Zerto Reviews

We utilize Zerto as part of our disaster recovery toolset. We employ a multi-tiered model, catering to a select group of customers, primarily hospital clusters. These customers maintain on-premise networks with cloud-based disaster recovery. In this managed service offering, we leverage Zerto to facilitate their cloud recovery.

The replication is quick. We encountered some challenges replicating the data during the first full copy. Since we weren't using Zerto, I suspect the bandwidth requirements for replication were a bottleneck for us. However, once the initial copy was complete, the process became seamless. The recovery was near zero after the first replication. Zerto worked perfectly.

We implemented Zerto because it supports a multi-tenant model, which was a critical requirement for us. We have five tenants located on-premises across five different data centers. However, we only have a single disaster recovery site in the cloud. Zerto's solution enabled us to consolidate our disaster recovery needs. Previously, managing five separate data protection solutions for each data center and five different cloud recovery subscriptions would have been incredibly expensive. Zerto significantly reduced our costs. Additionally, Zerto provides a single-pane-of-glass dashboard, allowing us to manage our infrastructure efficiently and effectively. This comprehensive view offers full control over our applications and complete visibility into all our tenants. As an infrastructure manager, I believe these features are the most valuable contributions Zerto has made to our organization.

Zerto has helped save around 30 percent of our time.

Zerto has helped achieve significant cost savings.

In the VMS portal, we had a relatively small amount of data overall. We also had multiple tenants, each with a maximum of 20 to 30 virtual machines on-premises. These VMs weren't particularly large. As a result, recovery was quick, typically taking less than a minute. My Recovery Time Objective would be less than a minute for any VM, even for a complete migration of all on-premises VMs to the cloud.

While I wasn't privy to the details of the client's previous DR solution before implementing Zerto, our discussions revealed significant time savings with Zerto's recovery process. Compared to their prior on-premises DR approach, Zerto offers a substantial reduction in recovery time – at least 15 to 20 minutes faster. This improvement stems from eliminating the need to coordinate with personnel and the time required for on-premises recovery procedures at their dedicated DR site. Previously, they relied on manual, on-premises to on-premises recovery, which inherently took longer. However, a direct comparison between their old solution and Zerto wouldn't be entirely accurate. Zerto offers significant efficiency gains, boasting up to 200 percent improvement.

Migrating data through Zerto is straightforward with careful planning. Our first experience involved Zerto's support throughout the process. While initially challenging due to our lack of experience, we were able to navigate the initial setup. One hurdle we faced was optimizing network traffic for the initial data replication from on-premises to the cloud. However, we embraced the learning curve, documenting everything as we gained control of the environment. This ensured a smooth integration for subsequent tenants. While the first migration presented some difficulties, as is to be expected, Zerto's excellent support made the process manageable. Their responsiveness in explaining and resolving issues made it a positive experience overall.

The RPO was very close to zero, meaning there was minimal data loss between replications. However, this could be impacted by the specific database being hosted and other factors. For application servers or virtual machines replicated on-premises to the cloud, I believe there was negligible lag or delay, assuming no network issues. Bandwidth and network traffic did play a role – we observed instances of slower RPO due to traffic spikes or network events. However, with Zerto providing the recommended data bandwidth, we encountered minimal challenges. In most cases, I'd say 90 percent of the data was synchronized almost constantly. The only exception was when network issues arose.

Our data center experienced an issue, necessitating a disaster recovery procedure. Fortunately, data loss seems minimal, and the impact on our clients appears negligible. This is partly due to the managed service we provide for a tenant, who fortunately didn't perceive any significant data loss. The success of the recovery is also attributed to our user-friendly, always-in-sync system. Upon receiving alerts and notifications, we promptly informed the client, who then quickly authorized the recovery process. From our perspective, the recovery went smoothly with minimal challenges. In the actual scenario, we believe data loss was negligible. While some data loss might have occurred technically, it wasn't significant enough to cause any noticeable impact on the client. It's important to note that our monitoring team maintained complete control of the situation, allowing for swift decision-making and a speedy recovery.

In a data recovery scenario, we'll still have our database administrator, Linux administrator, storage administrator, and Zerto operator available. While Zerto can automate disaster recovery and VM restoration, it's important to remember that it's not a foolproof solution. Even though Zerto streamlines the process, a well-prepared organization will always maintain backups and ensure a dedicated team is in place for data recovery. Zerto doesn't reduce the number of personnel involved; rather, it enhances their productivity by freeing them up for other tasks during a recovery event. During a recovery, it's still recommended to have everyone on call. While Zerto handles most recoveries, there may be situations where manual intervention is necessary. By being fully prepared, our organization can effectively address any data recovery situation.

It is easy to manage and monitor the DR plans using the Zerto GUI. 

Zerto's most valuable features include its user-friendly interface, multi-tenancy capabilities, and near-zero downtime recovery. Zerto is easy to learn and use, even for those with limited technical experience. Additionally, Zerto's failover testing functionality allows us to run tests in real time without impacting production systems.

