A closer look at Zerto Virtual Replication 5.0 – Azure supported!

At VMworld, Zerto announced Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) 5.0 (if you’re new to Zerto, read this article first). ZVR is Zerto’s multi cloud disaster recovery solution, for both on-premises as well as public cloud platforms. ZVR 5.0 includes some great new features:

• Support for Microsoft Azure as a recovery environment;
• One to many replication, which allows to replicate a specific VM to different on-premises and public cloud platforms simultaneously;
• Extended journaling capabilities, which allows point-in-time recovery from the journal up to 30 days;
• Introduction of the Zerto App (for both iOS and Anroid), helping IT professionals to stay connected by extending the IT environment monitoring to  a mobile device.

Specifically the addition of Microsoft Azure as a DR target is an interesting addition. The setup of Azure is comparable on how you have to setup an Amazon EC2 is a replication target. This means you have to deploy the Zerto Cloud Appliance (ZCA) to the Microsoft Azure cloud. The ZCA is comprised of:

• Zerto Virtual Manager;
• Zerto Replication Appliance;
• Virtual Backup Appliance;
• Zerto User Interface.

You will need an Azure D3 v2 virtual machine for the ZCA. This VM will store the replicate data in your Azure storage account. Failover virtual machines will be created in case of a failover test or an actual failover to Azure. Replication from both vSphere as well as Hyper-V environments is supported. Zerto is providing near synchronous replication, virtual protection groups and fully automated failover that will lower your RTO.

Future perspectives

A limitation for both the Azure and AWS replication target is that automated failback is not supported, this will involve manual steps. You have to decide if this is a requirement for your. It would be a great addition if Zerto will support automated failback from public clouds as well. Another nice feature that I would like to see is replication of IAAS virtual machines between clouds; in this case it would be possible to replicate virtual machines from Azure to AWS or vice versa.

To conclude

With version 5.0 Zerto provides a very mature DR solution, supporting cross hypervisor and cloud replication options. The Zerto mobile app, one to many replication are great additions. I personally also very happy with the addition of Azure as replication target. Zerto is also part of my DR for virtual environments comparison at whatmatrix.com. The comparison will soon be updated and ZVR 5.0 will be added.