Zerto Reviews

Replication for disaster recovery between data centers is valuable.

Zerto allows us to replicate entire systems between data centers instead of setting up replication within the applications, which sometimes is non-existent.

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.

I've been using it for nine months.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no performance issues.

Scalability is all about bandwidth, so the only issue we had was trying to guess how much bandwidth we would need.

Technical support is good.

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.

The Zerto setup is very easy. The difficult task is setting up any processes that need to be run after a failover.

This was all setup in house.

We primarily use Zerto Virtual Replication to protect groups of servers in our production data center, replicating them to a secondary site. We also protect essential test and dev servers.

I have also used it in a past role to carry out a datacenter migration project. 

The single pane of glass in Zerto Virtual Replication and ease of use is what makes Zerto different from other replication products that I have used in the past. You can clearly see if something is not quite right in your disaster recovery plan before you have an actual disaster.

Zerto has made Disaster Recover and Business Continuity Planning tests much easier and quicker. Even when doing 'Live' tests, we are able to confirm beforehand that everything looks OK. This means less time troubleshooting on the day of the test.

The product is improving all the time and I think the Zerto team have quite a good handle on things. I found the Local ZertoCON meetup/conference particularly useful to hear about different user cases. However, sometimes it feels like the QA is not great, as the previous two updates have been bug fixes.

• Interoperability between Hyper-V, ESX, vCloud, and AWS.
• Very easy to use
• Reliable
• Fast
• Also the architecture (on the ISP side) is designed with isolation and multi-tenancy in mind, so it's safely deployable on an ISP environment.

It allows smooth migrations which would be a lot more difficult with other technologies.

• A "manual mode" which would allow the user to failover the VMs but keeping them powered off at destination

• More powerful scripting engine

• Ability to move protected VMs between VPGs
• More reliable ETA on VPG syncronization
• root-level user for VRA installation ( at the moment the user "root" is hardcoded )
• Bandwidth throttling schedule should include days of week

I've used it for four months.

Not at all.

There were no issues.

There were no issues.

Great pre-sales experience, and good support.

8/10.

It was pretty straightforward.

I love the application, and it has become essential in my work.

It is easy to setup and manage.

Provides a simple interface for VM DR.

Needs compatibility with multi-tiered applications, such as Sharepoint, for testing.

One to two years.

No.

No.

Fair, depending on which location you get in contact with: They can be difficult to deal with and don't understand the product in which they are servicing.

Not applicable.

It is very straightforward. A simple wizard to install.

I didn't personally deal with the licensing structure.

You should evaluate Site Recovery Manager by VMware. It is more expensive, but works better.

Ensure you run an evaluation and test failovers to verify it will meet your individualized needs.

We use it for disaster recovery purposes. Since Zerto offers a near recovery point objective recovery, we utilize it to validate our servers from one location to another.

By implementing Zerto, we wanted to ensure that in the event of a disaster or ransomware, we are able to recover and not lose any significant amount of data.

Zerto is very easy to use. Installation is about half an hour, and then it starts protecting the data and VMs. It is not very cumbersome. The UI is built very well. It is fairly self-explanatory. To be able to stand up a product you have never seen in half an hour and get it functioning and protecting speaks to how good the UI and workflow are.

Zerto has near-synchronous replication. As a change is made on site A, it gets copied across the network to site B. We are five or six seconds behind production. If I have a heavily used system and I use traditional backups, I could be anywhere from 5 minutes to 23 hours behind. With Zerto, I am single-digit seconds behind. That works well for us.

Our disaster recovery test, which used to span an entire week, now takes two days. We used to recover our servers in the first two or three days with a backup product and then test for two days before tearing it all down. Now, we spend half a day on new servers and ensuring things work with networking, etc. We test the next day, and we are done in two days. Across the entire company, we are able to save significant man-hours by shortening the test from a week to two days. We are now doing smaller tests once a month and larger tests once a year.

Zerto has reduced our DR testing time by 60% to 70%. We are also able to do more disaster recovery testing. Previously, we were doing it once a year, whereas now, we are doing smaller tests once a month and our large tests once a year.

In recovery point objectives, we are single-digit seconds behind. In terms of RTOs, I can recover 350 VMs in 30 minutes. It takes less than several seconds to restore a single VM. From days to 30 minutes for 350 compared to 100 VMs is an incredible time-saving in terms of RTOs and RPOs for us.

I find it easy to use, and the UI is really easy to navigate. We reduced our time with backups from days to less than half an hour for the same data service. 

The best aspect of Zerto is being able to test any day, any time. It provides a quick look to ensure everything is functioning correctly from site A to site B. 

I would like to see different reporting options than what is currently available. I would like to be able to grab different data points that do not currently exist in the reporting system. 

I would also like to see more of a runbook or playbook for using Zerto. If I have 350 objects that I am protecting, I would like Zerto to be able to fire them up in one order, rather than having to manually bring them up in a sequence.

I have used the solution for at least six years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

The servers and VMs that we are protecting are across different business units. We have three people who are the administrators of the solution. 120 people were the testers, but there are only three full-time admins for it.

I would definitely rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I was using BMC Avamar Virtual Edition, which is really a BRS kind of product versus a disaster recovery product.

It is very easy to deploy. For us, the initial setup takes about half an hour.

In terms of maintenance, the most that we ever had to do with Zerto was install a patch. When there is a new patch, we give it a couple of months to make sure there are no other issues that pop up, but it is normal patching. We do not have to babysit it. We log in and get it done, and it just does what it is supposed to do.

Determining ROI is tough. In terms of man-hours, in the last disaster test, we had 120 users in the system. If we did that over a week, it would be 120 times 5 days. With 10-hour days, that is 6,000 man-hours. We now do it in 8-hour days or 1,920 hours. We are talking about a 4,080-hour difference between the old and new ways of doing things.

We feel it is pretty cost-efficient. For the amount of protection that we get for Zerto, we feel that it is at an excellent price point, especially compared to some of the other vendors that were just backup solutions. For all that it does, we feel that the price is good.

We dabbled in RecoverPoint a long time ago. At that time, RecoverPoint was specifically for physical machines and not virtual machines. The complexities with RecoverPoint and SRM, and having to manage two or three different products, made Zerto much more attractive. I am changing IP addresses, doing recovery, and replication all in Zerto. It is an all-in-one product, eliminating the need for two or three other things from different vendors.

It is also vendor agnostic, which is not the case with some other vendors. I can have HPE on one side and Pure on the other side for storage. I can have VMware on one side and Hyper-V potentially on the other side. Zerto can move data from site A to B. It does not care what we are using for servers or storage.

I would absolutely recommend Zerto. It is almost the only product in its market space that provides what it promises, such as near real-time replication and protection. The cost is very reasonable. There is no reason not to suggest Zerto for disaster recovery and ransomware protection. 

I would rate Zerto a ten out of ten.