We encountered some issues during Active Directory recovery. When we implemented Active Directory, we provided feedback to Zerto regarding the challenges of recovering AD from the on-premises environment to the disaster recovery site. Unlike other virtual machines, AD recovery presents unique difficulties due to its active-active nature. It's unclear whether these challenges stem from Zerto itself or limitations within Microsoft Active Directory. However, in our experience using Zerto for AD recovery compared to other technologies, we faced data discrepancies that necessitated workarounds to bring AD online at the DR site.

Certain applications we migrated from production relied on Active Directory authentication. To ensure successful application functionality at the DR site, a functional AD environment was a prerequisite to application migration. Therefore, our initial step involved copying and guaranteeing a running AD instance on the DR side before application recovery.

However, upon attempting application authentication on the DR side, data inconsistencies prevented successful authentication. To address this, we created an isolated clone of the AD environment and conducted tests. Through trial and error, we were able to develop workarounds to resolve the issue. Notably, these challenges were specific to Active Directory; other VMs didn't exhibit similar problems.

I have been using Zerto for over 3 years.

Zerto has been very stable for us. We do apply patch releases and upgrades whenever necessary to ensure continued stability. Fortunately, we haven't encountered any major bugs or issues that would cause significant downtime, unlike what we've experienced with some other tools. Zerto has been a reliable choice for us.

I would rate the stability of Zerto 9 out of 10.

I would rate the scalability of Zerto nine out of ten.

The technical support is fantastic. They offer same-day assistance, and their documentation is clear and comprehensive.

Positive

Before implementing Zerto, the client's disaster recovery relied on an on-premises to on-premises failover strategy. Seeking a cloud-based solution, they chose Zerto to leverage its expertise in this area.

We previously used another tool for DR orchestration. While Zerto can also perform recoveries, it focuses on virtual machines and doesn't extend to the operating system or database level for starting and stopping applications within those VMs. Despite these limitations, Zerto excelled in its support. The Zerto team provided excellent assistance whenever we faced challenges, joined calls to help us troubleshoot, and offered clear timelines for resolving issues. Their documentation was also thorough. In contrast, the previous DR tool lacked comparable support and documentation. This stark difference in support quality is why we favored Zerto and ultimately removed the other tool from our project. Currently, we rely solely on Zerto for our existing tenants, and we plan to continue using it for future ones as well.

We encountered some challenges during the initial setup. Zerto offers several data replication options, I believe 2 or 3. These include copying data to our hard drive or storage box, copying it to the DSR site, and replicating it over the network. However, only network replication worked for us.

The issue might have been related to bandwidth requirements. It's possible that either Zerto itself or our network infrastructure wasn't up to par. We faced some challenges during that initial phase.

However, after the initial setup and the application of delta copying, which happens daily, we rarely experienced any replication issues. Most of the time, network glitches and fluctuations caused brief disconnections, but overall, replication ran smoothly.

We went into the Zerto deployment with a clean slate. Both team members were new to Zerto, so we were all learning as we went. This initial deployment was challenging, but it gave us valuable hands-on experience. Once we had a firm grasp of the environment, onboarding subsequent tenants became seamless. We developed a clear plan and approach, which streamlined the process for future deployments. Technically, the challenges weren't ongoing. The main hurdle was understanding how to integrate Zerto with our existing infrastructure. While that initial learning curve was steep, Zerto's excellent support helped us navigate it successfully.

The deployment time for Zerto varies depending on the complexity of your environment. More complex environments will require a longer replication process. However, on average, we can onboard a new customer within 1 month. This timeframe encompasses the entire process, from the initial planning phase to the deployment of up to 30 VMs within a tenant.

Our project involved 2 separate IT teams at 2 different locations. One team acted as the managed service provider, while the other represented the client side. The client-side team, located on-premises, provided us with essential information about their data centers. This included details on virtual machines, such as their size, quantity, and basic data collection metrics. They also helped us identify their storage requirements. Based on this information, we planned our cloud storage procurement and other necessary actions. The project team comprised approximately 10 to 15 people, including project managers, IT personnel, storage specialists, network engineers, and development experts.

I would rate Zerto 10 out of 10.

Our organization uses Zerto to manage the replication of data centers from 7 on-premises locations to the IBM cloud for our midsize clients.

Our environment consists of VMware, data storage, and a network, with Zerto deployed for disaster recovery. While VCDM and VMware are managed by our cloud provider, we maintain 5 additional technologies with a team of 8 people.

We experienced a brief on-premises outage. Fortunately, we were able to recover quickly using Zerto. The software triggered an alert, notifying our monitoring team. These features proved to be very helpful. Additionally, we were able to promptly contact our clients and explain the situation. They responded quickly and effectively, minimizing the impact on their end. Our clients were pleased with the response.

I recommend Zerto to others.

We had a specific use case for one of our clients that had a regulatory requirement for backups to be further than what we were already able to give with our current backup structure. We are actually a global company and our global headquarters are in Northern Ireland. We're located in Pennsylvania. We're the North American headquarters. We implemented Zerto, and we replicate on our Northern Ireland site. That got us more business with our clients.

We needed to meet the requirements of the client, and, previous to this solution, we would not have been able to meet the distance. That's why we implemented it.

The journaling is the most valuable aspect of the solution. The near synchronous authentication is great. It's critical for our organization.

We haven't had to use Zerto for blocking threats, however, we like that we have it as an option.

