HPE StoreOnce vs. HPE Zerto Software

If you are looking for a backup infrastructure which is efficient and compatible for both file system and block level backup, then HPE StoreOnce is a great choice. It's easy to configure and easy to manage. We didn't have to hire a separate storage expert to set up StoreOnce for us. The HPE team helped our system admins and it was a easy to configure.

Incentivized

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

• We really like the deduplication feature of HPE StoreOnce. It helps reduce storage footprint by 1:3 to 1:10 depending on type of files being stored.
• It's easy to manage files on HPE StoreOnce servers using command line options.
• We use Veeam Backup Server software to manage our backups on HPE StoreOnce.

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

• file share based backups
• larger drive options for the storage system
• somewhat dated on network connectivity parts to have the fastest network connections

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

It just works and the support contract we have is good enough for the company needs

Incentivized

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

My team who are currently administering HPE StoreOnce do not come from a storage background. We still didn't had to struggle much configuring and using HPE StoreOnce. Of course, HPE team was very helpful in smooth technology transition. For critical errors, we already have phone home feature enabled and HPE support team has been excellent and their response time in dealing with technical errors/incidents.

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

We had couple of incidents so far and HPE support team was very proactive through the process until the incident was closed satisfactorily.

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

It was pretty smooth, at least smother that a Dell EMC Unity we set it up last week

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Some of our staff have worked with Baracuda, so it was a recommended product. But after our evaluation, we decided to use StoreOnce because of the types of backup, ease of administration, and cost savings.

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

• While not completely eliminating tape, it has relegated the use of tape to monthly and annual backups for compliance. It has reduced the recurring expense of tape media.
• It has increased the length of the retention period because of its efficiency in storing backups.
• The online backup repositories are now replicated to the secondary datacenter, a capability not possible with tapes.

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