuous replication for VMs
• Ability to choose point in time to recover from
• RPOs in seconds
• RTO in minutes

Adding or changing VPGs (Virtual Protection Groups) may require restarting replication.

The product is very stable; no issues with upgrading to new releases.

Adding additional VMs is fairly easy. Adding or changing VPGs (Virtual Protection Groups) may require restarting replication.

Very good.

Previously we used SRM (Site Recovery Manager). Zerto is much easier to set up and configure. Failover using Zerto is simply a one-button click, and it does everything else in restoring the VMs at a different datacenter (recovery site).

Initial setup is fairly easy and the environment can be protected in just a few hours.

You can find providers of a DRaaS solution with Zerto license fees for each VM. Zerto only sells to partners and they have a robust partner organization.

The product works and does what is says. Zerto provides enterprise-class, virtual replication and BC/DR solutions for private, hybrid, and public clouds. Future releases will provide multiple destinations/locations to store the replicated data.

Most companies have used backup software for their protection, or disk array replication. Zerto leapfrogs those data protection methods and provides a much more affordable BC/DR solution, with improved RPO and RTO.

Zerto is an excellent solution for cloud-based environments, but for DIY clients who have another site to recover their systems it also works well.

The ease of daily operations. This program takes almost no interaction on a daily basis.

Zerto has given us a sense of security. To know that we can move our production data to our DR site in minutes lets me sleep much better at night.

Support for Hyper-V which is on the way.

In production for almost 1 year now.

Absolutely none. I was replicating my first VPG in less than an hour.

Only things that I have caused myself.

Started with 50 vms today protecting almost 300 and I have had no issues.

I would give it an 8/10. Alot of customer service is handled through back and forth emails but once you get someone on a phone call and screen sharing the level goes to a 10/10.

9/10

Alot of customer service is handled through back and forth emails but once you get someone on a phone call and screen sharing the level goes to a 10/10.

We tried out SRM but chose Zerto because of the ease of use.

Very straightforward and I had a tech with me the whole way.

Implemented in-house and once again it was a PAINLESS process.

SRM and went with Zerto so we would not have to use SAN-to-SAN replication.

The best thing is that all you need is storage and vcenter in two locations and you have met all requirements to install and protect your vm's.

We use the solution for DR failover/testing on our DR site. We're a Windows/VMware environment and replicate 25 virtual machines from our primary data center to our disaster recovery site. The solution allows us to perform live failovers without shutting down our production systems.

Zerto has made the testing and the actual failover process of our replicated virtual machines seamless. The product has relieved the administrative burden for the IT staff responsible for the disaster recovery implementation of the organization. Adding new virtual machines is quick and easy, and managing the environment is straightforward.  

Failover testing is the most valuable feature. The fact that we are able to test the failover of live systems during regular hours is invaluable to our organization. No longer do we have to schedule failovers of our systems, which brings down our production environment.

There are a couple of minor areas that could use improvement.

The GUI could be streamlined a bit more to enhance the administrative tasks. I would also like to be able to throttle the email alerts, as sometimes they become a bit noisy, and get tough to keep on top of.

Our company has been using the product for four years.

This is a very stable solution.

It is easy to add new licenses for growth.

Support has always been readily available if there were issues.

We never used a different solution.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and seems to be in line with similar products.

We did not evaluate other products before choosing this solution.

Leveraging 'Move' to perform VC-to-VC migrations with little downtime.

Has simplified our DR/BC strategy and allows us to quickly protect Production applications that require low RPO's. We've done several fail-over tests with documented results. We feel Zert0 will only compliment our SDDC strategy.

POC'd the product for 2 months and purchased in March of 2014.

None.. Implementation was simple and quick. We were replicating vms in a matter of hours.

Nothing to date

No

Customer service has been excellent

Technical support has been exceptional

We've used traditional LUN based replication which can be challenging in any virtual environment. Zert0 gave us the granularity to replicate VMDKs to any target datastore.

Setup was simple and straightforward. We encountered no issues.

