Likelihood to Recommend Well suited: scenarios with very specific backups schedules; backups saved in tape libraries. Less appropriate: environments with older Operational Systems and older hardware, such as tape libraries.
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 It is very reliable on the server side to provide a trustworthy back end. The install was simple and provided an easy way to install and backup Unix servers. The support was always helpful and responded quickly. 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 Increase the range of support for new platforms. Improve the attention of support cases in terms of speed of attention. Keep me better informed of the latest solution updates. 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 It was just not a good fit for our organization. We have an EMC SAN, Data Domain backup storage, and VMWare. Without any other HP software or hardware in our environment I do not see the need to continue using a product that is not well integrated with our other brands
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 Very easy to use. What needs to improve is to make it easier to configure some integrations and features, such as office 365 integration, acropolis integration, block change-based backup, etc. Despite we have documentation, even following all the steps, the integration is hard to implement or doesn't work in the end.
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 Performance The Reporting-Server and the Reports depend on the settings.
Read full review Support Rating It is the weak point of this software, although it is improving little by a little. The first level of support does not solve almost anything until you move on to a higher level that is more involved.
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 Pick one person to help you through the process.
Read full review Make sure the end goal is in mind before implementing. That way results meet expectations.
Read full review Alternatives Considered When selecting a backup solution for our virtual environment we chose HP Data Protector for its cost savings in licensing, our familiarity with the software and the ability to backup to disk, tape or both with the standard installation.
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 Here the license model from the Micro Focus Data Protector and DP4CW should merge. It causes argumentation problems if you license two products here.
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 We use the tool in different installations and combinations of functions and hardware.
Read full review Professional Services The professional services had some details of low promptness in the attention of cases.
Read full review 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 Positive impact. I have not worked with HP Data Protector enough to provide the ROI. It simply worked when we needed it to. 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 OpenText Data Protector Screenshots