We do not do disaster recovery in the cloud or the AWS platform. It can do it. We just don't opt to use it that way.

We've used the solution to protect virtual machines.

It's had a positive effect on our RPOs. Our RPOs are eight seconds. It blows past RPOs out of the water. It's great.

The speed of recovery is excellent. We've only had to test it and never used it in production. That said, it works better than anything we've used previously. 

It's easy to migrate data. 

Its ability to keep users collaborating during a data migration is good. It goes very quickly, so it's not a disruption.

The impact on our RTOs is great. It far exceeds what we've needed it to do.

It will save us time in a data recovery situation.

It's helped us reduce our DR testing. It has gone from hours to minutes under Zerto.

It enables us to make better use of our staff. We have reduced the number of staff involved in overall DR management. 

Their data backup and restore have some ways to go. We looked at replacing our traditional backup system with Zerto and found it was lacking about a year ago. We have Commvault, which is very customizable and feature-rich in comparison. Their offering needs to be more robust.

I have used the solution for close to six years.

The stability is great. We haven't had any issues with it. 

The scalability is very good. It can scale out to quite a lot of VMs.

I've contacted technical support once or twice. It was for integration and customization and they've been great.

Positive

I was involved in the initial setup, which was very straightforward. It took about a day to set up. Two people were involved in the deployment.

The only maintenance is the annual upgrade. It's pretty much set and forget.

We handled the setup with the help of Zerto.

It's hard to quantify the ROI. 

The pricing is pretty fair. It's competitive.

We did look into VMware. It didn't meet our requirements.

The solution has not replaced any of our legacy backup systems.

It hasn't helped us to reduce downtime, as we haven't had any yet.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The only issue is that someone would move the VMs involved around. If you have a global team, make sure they understand the strategy and everyone is on the same page so that issues like that don't arise. We had silos on our side and once we dealt with that, we were fine.

We mostly use Zerto to replicate applications and database servers between our primary data center and our disaster recovery site. We have a number of business applications, Oracle servers, and three sites that we replicate to our DR site, and Zerto works well.

We deployed Zerto on private cloud and on-prem.

Zerto is low maintenance, so I can set it and forget it. It has a great process and an excellent solution.

We use Zerto to protect our virtual machines and virtual database servers.

Zerto has reduced the staff involved in the data recovery situation because we don't need to involve the backup team. We only require a couple of people to do a failover.

As our backup is managed by a separate team, we can use Disaster Recovery without involving the virtualization team. We do not need to involve the storage or backup teams, as Zerto takes care of all that. Therefore, only one or two people are needed for overall backup and management.

I appreciate Zerto's near synchronous replication, point-in-time restore, brick-level restore, and file-level restore features. We haven't had to use the feature in a real disaster recovery scenario yet, but we tested it thoroughly. The only manual part was changing the DNS from the production IP to the DR IP. Everything else worked perfectly. 

Zerto is user-friendly.

It would be beneficial if we could gain insight into DNS record reporting from the DR side, however, this is not a realistic expectation due to the fact that different companies use different hardware and different methods of DNS management. It would be advantageous if Zerto had plugins for Infoblox, Cisco, or load balancers, as this would enable us to better manage those records. Unfortunately, this is not a realistic expectation as these products are usually managed by the middleware or a network team, which has no relation to their application.

I have been using the solution for around three years.

Zerto is stable.

Zerto is certainly scalable and easy to deploy. We do not use as many licenses as they have available, but we are in the process of rolling Zerto out to all business users and applications.

Zerto's technical support is great.

Positive

We previously used SAN replication and storage replication. We also used some products from Veritas, but now we use Zerto, which is easier to set up. Zerto is great.

The initial setup is straightforward. I had no prior knowledge of Zerto when we first deployed the solution, so I had a few conversations with engineers, but other than that, it was relatively easy to learn and I was able to understand the whole process. The deployment took less than two weeks to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment.

I give the solution a nine out of ten. Zerto is a great solution that does exactly what it advertises and I definitely recommend it.

Zerto requires regular updates and maintenance. However, it is mostly a "set and forget" system, which is very convenient. This allows me to focus on other tasks.

Zerto has its own use cases, so we cannot replicate an entire site, but if we have to select certain products or applications that need to be replicated, such as a DR site, then it is an excellent solution to use. However, Zerto is not suitable for everyone and it would be difficult to do it on a large scale. For specific applications, it is great. I could not replicate my whole data center with Zerto, as it would be too complex. Nevertheless, Zerto is great for certain applications.

We are using it to decommission a data center, then moving the data over to other data centers that will still persist within our environment. Also, we now have a more robust disaster recovery for a lot of our non-vital, non-critical applications.

From a management perspective, one of the biggest benefits is to see the excitement of your engineers having a tool that truly enables them, really making their lives easier. That is something that I love. When we came out of the PoC, their eyes were just wide with excitement of what was possible now.

The replication would be the best feature. It increases our DR capabilities. We put a lot of time and effort into DR overall. For the amount of time that it takes to test and go through those activities on a regular, recurring basis, well, this cuts down on the time commitment, not just by the infrastructure team, but by the application teams and all their peripherals. Even just from a man-hours perspective, it is a huge cost savings. You cut down three hours per application, and an application has anywhere from three to 12 developers plus others who support that application. So, you are probably looking at 20 people times three hours, then times however many applications we have, which is in the thousands. That compounds pretty quickly.

