The setup is easier than most products, and for us as a cloud partner, once a customer is trained to create VPGs, they are good to go.
Co-Owner with 1-10 employees
Continuous log file transmission means the granularity of restores is amazing
Pros and Cons
- "The replication being log-based is awesome."
- "You can set the number of days a VM can be rolled back in case of corruption or virus infection."
- "Since the log files are continuously transmitted, the granularity of restores is amazing."
- "Files can also be extracted from the VMDK at the remote site even when the VM is off."
- "An integrated encryption would allow for faster initial install and connection to the remote cloud site."
- "Their offsite backup is a bit clunky, but it will probably improve."
How has it helped my organization?
What is most valuable?
- The replication being log-based is awesome.
- The VMDK can be preloaded to the remote site or allowed to come across the WAN, then the logs just keep flowing.
- You can set the number of days a VM can be rolled back in case of corruption or virus infection.
- Since the log files are continuously transmitted, the granularity of restores is amazing.
- You can practice failovers (start the replicated virtual machine at the remote site) while the logs keep stacking up. The replicated machine can be open for a few hours, but short times are best depending on how much data is changing.
- Files can also be extracted from the VMDK at the remote site even when the VM is off.
- In case of a disaster, a single mouse click sets the restore to the real failover; click the Failover button, the VM on the replication site is started, while the VM at the source site is shut down. Once up, reverse replication begins and stays in log replication until the systems are reverted back to normal via the same process.
What needs improvement?
An integrated encryption would allow for faster initial install and connection to the remote cloud site.
Their offsite backup is a bit clunky, but it will probably improve.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
Buyer's Guide
Zerto
October 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues with stability. The delivered upgrades and major updates are stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability, it pretty much takes care of itself. One does have to watch where all the recovery site systems are located, to avoid running out of space on the datastores. We can control/move recovery VMs as necessary.
How are customer service and support?
Awesome. Their helpdesk people are among the best.
How was the initial setup?
The product needs a VPN tunnel from the customer site to ours. VPNs can be tricky depending on the compatibility of the hardware. The programs themselves are a snap, and surprisingly small.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cloud providers get good pricing to encourage quick adoption. A new feature is the One-To-Many VPG allowing a VM to be replicated at up to three different locations, including local.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
As a cloud service provider, we have many tools to satisfy the needs of the customer. We have used Asigra, Veeam, StorageCraft, as well as Zerto. Each has its strengths. The market is heating up because of CryptoLocker and other viruses.
What other advice do I have?
There are many products on the market that perform Virtual Machine replication. The other products use Snapshot technology which can have issues with Hypervisors or large disk volumes. The datastore or shared disk (depending on Hypervisor) must have enough free space to allow the Snapshot to be open for as long as the backup runs. This can lead to crashes and consolidation issues, which are usually painful. Zerto is a log-based replication product, for that I give it a 10 out of 10.
I've been using it over a year now, and the product has kept improving. It is easy to upgrade to the next minor or major release.
In terms of advice, I would say become VPN, as well as VMware or Hyper-V, savvy.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Cloud Partner.
Network Administrator at a financial services firm
Can quickly recover from any disaster with very little downtime utilizing a user interface that requires minimal experience
Pros and Cons
- "The ability to test which virtual machines can be failed over to our DR site without interruption of our production environment."
- "The only issue that I observed was that depending on the number of virtual machines that are being replicated, you will have to provision the appropriate bandwidth for the link that the replicated systems will traverse."
What is our primary use case?
Zerto is used to provide real-time replication for the important virtual machines that my organisation uses to our Disaster Recovery (DR) site to ensure business continuity.
What is most valuable?
The ability to test which virtual machines can be failed over to our DR site without interruption of our production environment. Being able to do file level recovery in case you delete a file accidentally or want to recover from a ransomware attack.
How has it helped my organization?
