Zerto DR (ZVM)

HPE Zerto Software  is primarily used for disaster recovery from on-premises to Azure  Cloud, recovering from disasters, and running DR test failovers from on-premises to cloud as well as within on-premises data centers.

During a recent disaster recovery drill, I conducted a test failover using HPE Zerto Software . Consistency groups are created in HPE Zerto Software, and I predefined a specific application in a group, failing over the database servers first and then the application servers. I successfully recovered the servers in the DR site in Azure  Cloud during this test failover scenario.

Another use case involves failing over within the data center from on-premises to on-premises within a radius of 100 kilometers. HPE Zerto Software acts as an orchestration layer for failover, with a test failover performed while maintaining replication at the storage level.

HPE Zerto Software offers flexibility in failover, inbuilt data protection, and configurable replication in groups. Additionally, the throttling of network and enabling of compression features improve the process, ensuring replication pairs remain stable with minimal errors during continuous and asynchronous replication.

The compression techniques in HPE Zerto Software helped us transfer minimal data over the network before reaching the WAN layer, effectively using bandwidth. The network throttling feature enabled us to utilize the links between on-premises and cloud without affecting shared network resources. This made HPE Zerto Software reliable, with minimal replication errors and a failure rate close to zero during disaster recovery activities.

The high availability feature in HPE Zerto Software can be configured so that if the primary HPE Zerto Software is down, we can utilize a secondary server for recovery, discovering the replication pairs and performing a failover.

HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted our organization by providing error-free data replication and flexible data protection features, giving us confidence in recovering data from the primary to secondary site as it remains error-free. The virtual protection groups are flexible, allowing us to create them with minimal technical knowledge, ensuring compliance and protection for both technically and business-wise critical applications.

HPE Zerto Software's GUI needs modernization to match the flexibility and user experience of other HPE software solutions, as there is still room for improvement in software-level flexibility and the provision of a more visual dashboard for operational insights.

I suggest integrating HPE Zerto Software with Grafana  dashboards for enhanced monitoring and implementing proactive AI-driven alerting mechanisms. This improvement should emphasize the integration of AI alongside open-source monitoring tools.

I would say HPE Zerto Software's accuracy is acceptable, with the added AI layer mainly focusing on monitoring and observability. It is designed to detect errors in data replication and alert the end user, enhancing the mean time to resolution with minimal human intervention, thereby improving accuracy and reliability.

For others considering HPE Zerto Software, I recommend it for its near-zero RPO and effective RTO, as well as its scalability. It offers flexibility in failover capabilities and can serve as a migration tool for moving from on-premises to cloud.

My additional thoughts on HPE Zerto Software emphasize the need for improved customer support and timely updates regarding support requirements and version upgrades. Increasing community involvement for addressing issues would also be beneficial. I rate this product an 8 overall.

I recently used HPE Zerto Software  for one of my government customers who are looking for DCDR along with the regional data center also to be protected; we are going to protect almost 250 VMs with this solution, and the deployment happened in December 2025, successfully.

Our main use case for HPE Zerto Software  is the automation of DCDR, where we have 20 different locations from which we are going to replicate to four regional data centers; from there, we replicate to DC and then to the DR site, making it a distributed architecture where HPE Zerto Software is very important from the automation perspective.

This specific example of how we used HPE Zerto Software for automation in this distributed architecture is an active-passive DCDR setup where we required minimum RPO and RTO, using the underlying VMware infrastructure; with vSphere replication software, we manage the replication, while HPE Zerto Software is used for integrating with the APIs due to the many applications we have running in this setup that require these integrations to orchestrate the required RPO and RTO of a minimum of five minutes and an RTO around 30 minutes.

We are using HPE Zerto Software for a 100% on-prem solution with no cloud connectivity; essentially, we are doing VM-to-VM replication without any storage-to-storage replication, and possibly in the future, we may go for the active-active setup, but for now, we are focused on the active-passive perspective; it is very user-friendly, allowing any Windows admin to manage HPE Zerto Software administration effectively, which is significant from an OPEX perspective.

The best features HPE Zerto Software offers include fast failover and failback, which is important because sometimes customers use DR as a DC; for instance, we may run a DC setup for six months and switch to DR as a DC for the next six months, and the automated protection feature significantly helps reduce OPEX costs since we do not have to configure everything repeatedly.