We have been officially using it for three weeks.

It seems as though everything on the scalability factor checks out. However, we will see that very soon in our use case.

We have thousands of applications and servers. There is an exorbitant amount of data. 

The support that came in and engaged with us, setting us up through the PoC, were fantastic. Coming out of it, I already have five engineers who have gone through multiple levels of certifications. So, it appears as though that technical expertise, to be able to improve themselves, is right there at their fingertips. It seems highly available. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have used Site Reliability Manager (SRM), which is capable, but to a lesser degree. Zerto is 10 times to 100 times easier to use. It is amazingly fast.

I was not involved in the initial setup or deployment.

From the team, the deployment was very straightforward. The proof of concept that we ran took a little over a week. They were able to stand it up from scratch, deploy, and run several tests of varying complexities. Everything went smoothly. We put a contract and agreement together in record timing for our company.

We had a terrific hands-on proof of concept with the Zerto team, where they came in and worked with our infrastructure engineers. Our engineers were completely amazed by the solution's capabilities. As quickly as we could get our licensing in place, we did. Now, we have had our licenses assigned for the last two or three weeks.

From our perspective, we are already thin-staffed as it is. So, Zerto has allowed us to focus on other things that are equally important.

We have not been able to apply ROI yet, just because of our circumstances. We are waiting on teams to move out of the data center. However, we are now poised and ready. Once that onslaught of requests come in, that is when we will really see the return on it.

If you are a numbers person, the benefit far outweighs the cost from any other competing software or service provider. When you are talking about trying to keep a reduced amount of engineers in the happiest state possible in their work environment to do the workload that they had traditionally done with double the amount of people on their teams, this tool relieves all the stress that they are carrying with them on a daily basis, even though they don't have to implement it on a daily basis. I have seen that firsthand. That return on investment is almost invaluable.

They could iron out the licensing aspect of it, so we might be a bit quicker when implementing and starting to use it. At the same time, our sales rep and all the supporting team members from HPE and Zerto were great and very flexible. It is hard to be critical of that.

We have not done another valuation recently. Zerto was the first in quite some time.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.

It's deployed on private cloud. I have two data centers, one in New Jersey, one in Ohio, which is my job site. I'm using a Zerto instance for my servers and another for my VDI machines. I can replicate everything.

When COVID started, everybody started to work from home and the internet connection to our New Jersey data center was saturated. But we had the same internet connection in Ohio, so why not use it? We needed to spread the load between data centers, so I used Zerto to failover 60 of our 175 users in New Jersey to Ohio, and they were able to work for nine months from Ohio. They were able to connect to their machines from home via Ohio, and it worked perfectly. Later, when we realized that the COVID situation would continue, we increased our internet connection to New Jersey and, using Zerto, I migrated all 60 users back. When COVID happened, Zerto saved the day. We didn't have to stop our business for a minute. It was seamless.

We also had problems, a few times, with SQL Server. That was pretty early on in our use of Zerto, and I used Zerto to recover it from our other site. We were on SQL on the other site for a week until they figured out what was going on and fixed everything. After that, I used Zerto and migrated back to New Jersey. That was a big save.

When I started with this company we used the Double-Take solution. It was very cumbersome and very difficult and we could only back up some servers. And when something happened, we could only have a limited number of people connect. When we started using Zerto, I was able to give every user a machine. Everybody could now log in to their machines and see all the applications, everything the same as it was before. People couldn't believe that was possible. To do it we created a fully virtualized environment.

In addition, we are a very heavily regulated organization because we're working under SEC guidelines. We have large institutional clients like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. For them, we have to prove our resilience and our ability to work in any situation. If we cannot do that, they will pull their money out. We run DR tests and we share the test results with them. Our clients want to see them. We couldn't do that without this solution. Zerto gives us the easiest and the most reliable way to do it. When we ran DR tests before we had Zerto, it was always very difficult. It would take almost a day to bring things back. With Zerto, I can have everything back in 15 minutes. In 15 minutes everyone can connect and start to work.

With our old solution, in a DR situation, we would need three system administrators working for hours before they got things to a point where a few people could start working again. And it took almost 24 hours to get everything back. And at the end of that time, we were exhausted. The first time we did it with Zerto, for practice, we clicked a couple of times and just sat back and watched.

It decreases the time it takes to recover and the number of people needed to do it. We were planning to hire a person who would be dedicated to our DR solution, before Zerto, because that was the only way we had found it could be done. When we installed Zerto for a DR test, we were surprised how easy it was to do it. When we hired another system administrator, because we had grown as a company, I gave him something like a half-hour lesson on how to use Zerto and he started to use it himself.

The continuous data protection is very important. Even if it's synchronous, right now we are at seven seconds difference, so we practically have all our data available, always.