It allows for my organization to quickly recover from any disaster with very little downtime utilizing a user interface that requires minimal knowledge or experience.
What needs improvement?
I cannot think of any new features that should be added at the moment. With time, I should be able to make suggestions.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
None whatsoever.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The only issue that I observed was that depending on the number of virtual machines that are being replicated, you will have to provision the appropriate bandwidth for the link that the replicated systems will traverse. Zerto gives you a bandwidth calculation estimate, but in my case that still was not enough to handle the volume of traffic being generated by our virtual machines.
How are customer service and technical support?
10 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used to use Veeam Backup and Replication. We encountered some loss of connectivity with Veeam when we replicated some of our larger virtual machines that we hosted on our older virtual machine hosts.
How was the initial setup?
It was straightforward and easy to setup. Once the software was executed, all that was needed was the basic environment details as well as the hypervisor information.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented through a vendor team. They were very experienced and were able to provide detailed answers to all of our questions.
What was our ROI?
We expect to achieve a ROI within four years of the purchase. However, the ability to almost instantly failover and the fast file level ransomware recovering times give you that peace of mind that allows for low stress levels.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The setup will require that you have a domain controller and DNS at your DR site as well as a second hypervisor product (VMware vCenter Server/Microsoft Hyper-V) there as well. So, the additional software licensing will have to be factored into your operational budget.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
No, we did not. When we did our research, Zerto was the name that always came out as the market leader.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Zerto
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Zerto. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,562 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Engineer at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Easy to configure replication groups and multiple options for recovery of virtual machines
What is most valuable?
Simple, fast install
Easy upgrades
Grouping virtual machines by application, not LUN
Automatic IP address change
How has it helped my organization?
Simplified the way annual DR tests are performed as well as being a tool for migrating workloads between data centers as needed.
What needs improvement?
Would like to see additional reports after recovery operations with details on recovery of each VM
For how long have I used the solution?
2 years
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Sales and customer service are responsive to questions.
Technical Support:Technical Support is very helpful. They reply to phone or email quickly.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Used VMware SRM previously
How was the initial setup?
Straightforward, simple deployment
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Center Expert with 501-1,000 employees
Zerto just works
What is most valuable?
Near-zero RPO, granular selection of individual VMs and the very simple setup and management.
How has it helped my organization?
Reduced DR strategy documentation and procedures.
What needs improvement?
Physical servers would be a nice enhancement. I would also like to see the backup portion really enhanced further.
For how long have I used the solution?
3 Years +
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Deployment is so easy, so no.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Excellent
Technical Support:Excellent
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Yes. The product(s) I was using for replication were not as efficient and could not provide nearly as low of an RPO as Zerto.
How was the initial setup?
Easy
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Veeam replication, SRM and array-based.
What other advice do I have?
I work for a data center solutions company and DR was always the toughest challenge. I have recommended numerous solutions to my customers over the years but when we stumbled upon Zerto 4 years ago it has become our standard recommendation in these projects. It's easy to setup and manage but best of all...it just works as expected.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I work for a Zerto partner but have used this product in numerous projects and have much direct experience with it.
Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Reduces downtime and is fast and efficient
Pros and Cons
- "The stability is good, and I have never had any customers say anything bad about it. Some have used it for years and have not had any problems."
- "Zerto added the backup feature, but it's not quite up to speed yet when you compare it with the backup capabilities of other solutions out there."
What is our primary use case?
My primary use case is doing demos and testing to make sure that Zerto is going to work for our customers. I test it mainly for disaster recovery and backup.
We've tested with VMware, Zadara, and AWS.
What is most valuable?
My clients found the DR feature to be the most valuable. It's something they deal with daily from a virtual machine using VMware, Amazon, or Azure.
Zerto absolutely helped to reduce downtime. My customers can bring up their machine somewhere else, and they can test on it.
Zerto's speed of recovery is very fast and efficient whenever I tested it.
What needs improvement?
Zerto added the backup feature, but it's not quite up to speed yet when you compare it with the backup capabilities of other solutions out there.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used Zerto off and on for about a year and a half.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good, and I have never had any customers say anything bad about it. Some have used it for years and have not had any problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Zerto can be scaled to any number of servers that you need.
How are customer service and support?
My customers have used Zerto's technical support and had no problems with it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My clients loved Commvault from a backup side of things, but Commvault just didn't do the DR right for them. It was not quick real-time DR. They brought in Zerto, and it worked phenomenally for their production systems.
From a backup perspective, Commvault is really good, but from a DR perspective, Zerto is way better. It's much quicker and easier to use, and it works right out of the box.
What was our ROI?
My customers said that though they had to pay for it, they were glad they bought it because Zerto works. It's got really great ROI coming from that perspective.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing model is good. The price is a little bit expensive, but for what customers get on it, it tends to pay for itself. However, if more and more companies start to improve, then Zerto may need to look at their pricing and make it a little better.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Veeam, Cohesity, and RackWare. Zerto is by far the best disaster recovery product out there.
What other advice do I have?
You should set it up, test it on a few machines, and also test it in multiple environments. Most people have multiple clouds, so make sure you try it with VMware, AWS, etc. Also, decide whether you want to do all your critical tasks with Zerto and fully plan your DR as the top-level. Determine what is most important and then scale it down to the least important. You can then implement Zerto from that perspective.
Overall, I would rate Zerto at nine on a scale from one to ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Pr. UNIX Sys Admin at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We're able to replicate entire systems between data centers instead of setting up replication within the applications.
What is most valuable?
Replication for disaster recovery between data centers is valuable.
How has it helped my organization?
Zerto allows us to replicate entire systems between data centers instead of setting up replication within the applications, which sometimes is non-existent.
What needs improvement?
The backup capabilities require too much disk space and I would like to see better compression. or deduplication built in to reduce the amount of WAN traffic. It would also be nice to have it be able to monitor a VM to let you know how much bandwidth a particular VM would require to replicate.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for nine months.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We have had no issues with the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is all about bandwidth, so the only issue we had was trying to guess how much bandwidth we would need.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used point solutions for our disaster recovery needs and we were very selective about the applications we would setup with disaster recovery due to costs.
How was the initial setup?
The Zerto setup is very easy. The difficult task is setting up any processes that need to be run after a failover.
What about the implementation team?
This was all setup in house.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Cloud Architect with 501-1,000 employees
With it, we're able to provide our customers with disaster recovery options that work, but when we scaled, we had slight issues protecting SQL servers.
What is most valuable?
Being able to provide customers with DR options that work.
How has it helped my organization?
We are a Cloud Services provider that owns and operates data centers coast-to-coast.
For how long have I used the solution?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
no
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
no
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Only slightly when using it to protect 37 SQL servers. The high IOPS have been dealt with and we have solved that issue.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
excellent
Technical Support:excellent
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used many other solutions, but this is the one we reached for first.
How was the initial setup?
Yes - super simple.
What other advice do I have?
When you can't afford to risk your data, Zerto is the solution.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: www.tierpoint.com offers Zerto to fullfil a feature in our product profile.
IT system administrator at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees
File-level restoring to specific points in time has been very helpful
Pros and Cons
- "Implementing this solution has given us sandboxing and the ability to move VMs."
- "The backup functions are in need of improvement."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for disaster recovery.
How has it helped my organization?
Implementing this solution has given us sandboxing and the ability to move VMs. These are nice to have tools.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the Restore file, where you can go back in time on a file-level. This is very helpful.
What needs improvement?
The backup functions are in need of improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for one year.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: October 2024
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Good summary. I totally agree that Zerto is very simple to install and maintain. Creating groups of protected VMs is easy with the newly enhanced work flow. Anyone looking to replicate VMware or Hyper-V machines should give Zerto a good look.