Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 dives deeper into multiple clouds

Zerto's latest version of its replication software has been enhanced for multi-cloud implementations.

The data protection specialist's new Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 has the ability to do inter-cloud and intra-cloud data movement using Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud environments. Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 expands on the bidirectional replication capability to protect applications and data to and from clouds and between multiple clouds.

"It works any-to-any [cloud]," said Rob Strechay, senior vice president of product at Zerto, based in Boston. "We enable region-to-region [replication] support for Azure. We can do failover from AWS to Azure or on premises. You can go from Azure to AWS and from AWS to Azure. You also can go from IBM to Azure or AWS to IBM or one of the 350 other service providers we support."

Multi-cloud support can help organizations avoid vendor lock-in and provide better disaster recovery options.

Rob Strechay

Zerto Virtual Replication is a hardware-agnostic, hypervisor-based replication tool that uses continuous replication and automates failover and failback in VMware environments. Unlike traditional array-based replication, which requires homogeneous storage systems, Zerto Virtual Replication allows for replication to any storage system, as well as to hybrid and public clouds.

Zerto added journal file-level data recovery in Linux Ext file systems in 6.0 to go with journal file-level recovery in Windows file systems in previous versions. The new version also doubled the number of virtual machines supported, to 10,000.

Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 expanded the analytics functionality with a new dashboard and network analysis reports to help customers troubleshoot and optimize performance. The dashboard provides a view into the network throughput, the ability to monitor site-to-site connectivity and outbound traffic, along with a 30-day history of the metrics for any site.

Multi-cloud support can help organizations avoid vendor lock-in and provide better disaster recovery options.

Roy Illsley, a principal analyst at Ovum, based in London, said he expects Zerto to take its disaster recovery options further with region-to-region cloud support.

"They have made their disaster recovery to be very available and capable in the cloud by effectively allowing companies to do any-to-any cloud," Illsley said. "They are headed in the right direction. [But] they can't actually do region to region yet. The cross-region [capability] is coming."

Illsley said Zerto's roadmap for its Zerto Virtual Replication includes the ability to do cross-region cloud between Azure and AWS.

"They say they can do region to region, but that is within Azure and AWS. But between Azure and AWS, they support multi-cloud within the regions," Illsley said. "That is something that will be available."