Our old solution, Double-Take, required a lot of scripts and they were prone to mistakes. Zerto is so easy to use that when I showed it to my manager, he said jokingly, "Huh. I could use it myself, I don't need you." Zerto is most elegant. When I look at what's going inside Zerto, I see there is a ton of scripting but it's hidden from me. I just need to specify what I want to protect and where I want to protect it; very simple stuff. When they first brought in the solution, I saw what they were doing, how they were running all these commands, but again, I don't need to do any of that. If you do things right and you test it, it will just work with no issues at all. Nobody can come close to the elegance of Zerto.

I have been using Zerto since 2010 or 2011. We got Zerto when it was at version 1.2. They had just started.

I just upgraded to 9.0 U1. We ran our tests for IT a few days ago, because we made some network changes. And Zerto just worked perfectly.

From what I understand, if instead of 15 servers you need to protect 100 servers or 2,000 servers, if you properly plan everything it doesn't matter how many servers you have. To bring back 15 servers or 115, 15 VMs for 115 VMs, there is no difference. It will take the same amount of time.

Their technical support is great. When we have issues they work with us and troubleshoot until we figure out what is going on. I have no complaints. 

Initially, we used Double-Take on physical servers. We had five physical servers in our data center at that time. Later, we migrated all our servers from physical to virtual, using Compellent storage at the time. We were able to replicate our storage for DR, but it took a long time because there was a lot of manual work that was not scriptable. After that we found another solution, but it also required a lot of scripting and it was pretty cumbersome. It worked but it was pretty difficult.

Finally, Zerto came to us and we tried it. It was just day and night, a big difference between the previous solution and Zerto.

If you give me two Windows Servers, it will take less than 24 hours to replicate everything and you can already run a DR test. It's really amazing.

Initially with Zerto, every time there was an upgrade, I practically had to do everything from scratch. I had to recreate the groups and everything else. It didn't work well and I told them, "This is a big issue." In version 5, I believe, they resolved this and I could pick up my environment and restore it. When I upgraded my Zerto from version 8 to 9, it worked great and automatically. After half an hour I was running a brand new environment.

Every single penny we have invested in Zerto has been worth it. It has allowed us to grow our business and acquire more clients. Our clients are very happy with our DR solution. That's why they give us more money. For a company like ours, the more money we manage, the more revenue we have. From that perspective, Zerto has paid for itself 100 times.

It was a little bit expensive. It took a long time for us to get DR for our workstations. It's one thing when you have 15 servers, but when we needed to bring on almost another 200 users, and each was the same price as the servers, it was too expensive. But Zerto worked with us and gave us a solution that was pretty decent in terms of price. For my company, it was a good solution.

We bought those initial 200 licenses and we pay for maintenance every year, but it's stable. We don't have any issues. We get support, we can upgrade to a new version when we want, and they will support the changes on the ESX host.

I have looked at Commvault and HPE but I haven't found anything I like, so far, as much as Zerto.

Initially, when we looked at some of the other solutions, before Zerto, we were thinking that we would have a special person who would constantly build scripts. But Zerto is so simple that I  don't spend much time on this side of things anymore. My manager said, "I don't need to worry if you go on vacation because I can just open the console and click 'Failover,' and that's it. Everything will be done in the background." Zerto is an incredible solution.

It's not only about how much easier it is to install, set up, configure and, after that, run tests for DR. It also works. With previous solutions, DR tests failed a few times because they didn't work well or took too long. We would start a DR test at nine o'clock in the morning and we still couldn't bring things up until three in the afternoon. People couldn't wait that long. They hated those DR tests. Now, when we run DR tests at nine o'clock, everybody is back by 10 o'clock. We're really happy with this kind of scenario.

When we talk to other vendors I say to them, "Okay, you want me to try your solution. Can you promise me, when it comes to DR tests or real DR, that in 15 minutes I can start to use my DR system?" They ask me, "Who gives you this ability to run in 15 minutes?" I tell them, "Zerto. I've done DR tests with Zerto for many years, and within 15 minutes we are up and running." They are surprised.

The main thing to figure out before going with Zerto is, from a business point of view, what your company needs. What level of protection do you need? What regulations do you have to conform to? Can you survive with a seven-second difference in the data? Is 15 minutes enough or not?

Also, you need to take into consideration, from the licensing perspective, not only the Zerto licenses, but that you need to have a license for ESX, vCenter, hosts, and hardware. You need to count everything before you decide to go with Zerto. In our case, we're doing private cloud, and we needed to build that private cloud first. You have to decide if that is workable for you or you're okay using Azure or some other public cloud provider. Once you work through all that, Zerto will definitely be very good for you.

One issue we decided on, from a business perspective, was to divide our users into two groups: level one and level two. Level one users should be able to connect after 15 minutes and level-two users will be brought back after all level-one issues have been resolved, which should be within a couple of hours. When the business made that decision, we created the groups.

We're also working with Zerto as a ransomware backup solution. Right now we are using seven-day journaling but we're putting it on external storage or cloud. We're thinking about a one-year solution where we can go back to any particular point in time, bring the server back, and get all the files. We upgraded our version so we can start to use external storage. Zerto is one of the greatest applications we have for security and vigilance.

They did everything so well that I don't know how it can be improved. It's one of the best solutions among all the different components I have. I would rate most of the other solutions we're using between seven and nine out of 10. Only Zerto is a 10, along with my malware solution, Minerva Labs. Both companies are from Israel and I always grade both a 10 when I talk to others.

