HPE GreenLake adds new Zerto disaster recovery services
Two new SaaS data recovery services available in HPE GreenLake offer easier use of Zerto and other software to entice users familiar with public cloud offerings.
LAS VEGAS -- HPE seeks to sell its popular Zerto disaster recovery software and other backup products to more than just recovery power users through the company's GreenLake SaaS portfolio.
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery and new capabilities in HPE Backup and Recovery Service for GreenLake launched at HPE Discover 2022 this week.
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery, currently available in technical preview, supports the Zerto Platform within HPE's GreenLake SaaS ecosystem. HPE acquired Zerto in July 2021 to add its technology into GreenLake.
The HPE Backup and Recovery Service, which was added to GreenLake last year, now has new features and support for AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Instances backup and recovery.
HPE's claims of simplifying the DR purchase and usage could introduce more customers to the GreenLake ecosystem, said Krista Macomber, senior analyst at Evaluator Group. The cost of Zerto's technology must be competitive with other DRaaS products. Zerto Platform competitors include VMware Site Recovery Manager, Veritas InfoScale Availability, Veeam Availability Orchestrator and other popular platforms.
"The concept of streamlining, simplifying and optimizing IT is especially important for data protection," she said. "This is a space where cost has always been king, but protection environments are larger and more complex than ever before and cyber attacks are relentless."
Zerto fills the GreenLake
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery combines the GreenLake user experience with the Zerto Platform's capabilities, which include granular disaster recovery of VMs, containers and other infrastructure through journaling instead of timed snapshots.
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery brings those capabilities to the HPE Data Services Cloud Console, enabling users to purchase and consume the DR service similar to cloud hyperscalers, such as AWS or Microsoft Azure, with Zerto's RPO and RTO guarantees.
The full suite of Zerto capabilities is available through the console, but the standalone version of Zerto, which was updated earlier this year, will remain available for sale and will be supported into the future, according to Zerto executives.
Zerto executives expect the existing Zerto product to remain popular with power users who build their own automated capabilities for hybrid cloud environments across hyperscalers, on-premises hardware and other private clouds. HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery should evolve to meet those users needs, but will initially focus on users who may not want to tinker with APIs or those who seek to protect single environments.
Zerto's capabilities will expand further in GreenLake, executives said, with features such as user-defined RTOs and RPOs. Final pricing outside of the preview has yet to be determined.
AWS backups expanded
The latest update to the HPE Backup and Recovery Service for GreenLake, now generally available, adds support for AWS EC2 and EBS workload snapshots for the SaaS backup service.
The service previously provided backups only for VMware workloads to VMware or AWS S3 storage. Existing features for the service include data snapshot immutability, storage in air-gapped cloud backup, and support for HPE and non-HPE hardware running VMs on premises.
A majority of HPE customers also have workloads in AWS, according to HPE executives. Support for EBS complements HPE's new block storage as a service in GreenLake.
HPE's overall message on data protection and DR could be more unified.
Christophe BertrandPractice director, Enterprise Strategy Group
The move to support additional clouds outside of GreenLake makes sense for the multi-cloud message HPE is pushing over the portfolio's private cloud origins, said Christophe Bertrand, practice director at Enterprise Strategy Group.
"The introduction of the backup and recovery service for AWS is a good step in the right direction of multi-cloud coverage," he said. "I expect additional platforms to be added soon."
HPE's message around GreenLake's DR and backup services, especially the new multi-cloud capabilities, could be better delineated and described to customers, Bertrand added, especially as other companies move into the all-inclusive SaaS space, such as Dell Technologies' Apex.
"HPE's overall message on data protection and DR could be more unified," Bertrand said. "I would like to see more around ransomware and the inclusion of tape offerings in this context."
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget
Tim McCarthy is a journalist living in the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