We spent weeks doing a POC and literally installed and re-installed multiple times to see if there were any impacts on our infrastructure. There were none and it worked as advertised.

N/A

We had capacity so our only setup costs were building a couple of VMs to install the Zert0 Consoles on and licensing of the product. Minimal when compared to SRM, Recover Point and Storage.

We did a POC with SRM and researched Recover Point extensively.

I feel because the product is so simplistic yet extremely robust and effective management may perceive Zert0 as not being Enterprise worthy when in reality, it is. Bottom line, its a great product that brings standardization and simplicity to DR/BC.

We use it primarily for DR.

What I appreciate the most about Zerto is that it is the easiest to install, upgrade, and manage. Most things in the product are fairly intuitive and easy, including upgrades. You don't have to dig through a bunch of manuals or go through a bunch of technical data to make it work.

The low RPO times of about four to eight seconds are very nice and very valuable to us.

The alerting could be fine-tuned and improved. It does a lot of alerts, but it's a little bit cumbersome to modify them.

It could be cheaper as well.

I've been using it for six years.

The stability is very good. We haven't had any real problems or downtime. The only thing is that it runs on Windows, so that has its own problems.

Zerto's scalability is very good. We haven't had any scaling problems. We tested out DR in Azure, DR to VMware on GCP, and DR on AWS. It performed on all of those. The AWS setup was the most complicated, but AWS with Windows is a little bit messy.

We currently have 400 licenses. We have two ML350s, and we use Zerto to keep them replicated. If one fails, we just move to the other. That has been expanding, and that's where we've been adding licenses.

Zerto's technical support is very responsive. We had some posts that were not working properly and caused some issues with Zerto. The technical support staff were very helpful and worked through the night to help us resolve that. They always solved any problem I've had, so I'll give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used SRM. It had a lot of specialized plugins and specialized machines, but was very cumbersome. We weren't guaranteed that it would work all the time. It was very complicated to set up and manage as well.

SRM was storage-vendor-dependent because you had to have plugins through the storage vendors. It wasn't IP-based at the time and relied on storage-based replication. We had disparate storage arrays and disparate systems, and the IP-based replication treasury was much more resilient on our end.

The initial setup was unbelievably easy. We had Zerto up and running in five minutes, whereas setting up the SRM replication took weeks and needed technical support staff.

We deployed it ourselves.

In terms of ROI, it was quite expensive, but I think we got a lot of value out of it, such as being able to have a reliable DR method, particularly offsite. We have very poor latency locations, and sometimes, we replicate those. Zerto makes that very easy.

From a customer perspective, the price is okay. From an investor's perspective, however, it is a little bit high.

We looked at Veeam, but Zerto was a better match for our needs.

I would advise you to give Zerto a try in your environment. Get a trial license and see how it works. I think you'll be very impressed.

Overall, I've been very happy with Zerto, and I'd give it a rating of nine on a scale from one to ten.

We use it for backup and replication.

The total time for replication has been reduced drastically for us and that really adds value in the long run because time equals money and resources.

It has also helped to reduce our DR testing. Previously, when we were doing it across our own locations, we had to make sure it was working by doing a lot of testing back and forth.

Also, the solution is already up to the mark on audits and certification.

For us, the most valuable features are the quick upload time and how the sync works. The sync is pretty good and that's really helpful. The quick upload is important to us because other solutions were lagging behind. We have VMware SRM and Veeam, and they have been pretty slow and sluggish. We have had some challenges with them.

We have been using Zerto for seven years.

We're just replicating and I assume it runs on some kind of cloud as an overlay, so the stability is pretty good.

The scalability is insane. Really good.

An area for improvement is the support because it gets really expensive. They need to make it a little cheaper. Support also takes time.

Neutral

We still have some other solutions in-house. We are not fully dependent on Zerto. We are still trying to get rid of the others, but we have not entirely moved on.

In 2014, when Zerto was launched, the initial setup was pretty simple.