My experience with fast failover and failback in HPE Zerto Software significantly benefits my customer, a sensitive government organization needing this functionality in critical scenarios; due to geopolitical situations, customers may require location changes and user relocations, making fast failover and failback essential.

An additional important feature of HPE Zerto Software is continuous data protection, delivering near-synchronous replication, which, while not 100% zero RPO or zero downtime, is very close to synchronous replication; we also experience real-time encryption detection, which is crucial since data is critical for every organization.

HPE Zerto Software positively impacts our organization by providing app-centric protection; previously, we used other vendors' DR software, but now, customers with different applications on every virtual machine benefit from the app-centric protection and API integration provided by HPE Zerto Software, which the previous solution lacked.

App-centric protection and API integration with HPE Zerto Software have improved my customer's operations significantly, allowing us to eliminate dependency on app vendors for DR configurations, resulting in a uniform platform where any HPE Zerto Software representative can assist with applications, making it manageable for normal Windows admins or simple system engineers.

HPE Zerto Software needs improvements regarding its dependence on storage vendors; the rising hardware prices lead to numerous vendors entering the market, and HPE Zerto Software must enhance its API integrations continuously as new storage vendors emerge across different geographies.

Further improvements needed for HPE Zerto Software include necessary API integration with different cloud vendors, especially in regions like India where local cloud vendors seek integration with DR software; HPE Zerto Software may even charge for these customizations, but this flexibility should be available.

Regarding HPE Zerto Software's AI capabilities, while AI is beneficial for online solutions connected to the internet, improvements are necessary for on-prem solutions completely devoid of internet connectivity, as it presents challenges in importing AI intelligence on a regular basis.

Additional improvements for HPE Zerto Software are essential, particularly to address the needs of critical defense and government organizations that operate within air-gapped networks with no internet connectivity.

I have been working in my current field for the last 25 years, specifically as a presales consultant for the last 20 years, and in my current organization for the last four years and four months.

HPE Zerto Software is stable.

HPE Zerto Software demonstrates excellent scalability; initially used for 50 VMs, it now protects almost 250 VMs, with plans to expand to nearly 600 VMs in the future without encountering challenges.

The customer support for HPE Zerto Software is fabulous; we have a contact point for sales who connects us with the relevant support team, and due to the remote and isolated environment, HP arranges for a support engineer from the partner side when necessary.

We previously used Site Recovery Manager and switched to HPE Zerto Software due to the need for app-centric and better API integration.

We experience a return on investment through time saved, as the customer previously used SRM Software, Site Recovery Manager; while the costs remain comparable, the time savings are significant.

I find the pricing of HPE Zerto Software good compared to Perpetuity, Carbonite , and Dell Rackware, especially from the perspective of Dell.

Before choosing HPE Zerto Software, we also evaluated other options alongside SRM and vSphere replication, including Perpetuity and Dell Rackware.

My advice for others looking into using HPE Zerto Software is to first list your applications and their dependencies regarding replication, then decide on your replication software; you should determine whether to use the native hypervisor replication software or an alternative, and finally , define your automation policy in alignment with your organization's compliance requirements.

I choose a rating of 8 out of 10 because HPE Zerto Software integrates well with many hardware and software vendors, but I occasionally face issues with Dell and Cisco handshaking with HPE Zerto Software, highlighting the need for better collaboration with them, especially since most large data centers utilize a mix of HP, Cisco, and Dell equipment.

The accuracy and reliability of HPE Zerto Software's AI output are around 80%, with the remaining 20% requiring a human touch; this local and customer-specific context applies equally to the outputs from HPE Zerto Software.

Overall, I find HPE Zerto Software good; I expect HP to release the hypervisor, HVM, HP Virtual Hypervisor , alongside their servers, and I hope it will work similarly to how it is functioning with VMware hypervisor, which is my expectation.

My main use case for HPE Zerto Software  is disaster recovery. A quick specific example of how I use HPE Zerto Software  for disaster recovery is to recover from hardware, files, or user file deletions in a disaster situation.