We have typical use cases for it: resilience and disaster recovery. They have some other functionalities that their software can help account for, but we are using its disaster recovery and resilience, which are kind of its core functions.

I have used it in many scenarios, including a temporary data center move in Europe. I had to move all my resources from Belgium to Budapest, and then back, once our data center was physically moved across town in Belgium. I am not sure how this would have been accomplished without Zerto. 

With Zerto, the move was incredibly easy to do. It was click of a button, wait 10 minutes, and everything is up, then turn on the data center. Once the data center was relocated and rebuilt, click a button, and wait a few minutes, then it now runs back to the original site. It was that easy. The data center move part was obviously the hard part, as it should have been, not keeping the applications going at a secondary site during that time. That was a pretty big success with Zerto and our largest use case for it: a data center move.

We are currently using Zerto with some more modern databases, application servers, and tertiary systems to provide redundancy and resiliency to our crown jewel application. We have been doing a lot of DR testing scenarios, part of which relies on Zerto and part of which are other mechanisms. In general, when we have done our recent testing using the Zerto portions, once we say, "Okay, we are doing this now," it is taking less than three minutes on average for the systems to be fully back online at the new location once we start. That includes booting all the Windows VMs up. The actual VMs were ready to go and functional within 30 seconds. However, some of them are larger Windows machines and those take their time to boot, getting services online and connected to everything. So, the Zerto part was literally under a minute in these test scenarios to clear a total failure and initiate our disaster recovery function.

The near real-time replication is probably the biggest value of this solution. There are some other ways to get that done, but this seemed to be the easiest and cheapest way to get near real-time replication. In most instances, our RPO is about five seconds, which is pretty aggressive and not that taxing to achieve with Zerto.

The ease of use is pretty high. It really isn't very complex to use. They did a good job with the UI, and it is fairly obvious where you need to click, what you need to click, and what you are doing. There are good confirmation screens, so you are not going to accidentally take down or move loads that you are not trying to. It is fairly user-friendly, easy to use, and you don't need to read a manual for three weeks to start using it.

Previously, our main need for Zerto was actually database cluster servers running fairly old software, SQL 2008 on Microsoft Windows clusters with none of the advanced SQL clustering functionality. Our environment is all virtualized. The way we had to present the storage to our host machines in VMware was via raw device mapping (RDM). Technically, Zerto can do that, but not very well. We have gone to some different methods for our databases, which don't actually use or rely on Zerto because the solution wasn't that functional with RDMs. This is an old, antiquated technology that we are currently moving off of. I can't really blame them, but it definitely is something they thought they could do better than they could in practice.

They had a bug recently that has come up and caused some issues. They currently have a bug in their production versions that prevents their product from functioning in some scenarios, and we have hit a few of those scenarios. Aside from that, when it is not hitting a bug, and if we're not trying to use it for our old-style, old-school databases, it functions incredibly well.

I had an early Zerto certification from their first ZertoCON conference. I received a certification from them in May 2016, so I have been using it for at least five years. I would have been one of the initial users at my company, so they have been using Zerto for at least five years.

Stability is reasonably good, but I wouldn't say excellent. We have had some odd issues with vRAs, which are little VMs that hang off of every VMware host that we have. Those aren't consistent, but they do occasionally happen. As I referenced earlier, there is a bug in the system right now that can affect my VM recovery. It tries to put too many requests into VMware at once, and VMware will timeout those requests, which causes Zerto to fail. That has not been constant throughout our use of Zerto. It is usually a flawless operation, and that is why I can still say good to very good, even though they currently have a bug. It is very uncommon for them to have anything that affects the platform negatively.

Scalability hasn't seemed to be an issue. We started out with two sites connected in the same city. Now, we are running the connected infrastructure of Zerto on three different continents. Some of those continents have various cities and/or countries involved. That has not given us an issue with scalability at all. It seems to be fairly flexible in adding whatever you need it to do. As long as you have the bandwidth capability and reasonable latency between sites, Zerto seems to work quite well.

10 to 12 people are actively in Zerto, or even know what it is besides a word that an IT guy uses to say, "It is okay." Generally speaking, their titles would be network administrator, network engineer, or senior network engineer. 

For all our sites, most of our IT staff wouldn't be allowed to mess with it. Because if you hit the wrong buttons in Zerto, you can take down an application. So, there is a fairly small list of folks who would be able to get into this. Only a few sites can actually access the management console. They are located in Louisville, Kentucky; Belgium, Budapest, and Melbourne, Australia.

I would rate the technical support as eight out of 10. They know the product very well. I have had a couple misfires at times, but they are pretty good in general.

One of the issues that we had early on was regarding some of the storage functionality, especially regarding RDMs. I had contacts and conferences with the Zerto development staff, whom I believe are in Israel, about the ability to ignore disks in Zerto for my virtual protection groups (VPGs). What they can do currently is mark them as temporary disks, then they will do a one-time copy, and that is it. However, some of those temporary disks are extremely large, so it wasn't a great answer for us. I would like the ability to ignore disks instead of still trying to replicate every disk on a VM as being protected by Zerto. The biggest thing that they can do right now is improve their product. This would have been much better a few years ago rather than now. Now, we are finding other ways around it.