We used an integrator. Our experience with them, at our engineering level, was that it was pretty smooth and streamlined, the first time we used Zerto. We had a few issues in the initial deployment, but later on, when we moved to scripting, the process became streamlined.

I would like to see different service levels. They're good, but it still takes a lot of our budget in ops.

We evaluated Veeam and SRM. Zerto is an HPE product, and we have been using a lot of HPE servers. That trust in HPE won our business.

When comparing Zerto with Veeam and SRM, the latter are newer in the market. They try to provide a multi-cloud strategy with tie-ups across six different clouds, which is different from Zerto. That's where I would use them if I had to.

All the solutions were almost equal but Zerto is still better because they have a lot of releases and new versions.

We are just using it for backup and replication. We have not yet had an event where we have had to restore.

We utilize Zerto to backup our on-prem environment to our cloud provider. We've also used it for migrations from on-prem to our cloud provider.

Our deployment model is a hybrid. We're using on-prem and also replicating to Azure.

It is used in our production environment and also our lower environment, on-prem. It's like a DR, as we're backing it all up to our cloud provider. There are a handful of servers involved, replicating and backing up.

It saves us about eight to 10 hours a month in staff time.

Another benefit is just the peace of mind that everything is backed up. We rely on the backups, that they're good backups. It's not like we have to second-guess them.

It has also helped us with our migration to our cloud provider. It's made it easier, sped up the process, and taken a lot of the guesswork out of it.

The solution has reduced the number of staff involved in data recovery situations for our backup and recovery side by at least two people.

The most valuable features are 

• the single pane of glass
• the reduction in time it takes for our systems engineering team to manage the platform.

In addition, the RPOs and RTOs are great on it. It keeps up with things. The protection has been perfect so far when we have done our tests of spinning things up every six months or so. All our backups have come up with no issues at all. They just make great replication copies.

Zerto is also easy to use. That single pane of glass makes it very easy to check on the status of replicated items, and if there are any issues, to dig into them to fix them.

So far, it's been pretty good. I haven't had any issues. If I had to pick anything, it would be the documentation for upgrades. They need to make it easier for users to do upgrades without having to contact support, by providing better documentation for that.

We have been using Zerto since 2018.

So far, it's been very stable. We don't have any issue with the services or the ZVAs. They just keep trucking. There have been no stability issues at.

It's very easy to scale with it. As our environment has grown over the years, we've been able to add ZVAs to it, configure them, and they just fall right into the mix. Scaling is very easy.

Technical support has been very helpful and quick to get back with responses. Ticket turnaround time has never taken more than an hour for me to receive a response back to a general question.

We used Avamar. The primary reason we switched to Zerto was the integration with cloud providers that it provides.

I was not involved in the implementation, but I do remember that it was a pretty short implementation time. It included setting up the ZVA agents in our on-prem environment and connecting to our provider's cloud storage. The longest part of the implementation was getting the data, the initial seed or the backups, up there. But that's nothing against Zerto. Every environment will be different on that and has to get its initial copy up there. Since then, keeping copies up to date has been good. It meets up with RPOs and RTOs.

The initial implementation and getting everything set up took us about two and a half weeks. After that, to get everything that we are protecting into the cloud took us close to a month. We had to do it in stages, due to our work environment and our connections at the time. We didn't have the biggest connections, but that's more on our side, not Zerto's.

There are three people involved in maintaining Zerto for us. They're systems engineers.

Zerto is a lot easier to use than Avamar: easier management, easier setup, and the single pane of glass to watch over everything makes it better. I wouldn't say there's really a cost savings. They're probably comparable in price, but there were a lot more features and options with Zerto than in Avamar.

If you want something that's easy to set up, with a single pane of glass, and that doesn't take a backup administrator to admin, Zerto is the way to go.

The only lesson we really learned, and this has been resolved now, is that when we initially started using Zerto there were some hiccups when it came to Linux servers, hiccups that we had to work through. Support was very helpful and resolved it for us, but it made it a little bit of a manual process. In the later releases of Zerto, they've resolved those issues. They just had to work out some kinks.