HPE Zerto Software offers excellent features including point-in-time recovery to just before a disaster occurs. Point-in-time recovery helps my team day-to-day by allowing us to recover key data that may be lost due to a disaster event.

HPE Zerto Software has positively impacted my organization by keeping our data always available and business operations running. This has led to specific outcomes for our business, resulting in near zero downtime.

I believe HPE Zerto Software can be improved by providing more clarity on roadmap features coming.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for five years.

HPE Zerto Software is stable.

HPE Zerto Software is very scalable.

The customer support is top-notch.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is good.

In most of the companies where I have seen HPE Zerto Software  deployed, it is primarily used for DCDR purposes. It is very easy to test failover during audits to demonstrate the capability to auditors, and during disaster recovery scenarios, it is very easy to failover from one site to another. HPE Zerto Software is quite a GUI-friendly tool.

The failover feature in HPE Zerto Software is quite easy and intuitive, and the best part is that once your workload is migrated to another DR site, it automatically picks up the VLAN and gets powered up so your production is up and running there.

Sometimes the virtual private group that is created in HPE Zerto Software is sluggish. Searching all the VMs, categorizing it, and filtering it are areas where HPE can enhance more to make it more user-friendly.

The live synchronous feature is what gets used everywhere in HPE Zerto Software. The workload VM and the DR VM are in live synchronous mode at all times, with approximately seven milliseconds of latency, so both workloads are in near-sync.

HPE Zerto Software has made operations quite easy. Before using it, there was manual intervention required for everything. For example, with the SRT tool I used previously, I had to migrate VMs from the DC to DR for DR testing and then power them on manually, attach them to the correct VLAN, and handle all those configurations myself.

On many occasions when there are slowness issues in one of the regions, we need to quickly migrate workloads to another paired site, and we use HPE Zerto Software for that purpose. Otherwise, I would have to power off servers, procure new servers to support those workloads, migrate them to a newer server, coordinate with the network team to configure VLANs, handle DNS configurations, and manage many other tasks. With HPE Zerto Software, none of this is necessary, and instead I can use it to migrate workloads to the paired site.

The virtual private group that is created in HPE Zerto Software is sometimes sluggish. Searching all the VMs, categorizing them, and filtering them are areas where HPE can enhance more to make the interface more user-friendly.

I have been using HPE Zerto Software for more than three years now, as it was being used in my previous company and continues to be used in my current company.

HPE Zerto Software is pretty much up and running consistently. Every time I access it to check anything, it is always up and running. Unless the underlying infrastructure is having some issue, HPE Zerto Software from the OS perspective and VM perspective is quite stable.

I cannot comment much on scalability based on my experience, but for the workloads I have seen, there are more than 100 to 150 plus servers that are being kept in synchronization at all times, and I think HPE Zerto Software is quite stable for that scale.

The customer service is quite fast and responsive. I would rate them a nine because sometimes it took time for them to understand what my issue was, but once they grasped it, they were swift to respond.

I have used the SimpliVity  recovery tool, which is also being used here. The SRT tool does the same thing, but it is very basic and not as rich as HPE Zerto Software is. Many times it needs manual intervention for tool maintenance.

With HPE Zerto Software, I have not seen anything our team needs to do on the HPE Zerto Software end because I have used it for more than three years in my previous company and here as well, and no maintenance has been required as far as I know.

Recovery time objective and recovery point objective are important metrics. HPE Zerto Software is something that is quick and fast in achieving these. The live synchronous feature always keeps my workload in synchronization, so anytime a disaster happens or any sort of incident occurs, my workload is up and running on the other side. Users working with and utilizing the systems do not feel any difference in the backend.

HPE Zerto Software is very easy to learn. The HPE Zerto Software website has proper documentation similar to how VMware provides an HOL lab to try out and test products. HPE Zerto Software provides very elaborate documentation with guided steps, and they even provide basic certification to start with. The GUI that they have makes it very easy to understand.

For everything, I would rate HPE Zerto Software an eight overall. It is a quite good and rich tool. I do not understand why every other company is not using it more often. HPE Zerto Software is now into the cloud as well, so if you want to have a DCDR setup with your DR in the cloud and DC on-premises, you can use HPE Zerto Software during your disaster recovery situation. However, I think this capability is very little marketed.

My overall rating for this review is eight out of ten.