We previously had some storage-based replication, which we are currently still using, but nothing that really fits the same mold that Zerto does.

Zerto's database storage replication is not good with RDMs. We are still doing storage-based replication for those. 

Our new schematic is self-replicating. It doesn't require any type of Zerto replication or storage-based replication, so that was a need removed.

It was quite straightforward. You just install the software, point it to your vCenter instance, and then deploy your vRAs, which is done automatically. Updates have been the same, e.g., quite straightforward. The only challenge with updates is if you have multiple Zerto instances that are linked to each other. To be able to replicate to different sites, they can't be out more than a half a version. For instance, I am running version 8.5 on all my sites that are currently running Zerto, but I couldn't be running those if I was running 7.5 anywhere. That would have been too far out of appliance. That is more of a minor challenge than a problem. I don't consider that to be a shortcoming, but it is well-documented, easy to figure out, and also pretty straightforward.

The first site was also kind of a learning experience. That deployment took less than a day from, "Okay, let's start the download," to, "Look, it's doing something," and you need to stand up two sites to go from site A to site B. That took less than a day to get them up and functional in at least some capacity, protecting some machines and workloads.

We generally try to perform all functions in-house instead of bringing in a third-party or contractor service to help for deployments. That was the model that we followed. We read the documentation, had Zerto's number handy in case we ran into issues, and deployed it ourselves.

There are probably only five of us (out of the 12 who have access) needed for deployment maintenance. Their titles would be network administrator, network engineer, or senior network engineer. 

It is fairly simple to deploy and maintain. We do product upgrades every six to 12 months.

We relocated all our virtual machines from Belgium to Budapest, Hungary. I am not sure how we would have done it without Zerto, because we were able to keep the data in sync. We would have needed to have a lot more expensive storage products online at the time that could have kept that replication. From what I have seen from other methods, that would have required a much higher amount of bandwidth as well, then the cost would have been extreme. The mechanisms available to us with a storage space replication would have been more labor-intensive and prone to error. It was much easier and more successful with Zerto than other ways at our disposal.

Zerto has reduced the time involved that staff would spend on a data recovery operation. We don't have dedicated resources for disaster recovery. It is a scenario where, "Everybody, stop what you are doing. This is what we are all working on right now." We haven't had a reduction in headcount because of Zerto, but we have reduced the use of existing headcount.

DR management is less time-intensive and resource intensive. Therefore, there are less staff hours involved because of Zerto, but not less headcount.

Zerto has helped to reduce downtime in any situation. The easiest one to point out was the data center move. It took minutes to move an application to a different country, then minutes once again to move it back. That would have been hours at best to days with the other solutions that we had at our disposal.

Even though we are on-prem, the licensing model was changed to more of a cloud licensing model. We pay for blocks of protected machines. You need to buy a block for use and pay for maintenance annually based on the block size that you have.

When they changed their licensing model, pricing might have gotten a little more expensive for some use cases, but it has been pretty straightforward.

It is a little easier to use than Cohesity or Rubrik, but we haven't really had another DR platform in place. 

At the time of evaluation, we did not have a good snapshot-based backup platform, such as Cohesity and Rubrik, so that was not much of an option. The only thing we were aware of and investigating was VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which is VMware's built-in system, SRM, and played around with it. In comparison to Zerto at that time, Site Recovery Manager is a nightmare. Zerto was definitely the easy button when we were last investigating solutions. Zerto was better in terms of ease of use, visibility, and costs. Frankly, these are all the metrics that we looked at, and Zerto worked better than SRM as well as it was easier and cheaper.

Do a PoC. Test it along with other solutions that you are looking at and make a decision. Our decision was easy, and it was Zerto.

We are changing the infrastructure supporting our primary crown jewel application and will be utilizing Zerto more heavily in that. We are expanding the amount of application servers as well as adding some database servers that Zerto will be responsible for, and currently aren't. We are expanding using Zerto because we are expanding the assets for our application. That is happening currently. We have been working on that switchover for the last 12 months. We are getting close to actually deploying all those changes in production, so that is a fairly recent and ongoing task.

We haven't had to deal with a data recovery situation due to ransomware or other causes. We have a combination of luck and some pretty good security measures in place to where we haven't had an impactful ransomware event, CryptoLocker event, etc. In that event, I don't think Zerto would probably be the first thing that we would try to utilize. We have some pretty good backup mechanisms as well. We would probably look to those first to restore from backups. We have a fairly aggressive backup schedule with many servers backed up once an hour or more, which contain critical data. That is probably where we would go first.

There is a need to have both DR and backup in one solution, but it is not important. There are better backup methodologies that we use and they cover more use cases.

We are not utilizing any cloud resources for DR at this point. Our applications are very CPU and memory intensive, which becomes very expensive to run in the cloud.

We have other mechanisms for long-term retention.

Biggest lesson learnt: Disaster recovery doesn't have to be the biggest challenge in your organization.

I would rate Zerto as eight out of 10. The rating may not sound great, but it is pretty high for me.

We are using Zerto as a disaster recovery solution.

We utilize Zerto for three replication scenarios: on-premises to on-premises, on-premises to cloud, and planned cloud-to-cloud replication.

