OpenVPN Access Server vs. HPE Zerto Software

OpenVPN is great for anyone who needs to access internal company resources while away from the office. For us, it's useful for our office staff if they need to work from home for a day or are at a work conference. I can see where it would not be helpful if you didn't store much on your intranet, but we do, so it's very helpful.

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

• Secure
• Easy setup
• 2 free users
• automatic updates

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

• None, it accomplishes everything we need it for.

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

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

We've never had any issues with usability. The UI is very intuitive, and our general user base (which is not very tech-savvy) can use OpenVPN with two clicks since we have SAML set up. It's the easiest thing ever for them, and I don't know how we'd even begin to improve on it.

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

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 found OpenVPN to be more cost-effective vs Azure. In addition, it was easier to install, deploy, and manage

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

• Only 2 free users, it would be nice if they would expand to 5.
• Easy way to establish a VPN backbone between two locations
• Great for work at home or BCP events.

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