What’s New in Data Protection at HPE and Zerto: Updates and Releases for Q4 2023
Earlier this year, Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, launched Zerto 10 and the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault. New capabilities include powerful tools to protect data and applications against ransomware and provide enhanced security with new Zerto for Azure architecture. Around the same time, HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery, built with Zerto and integrated into the HPE GreenLake Platform, became generally available. This was a big milestone and the result of a lot of hard work since Zerto became a part of HPE.
Zerto and HPE are continuing to innovate and expand the powerful capabilities of their data protection portfolio. I am excited to tell you about some of the latest updates to Zerto, HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery, and HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery.
Zerto—What’s New in Q4
New Zerto for AWS architecture—Following the architecture improvements to Zerto for Azure in Zerto 10, we have implemented the same improvements for Zerto for AWS. This update adds a new cloud-based Virtual Replication Appliance (VRA) in addition to the Zerto Cloud Appliance (ZCA) in AWS. This architecture more closely resembles the Zerto for VMware architecture, with the Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) acting as a single management layer for a site and multiple lightweight VRAs doing the heavy lifting of replication, failover, and recovery. This change reduces complexity by allowing easier scale out to hundreds or thousands of EC2 instances without adding more ZCAs. In addition, the new appliances are Linux-based, making them more secure and more easily managed.
Integration with vSphere Lifecycle Manager—Updating software-defined appliances on dozens or hundreds of hosts can be daunting, but Zerto has made it simpler. This new integration allows Zerto appliances to be managed and updated with vSphere Lifecycle manager for easier deployment and updates of Zerto components. See more information on myZerto.
Upgrades to the Zerto Virtual Manager Appliance are now in the Zerto GUI—For faster deployment, easier management, and greater security, we introduced the new Zerto Virtual Manager Appliance (ZVMA) in Zerto 9.5 and then replaced the Windows ZVM completely with the new appliance in Zerto 10. Now, the upgrade process for the ZVM appliance has been added to the Zerto GUI rather than being available only in the Zerto command line interface (CLI). See detailed documentation on myZerto.
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery—What’s New in Q4
HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery provides global management across sites through a single SaaS console. Administrators can create VPGs at any connected site and perform DR operations against any VPG from any site connected to the service. To improve the global management functions, the team has been busy adding new features within the cloud console, including:
Resilience Score—as part of the cloud console dashboard, the new Resilience Score provides you with a gamified view of DR readiness and resilience. The score is calculated out of 100, and the first implementation delivers suggestions such as performing scheduled failover tests, resolving any issues, and checking in on RPO or SLA breaches, allowing you to quickly understand where to improve.
Consolidated VPG State View—in addition to creating VPGs and performing failover operations, you can now view a simplified VPG state directly from the cloud console. Using this new state view, the real-time status of any VPG, across any site paired to the service, is easily monitored directly from the cloud console. The team worked hard to reduce the number of possible VPG states, allowing you to quickly sort and filter your VPGs, and drill down into problems.
Centralized Log Collection—you can now initiate log collection directly from the cloud console. Previously, you needed to navigate to each on-prem appliance management console to upload logs to Zerto support. Now, with this feature, you can kick off log collection and upload to support directly from the central cloud management console for any connected site.
HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery—What’s New in Q4
Protection of Containerized Applications in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)—Applications that have been deployed in Kubernetes containers on Amazon EKS can now be backed up and recovered back to EKS.
Protection of Microsoft SQL Server Database—HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery now protects Microsoft SQL Server databases running in VMware virtual machines.
Protection of Amazon Relational Database Service—This service also enables snapshot orchestration of Amazon RDS instances within the customer’s AWS environment and provides rapid recovery from that snapshot.
Storage Volume Protection—Users can now protect any HPE array volume that is managed by the HPE GreenLake Data Services Cloud Console (DSCC). Volume protection, using snapshots and replicas, can be configured using Data Ops Manager.
Summary and Looking Forward
As we look forward to calendar year 2024, I will keep you apprised of updates. Zerto is going to continue building off the industry-leading technologies we are known for as we both integrate into the HPE GreenLake platform and continue adding new capabilities that help Zerto scale to meet the needs of ransomware resilience, disaster recovery, and multi-cloud mobility. In the technology landscape of ever-growing data, hybrid cloud complexity, and emerging AI capabilities, HPE and Zerto are working hard to continue leading the fight against threats that disrupt digital services and safeguard your data and applications from downtime and loss.
Check out our upcoming webinar on December 14th for more information on what’s new with HPE and Zerto.
David Paquette 