Zerto is easy to use and implement, especially when performing a failover.

Zerto's near synchronous replication is valuable for our SQL database.

The benefits of Zerto were immediately apparent. After implementation, we quickly realized we were protected against any disaster. Zerto also provides visibility into the health of replication, allowing us to identify and address any potential issues.

Since implementing Zerto, we have observed a positive impact on our Recovery Point Objectives, which have been reduced by half.  Zerto's ability to easily group servers by application and configure protection groups streamlined our processes. Moreover, Zerto's support for on-premises to cloud replication is invaluable. We've leveraged this capability to replicate all systems to the cloud, establishing a robust disaster recovery solution. Zerto has proven to be an effective cloud migration and disaster recovery planning tool.

Our Recovery Time Objective determines how quickly we can restore our infrastructure. Zerto has been instrumental in reducing our RTO by enabling rapid recovery in any disaster recovery scenario.

Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. For example, some servers have a recovery point objective of just five seconds. During disaster recovery tests conducted last year, we recovered 60 servers within eight hours, including server delivery, startup, and operating system verification by our team.

Zerto is our primary tool for achieving all disaster recovery objectives.

Zerto is a flexible and resilient business continuity and disaster recovery solution. Its industry-leading replication technology enables seamless data protection across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments.

Another valuable feature is the failover capability. Unlike many other tools we tested, Zerto allows us to perform a disaster recovery test without risk to our production environment.

Zerto's current reporting capabilities are insufficient for our needs. We require detailed reports to analyze the performance of our environments. To achieve this, we have developed a custom reporting solution using Zerto and other tools to thoroughly assess VPG configurations and overall environment health against specified parameters. Unfortunately, Zerto does not natively provide this level of reporting functionality.

I have been using Zerto for seven years.

Zerto is highly stable, and I do not recall encountering any crashes.

Scaling Zerto is easy. We just need to add additional virtual/appliances servers.

Zerto provides excellent support, but response times to our issues can sometimes be a concern, possibly due to the size and complexity of our environment.

Positive

We currently utilize both SRM and Zerto, but SRM's replication capabilities are limited to data centers, while Zerto offers additional cloud replication options. Unlike SRM, which is exclusively designed for VMware infrastructure, Zerto is compatible with other virtual platforms, providing greater flexibility.

Zerto is easier to use than SRM.

The initial deployment is straightforward. We only need to deploy a few servers to build an environment and start to replicate.

Deploying Zerto in a single region required three months. One contributing factor to this timeline was the time-intensive process of collecting Virtual Recovery Appliances and deploying them across 500 ESXi servers. A team of ten architects and engineers was dedicated to this project.

The implementation was completed in-house by my team and me. As the architect, I oversaw the project's planning, construction, and deployment. We consulted with Zerto to identify potential areas for improvement.

Compared to other options like SRM, Zerto is a more expensive solution, making it primarily suitable for larger organizations. Smaller and medium-sized businesses might find Zerto's cost expensive. While Azure Site Recovery is free for users of Azure cloud services, Zerto offers a broader range of features.

I would rate Zerto nine out of ten.

Our organization takes a unique approach to disaster recovery testing, conducting 15 tests annually to meet policy and audit requirements. Zerto is the cornerstone of our DR testing strategy, enabling us to validate between five and seven applications in each test.

Zerto requires ongoing maintenance and a dedicated person monitors it daily. However, we must still test and deploy updates into our production environment.

Potential users should be knowledgeable of virtual environments and clearly understand their disaster recovery needs, including the required replication type, desired recovery strategy, and whether Zerto aligns with their specific requirements.

We use Zerto for data and disaster recovery replication. 

From time to time, we have to go look at the DR environment. Every time we go there, Zerto application always works. That's a benefit. 

Zerto's near-synchronous replication works. The value for our business case is okay. 

Zerto's near-synchronous replication is important for healthcare, but not as much because we have time to recover data.

Zerto helped protect VMs in our environment, just for the DR.

Our RPOs are not very aggressive. So, Zerto works just fine for us. 

It's very easy to set up. Up until now, even with an old version, it always worked fine.

There is room for improvement in the upgrades. We are planning an upgrade now, and it seems that it's not straightforward.

In future releases, I look forward to the security feature.

We have been using Zerto for more than five years.

Stability is very good. We have complaints about stability.

We haven't had issues with scalability. When we add VMs, we just buy additional licenses.

The customer service and support are very good. Every time we have problems, they're ready to help us.

They're always available and very knowledgeable. 

They need to be on-site. That would make them a ten on ten. 

Positive

We have only used Zerto. 

It was very easy to deploy. There wasn't a lot of configuration needed to get the syncing working.

It is an on-premises deployment.

We used HPE Services. Our experience with them was very good. 

We have seen ROI. Several times, we needed to recover, and we were able to go to Zerto.

The pricing, setup, cost, and licensing are comparable to other solutions. Zerto is not more cost-effective.

We looked at Veeam. They're very similar. We already had the skills for Zerto, so we decided to stay with it.

We decided to stay because we have not had any problems with it, and moving to another solution doesn't make sense for us. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. The version we have doesn't have security yet, so maybe the next version will get a ten.