Likelihood to Recommend If you don't have to manage your client's email and their email archiver Acronis works very well. If you're looking for just a backup service for what's on a particular computer then Acronis is perfect. It is easy to use, so newcomers are not overwhelmed with features.It does not include as robust features as Barracuda and Cloudberry, but it does work well as just a backup.
Read full review Zerto is well suited for disaster recovery and virtual machine replication between multiple data centers. DR testing for audit or regulations is much easier with Zerto, great reporting, dashboard etc. It is not well suited for physical server replication for disaster recovery or as a primary backup solution.
Read full review Pros Image based backups. After the initial backup, the backups happen quite quickly. This allows for multiple backups per day. We have different classes of data which requires different retention policies. Acronis makes that easy to manage. Restoration can be done directly to hardware or to a VM. This makes it easy to migrate a physical server to a VM. Read full review Anyone with a large disk (VMDK) knows the issues of VMware snapshots. Most backup software is a "point in time backup" that uses snapshots. While the backup can be run multiple times per day the stress of the snapshot on the host and storage is eliminated by the continuous protection of Zerto log replication. A client had a the disks on a VM go missing for some reason. We had them "flip the switch" for a real fail over and press the fail over button. The VM on our DR site started to come alive as the VM at the customer site was brought down. When the DR VM was fully up, automatic reverse replication started. The DR machine was available in a few minutes (to take into account different host hardware) for access. One the vm at both sites were in sync, we had the customer again repeat the fail over process and the DR site VM was turned off and the Production site VM was brought back on line. This was a 200 GB VM and the whole process was finished in about 3 hours. Zerto also allows for "Test" fail overs that can be configured on many different functions, such as host, datastore, network and IP usage. Configuring the IPs is crucial to avoid inadvertent site cross contamination of the same VM. Zerto can also retrieve files from any VM disk on the DR site without starting a VM. Very handy for retrieving files or directories. Since Zerto is running continuous log replication, changes on the production VM are nearly instantaneously copied to the DR site. As with any data process, having sufficient bandwidth for "churn" peaks minimizes the delay in updating the DR site. Read full review Cons The web interface is slow and can kick you off from time to time I do find that the error messages are hard to decipher if/when a backup is unsuccessful. However, support is very good in helping out the solution The user interface is not intuitive enough to find failures in backups or track logs with alerts or errors Read full review Moving a VM from one protection group to another could be simplified. I would like to see an executive-style report of recovery and testing for upper management. The ability to deploy Zerto as a virtual appliance, without the need for a windows server. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We have renewed our subscription over the course of a few years now. We used to use Backup Exec and it was tedious and difficult to obtain our backups when needed. Acronis just fits our environment style and the way we prefer to do business and use our third party software.
Read full review We really like the easy setup of this replication solution, as well as the ease of management. Not to mention, our internal IT Economist determined that the Zerto solution would provide the best ROI out of the competing solutions we analyzed. So far, his calculations have been spot on, and we have saved substantially
Read full review Usability I give it a rating of 9 do to its ease of usability. It's ease of understanding how to setup - form - fit - and function. I have no sorrows when having to login to the console in order to setup a new backup schedule or retrieve and recover lost data.
Read full review Usability was the primary reason we purchased the software in the first place. We had compared it to several other software products in the same area, and it was by far the easiest to set up and use. Long-term maintenance proved to be similar, with updates driven by updates to VMware and vSphere, rather than the product itself.
Read full review Support Rating I only got one issue resolved for more than 20 cases open. The escalation is ineffective. Most of the time, I have the feeling that I know the solution better than the support technician. Overall, case management is time-consuming, as our resolution rate is really low
Read full review Overall support is very good. We sometimes get pushback when asking Level 1 support to escalate to Level 2. This causes undue frustrations when you need a more knowledgeable support person to get involved. We've had to escalate to account reps a few times for this scenario. Zerto is very responsive and normally handles our requests very quickly.
Read full review Implementation Rating I don't have any real key 'insights' per say except that it wasn't difficult at all, and do not be afraid to dabble in its tools and settings. It is quite intuitive with built in common sense. I cannot say enough good things about our companies experience when using this backup software.
Read full review Make sure the end goal is in mind before implementing. That way results meet expectations.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We've looked at SolarWinds, Veritas, etc. but none of them had the right combination of features, price and ease of use when compared against Acronis and its ease of implementation, setup and recovery options. We didn't like the wait time for recovery with some of the others and being able to quickly get a machine back entirely was important to us.
Read full review We started out using Backup Exec which was in service until we virtualized our environment where it didn't perform as well at the time. Then we switched to Veeam which worked well, but then as we started needing to do migrations and off-site DR, we found ourselves relying on Zerto more often.
Greg Goss SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model I would love it if they offered better cloud space pricing or even "unlimited"
Read full review For my organization, the pricing model was an upfront investment for the Zerto licenses. My organization prefers to pay upfront and not deal with month-to-month or year-to-year pricing models that most companies are moving to. But for some, the investment may be more than they can afford, and would prefer the year-to-year pricing model.
Read full review Scalability The ability to back up multiple servers from one source is a great tool to have for businesses that have equipment in different locations on the same network with a variety of software data to back up such as SQL, Exchange or a Files Server. You can decide to purchase individual server licenses as well if you would like to keep the process separate or have multiple sites where your data is housed.
Read full review Professional Services I mean, it was 6 years ago, but we were up and going with all applications synchronizing in short order. The longest tasks was getting the 30 TB of application data synchronized between the datacenters.
Read full review Return on Investment Every times you restore a file, you see the value and the ROI of backup. Backup is a great protection against ransomware, you can always restore files that has been infected. When you want to go back in previous version of files, it can be life saver. Read full review Zerto is like having the best possible insurance ... it just works, and often provides the backups taken overnight that are key in recovering data/work between overnight backups. Zerto easily enabled the move of primary datacenters by allowing easy failover to a secondary site, and failback to the primary site. Read full review ScreenShots