Arcserve Backup vs. HPE Zerto Software

Arcserve UDP is fully suited for small to large size environments that need complete data protection solutions with the ability to run the fastest backups, replications, instant VM and DR.

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.

Incentivized

• It offers excellent features like dedupe, high availability, DR, and BMR.
• Arcserve Backup has many offerings to fit many business sizes and needs.
• Arcserve Backup sales and technical support is good to work with.
• Very nice reseller program and benefits.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Arcserve Backup can be costly.
• To utilize Arcserve Backup and all its features may require a layout of dedicated equipment or additional infrastructure.
• They don't always explain that for Arcserve Backup to work well, and it requires specific system requirements and extensive internet bandwidth.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

Arcserve UDP provides our organization lots of benefits and it is much more than a simple backup and restore solution. We use it for cross platform DR, storage agnostic replications, DR solution instead of VMware SRM and more.

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

Incentivized

It basically covers all our required scenarios, including VMs, partitions, files or any other objects through NAS, SAN or DAS connections. It's easy to set up and utilize the features and functions. There are a few times that we needed to switch over for the RHA replications and UDP backups. For the RHN replication, there was a roughly 10 minutes downtime during the switchover. For the UDP, it works pretty well.

Incentivized

Zerto is very easy to implement and support. Uses are broad, only issues are once something doesn't sync it is difficult to get assistance until your reach tier 2 or tier 3 support. Basic file and folder recovery is great. Live and test fail overs are also easy to implement without issue.

Incentivized

Arcserve Backup support is usually very good. Their chat is usually able to fix most general issues, but will escalate more in depth issues to technical engineers that call you back. Their product knowledge is really good and usually resolve issues promptly.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Make sure the end goal is in mind before implementing. That way results meet expectations.

Incentivized

We use Veeam Backup and Replication at our larger sites where Vmware Virtualization is being used and is our product of choice in this venue. When it comes to our smaller sites, nothing is more affordable and reliable than Arcserve Backup.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We were able to roll back up and replication into one product, which reduced the costs without having to go with multiple vendors.
• As a result of Arcserve UDP, we were able to implement a full DR scenario test, which until that point hadn't been successful.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized