Zerto Competitors and Alternatives in 2024
Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) is the original product of the company with the same name – it is a solution in the Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) form that mainly targets middle-sized and large businesses due to its complexity and other nuances. There are several other products that Zerto as a company also provides, but the brunt of this review is ZVR and its capabilities.
Zerto as a company was created back in 2009, which makes it relatively young by industry’s standards. It has been creating and distributing ransomware resilience, workload mobility and disaster recovery software for cloud environments and virtualized infrastructures for over a decade by now. The company in question was successfully acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2021 for a substantial price of $374 million, and is considered a subsidiary of HPE to this day.
It is not that uncommon for various DRaaS solutions to provide a number of fairly standard features – bare metal recovery, mail server recovery, VM recovery, and so on. In that context, Zerto’s solution is different – its focus is VM safety via data replication to either an external cloud storage service or an internal network host. ZVR may seem like a one-note solution in that sense, but it is a solution that does its job very well.
Zerto’s interface is web-based and it does its job well when it comes to monitoring VMs, network settings, associated resources, and so on. It also includes a dashboard tab with plenty of useful information within a single screen, with all kinds of telemetry and statistics to show to its users.
Zerto’s reporting capabilities are quite vast and flexible, capable of creating a detailed audit trail for the entire replication process when necessary. Reports themselves can cover performance, recovery, resources, usage, and other topics – all presented in a convenient dashboard-like form with the ability to export in several different formats (ZIP, PDF, CSV, etc.)
It is also worth noting that Zerto’s setup process is not one of its stronger points – and it may vary a lot depending on cloud platform used for deployment, virtualization platform to be deployed to, and so on. For example, configuring the virtualization infrastructure from scratch can be somewhat of a challenge for less experienced users, even though the ZVR installer is easy to work with in most cases.
Zerto Benefits
Now that we have a somewhat basic overview of what Zerto is, we can go into more details in terms of what Zerto can provide to its users:
- Helpful and versatile web-based user interface
- Can work with a variety of cloud storage providers as backup storage locations
- A secure yet flexible solution for VM protection
- Extremely fast RTOs and RPOs
- Streamlined workflows and easy data protection
- Software-only architecture with no dedicated hardware requirements
- Impressive customer service support
- Extreme scalability to some of the largest businesses out there
Zerto User Reviews
- Rick D. – Capterra – “Zerto software and their amazing support team have allowed my company to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue by making it easy to migrate clients from Hyper-V or VMware to our VMware infrastructure.”
- Jamie Orth – TrustRadius – “Zerto is deployed across multiple data centers and allows for VM replication, migration, and recovery. Zerto is managed by our Systems Engineering team within the IT department. Zerto addresses our business continuity needs, and for a low RPO and fast RTO, while being storage agnostic. Zerto has an easy-to-use interface that allows new team members to quickly learn the system and perform recovery options. We successfully perform disaster recovery testing and Zerto plays a large role in that success.”
- Mark M. – G2 – “We are using Zerto to provide our company Disaster Recovery services for all of our Tier 1 applications. We replicated all of the servers involved with the applications from our primary data center to our secondary data center via replication groups. It is easy to test out DR failovers with Zerto as well – so this frees up our Administrators time to focus on other issues.”
- Rodney Carlson – TrustRadius – “We use Zerto for [the] replication of our VMs across the whole organization. Replication is made to a DR site 3 hours away with an RTO of 4 to 8 seconds. There is currently 48Tb being replicated. We hold normal copies for 3 days. We use Zerto’s long-term retention and hold daily copies for 7 days, weekly copies for 1 month, monthly copies for 12 months, and yearly for 7 years. It fulfills our company [backup] policy for a financial institution.”
Zerto Competitors
Of course, every solution has its downsides and Zerto is no exception. For example, Zerto does not support data protection for non-virtualized resources, and configuring the supporting infrastructure of the solution can be a challenge at times. Zerto’s scalability is also something that may backfire, with the solution’s overall price reaching unexpected heights for some of the more sophisticated infrastructures.
Additionally, with a software market as vast and varied as the enterprise backup market is right now – there are plenty of other solutions to choose from, even if it may be difficult to compare specific solutions or to figure out the advantages and shortcomings of multiple software platforms at once.
As such, we would try to help with this issue by providing a number of Zerto alternatives to choose from – each with their own set of advantages and shortcomings. Resources such as Peerspot and Gartner would be a great help for us in this task, offering extensive information when it comes to providing alternatives for Zerto. Here is our list of the top 10 Zerto competitors as of 2024:
Rubrik
A centralized data management solution that supports a variety of environment types – physical, virtual, or even hybrid. Works as a great layer of protection against various data breach causes, be it ransomware, operational failures, internal threats, and so on. Other features of Rubrik include cloud integration, substantial solution scalability, and more.
4.8/5 score based on 682 customer reviews
Advantages. The Live Mount feature is practically the single most talked about feature of Rubrik as a whole. Other notable advantages include highly customizable reporting capabilities and general capability to improve data management effectiveness.
Shortcomings. Rubrik’s pricing model tends to become less and less affordable the bigger the scope of the infrastructure is. Additionally, there are still a few flaws with the aforementioned reporting system (not enough details across the board, be it for system logs or general events), and the client has little to no access to the “backend” of the solution.
Veeam Backup & Replication
While it is true that the backup and recovery software market is quite vast and highly competitive, there are several solutions that are well-known by most professionals as the most popular examples of such software. Veeam Backup & Replication is one example of such a solution, offering a variety of features and functions, ranging from disaster recovery, granular file recovery, and instant NAS recovery to application-aware backups, SharePoint support, and more.
4.6/5 score based on 1,630 customer reviews
Advantages. A wealth of different pricing tiers and a free version make Veeam surprisingly affordable for many use cases and company sizes. The solution itself is fast and versatile, supports plenty of different storage types and is relatively easy to set up initially.
Shortcomings. There are not that many VM types that Veeam is capable of working with, and there have been multiple security concerns raised about the solution at different points in time. Additionally, the overwhelmingly large number of different product tiers and pricing models may be confusing for newcomers – and too expensive for small businesses.
Commvault Complete Data Protection
There are three main target goals that Commvault focuses on – disaster recovery, data security, and centralized data management. All three of these goals are what Commvault is all about, offering a wealth of supported backup environments and a generally impressive feature set, capable of working with databases, operating systems, virtual environments, and more.
4.5/5 score based on 449 customer reviews
Advantages. Commvault’s variety of supported systems and storage types is difficult to compete with, especially when it is combined with years and years of positive reviews from long-time clients. There are also plenty of positives about specific features, as well, such as the search feature.
Shortcomings. Commvault is not the most user-friendly solution in the world, and its initial deployment process may take a while for relatively inexperienced users. The solution’s overall pricing is also significantly higher than the market average, making it more suitable for larger businesses, and not SMBs.
Unitrends Backup and Recovery
Unitrends Backup and Recovery is an extremely versatile backup and recovery solution that allows for all kinds of data to be safe and secure at all times. It can protect endpoint data, SaaS applications, IaaS workloads, and even entire data centers. Other features of Unitrends include security tools that offer end-to-end protection against various data security causes, and vast automation capabilities make the overall solution management process far easier than ever before.
4.2/5 score based on 135 customer reviews
Advantages. Granular level of control over data security measures and strategies. The restoration process is relatively simple and easy to manage, and the default set of backup settings is more than enough for the majority of customers.
Shortcomings. Unitrends is a rather expensive solution on its own, and frequent updates may be an inconvenience for some users. Some of its interface design choices are needlessly complicated, and false positive alerts tend to happen on an irregular basis, as well.
Acronis Cyber Protect
While the solution itself may be more focused on data protection as a whole and less on backup and recovery jobs, Acronis Cyber Protect is still one of the most well known data protection solutions on the market. It can offer a variety of different methods and features designed to protect the customer’s data and storage no matter what state or location it is in. This includes features such as fast RTOs, active ransomware scanning, blockchain-based authentication, improved backup validation, etc.
4.4/5 score based on 305 customer reviews
Advantages. Storage cloning and flexible administrative capabilities are some of the strongest parts of Acronis, along with the combination of effectiveness and versatility that it can provide.
Shortcomings. Acronis’s capabilities in terms of database type/hypervisor type compatibility leave a lot to be desired. Scalability can be limited, and its reporting feature is somewhat basic, the solution itself is rather difficult to set up initially, and it may also look sometimes that it is complicated just for the sake of being complicated.
Druva Data Resiliency Cloud
Zerto’s main focus is VM security – just as Druva’s main focus is cloud-based data. Druva Data Resiliency Cloud can be deployed as a service and can protect a variety of information located in the cloud, including not just cloud storage location, but also application data, and many other use cases. Druva can offer centralized management capabilities to its users, as well as backup, recovery, archival, compliance, and more.
4.8/5 score based on 596 customer reviews
Advantages. Data security aspect of Druva receives a lot of praise on a regular basis, with features such as data encryption, data immutability, etc. It can create lifelong audit trails, its customer support is top-notch, and the overall user experience received a lot of praise from customers over the years.
Shortcomings. The restoration speed is not the best available, the capability to perform less popular data formats is either limited or nonexistent, and the first-time setup can be somewhat complicated, especially for users that are not familiar with this kind of software.
Cohesity DataProtect
Cohesity DataProtect is a sophisticated software-defined backup and recovery solution with a large emphasis on cloud environments. It is extremely thorough with its protective measures, while also offering impressive scalability options. Cohesity can be deployed either as a service or on-premise as an actual software, and its overall performance is highly praised in the industry.
4.7/5 score based on 719 customer reviews
Advantages. Instant DR failover, ransomware detection and forever incremental backups are some of the strongest points of Cohesity, along with its overall performance as a data protection solution.
Shortcomings. Cohesity’s user interface leaves a lot to be desired, the reporting features are somewhat lackluster, and there is also the fact that some of the updates have to be applied manually with the help of the command line interface.
Veritas NetBackup
Veritas NetBackup is an enterprise-level backup solution with plenty of different features to work with – including data deduplication, tape support, public cloud support, and plenty of automation capabilities. It can create backups of regular servers and workstations, as well as databases, virtual environments, and so on.
4.8/5 score based on 413 customer reviews
Advantages. General versatility of the solution, with all kinds of data storage types supported, as well as features like automation, data security, full coverage for hybrid environments, and more.
Shortcomings. Veritas NetBackup is not a particularly cheap solution in itself, and it would not be the most cost-effective option for most SMBs. The initial setup and configuration is somewhat complicated, and the restoration performance when it comes to copying data from cloud storage can be slow.
Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP)
Arcserve’s main goal is to present a complex enterprise-level data protection solution that is also not as difficult to work with as most solutions on the market. Arcserve UDP is a versatile backup and recovery platform that supports a good range of different storage and data types, from applications to VMs and databases, among other examples.
4.5/5 score based on 167 customer reviews
Advantages. Arcserve provides its users with a direct access to backup files, and its deduplication technology is nothing if not praise-worthy. Additionally, Arcserve is fairly scalable, making it suitable for all business sizes on the market.
Shortcomings. Unfortunately, Arcserve has plenty of issues, starting with all kinds of minor errors and bugs across the entire solution. Its licensing process is needlessly convoluted, and the interface of the solution leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to accessibility and user-friendliness.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication
NAKIVO is a flexible and versatile data security platform that claims to be suitable for all business sizes. It can offer instant recovery operations, app-aware incremental backups, and so on. NAKIVO also supports a variety of backup target locations, from Windows/Linux environments to VMs, databases, M365, and other applications.
4.8/5 score based on 415 customer reviews
Advantages. NAKIVO’s overall backup/restore performance is considered well above average, and the number of different storage types supported is also a great advantage. NAKIVO’s initial deployment process is also rather simple and fast, which is quite rare on this market.
Shortcomings. A number of NAKIVO’s more specific features are somewhat basic in their capabilities, and the same could be said for the solution’s reporting feature. There is also the fact that NAKIVO’s pricing is definitely more suitable for larger companies in the industry and may not be affordable for most SMBs.
Of course, that’s not to say that these 10 examples are the only possible alternatives to Zerto’s solution. The market is full of different backup and recovery platforms and services. For example, there is also Bacula Enterprise – an extremely versatile and user-friendly backup platform that also has especially high levels of data security compared to other vendors. Bacula’s customer support receives universal praise on a regular basis, and its unusual pricing model (not based on data volume) also makes it a favorite for organizations with a lot of data to protect.
Bacula Enterprise is a solution used by plenty of different companies, and not just high-end businesses, either. Official military organizations and security-conscious enterprises are just a few examples of Bacula’s highly varied customer base. Bacula’s modular architecture also makes it easy to fit almost any company – even with the most complex IT departments, since practically any feature or storage type that Bacula does not have in its basic form can be added via a dedicated module. For example, Bacula can be used across physical, virtual, container and cloud environments. By way of example, just its Hypervisor coverage includes Nutanix, Hyper-V, VMware, Xen, RHV, KVM, Proxmox and Azure VM.
Conclusion
The overall market for backup and recovery solutions (or data protection solutions) is vast, varied, and highly competitive. While this particular environment is great from the customer’s standpoint, there is also the issue of actually choosing a single solution for your specific organization or business.
There are plenty of brands, technologies, and storage types out there – enough to make practically everyone confused at some point or another. Solutions such as Bacula Enterprise would be the best pick for businesses that care a lot about their data security first and foremost, while also working with plenty of different data types. Druva is a fine pick for a company that has most of its data in some sort of cloud storage already. Rubrik or Veeam would be great for large enterprises that are willing to pay extra to receive a “jack-of-all-trades” kind of solution.
At the end of the day, the best way to figure out what solution your specific organization needs is to define your priorities, and likely needs in the near to mid term future.. Figuring out what aspects of a data protection solution are the most important to you is a good first step in finding the best possible backup and recovery software. When a business knows what it wants, and knows what its limitations/weak spots are – then it becomes that much easier to look for the right data protection solutions and platforms that are capable of filling the gaps and ensuring that the business is protected, and the company can meet its backup and recovery needs.
About the author
Rob Morrison is the marketing director at Bacula Systems. He started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat and Pentaho ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours Digital Media and Communications degree, and completed an Overseas Studies Program.
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