Why Zerto for Azure Architecture Is Unique

Zerto for Microsoft Azure

There’s a lot of love about Zerto for Azure! Many organizations are quickly adopting Microsoft Azure as their preferred public cloud provider and Zerto for Azure is helping them get there! For the newly initiated, Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, empowers customers to run an always-on business by simplifying the protection, recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. Zerto harnesses the scalability, security, and agility of Microsoft Azure to deliver a uniquely powerful and adaptable disaster recovery (DR) and migration infrastructure.

Zerto for Azure Overview

Zerto for Azure simplifies data protection through automated and orchestrated disaster recovery and migrations operations for virtual machines running on-premises to, from, and across Microsoft Azure
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What Makes Zerto for Azure Architecture Unique

So, why is Zerto for Azure Architecture so unique? Let’s have a look.

Love for the Linux Appliance: Zerto Cloud Appliance (ZCA)

Zerto for Azure delivers unrivaled replication and recovery times due to its orchestration and automation of the entire recovery or migration process to, from, and in-between Microsoft Azure regions. Subscribed directly from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, users can get started by deploying the Zerto Cloud Appliance (ZCA), which is the management component of Zerto for Azure.

Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Zerto for Azure

This lightweight and secure, Linux virtual machine simplifies the management of Zerto for Azure, enabling users to easily recover entire sites, multi-VM apps, VMs, and individual files to, from, and in-between Azure regions.

→ Already using Zerto for Azure and looking to switch to the Linux version? Download the Migration Utility to your Windows ZCA from “MyZerto/Support/Downloads”  [sign-in required] and get started with these prerequisites here!

It’s So Scalable! Multi-VRA Architecture

The Virtual Replication Appliances (VRA) are the “workhorses” responsible for replication in Zerto for Azure. These are independent of the Zerto Cloud Appliance (ZCA), allowing for replication operations to scale as necessary. Each VRA uses Azure scale sets and dedicated Storage Accounts to act as the replication engine separate from the interface, allowing users to scale as much as they need.

Zerto for Azure Architecture

This means that users have multiple VRAs for enhanced replication and recovery capabilities. This multi-VRA architecture scales out protection for VMs in Azure rather than using multiple ZCAs. This  enhanced scalability enables protection of up to 5000 VMs to, from, or within Azure. Each VRA has its own scale set worker pool and dedicated storage account, ensuring minimal interruption between replication and recovery processes while simplifying resource consumption scaling as replication scales up or down. Since its Zerto, replication only occurs to changed blocks, significantly reducing egress fees when replicating to and from Azure itself.

Proprietary Zerto API to Protect More with Multi-disk Consistency

Zerto for Azure ensures a multi-disk consistency for protected Azure VMs, which protects VMs to, from, and within Azure with complete disk consistency. Moving away from snapshot-based replication, multidisk consistency for Azure VMs now leverages a new restore point API- proprietary to Zerto for Azure- offering an easier and more efficient way to manage replication and recovery operations.

Zerto for Azure Restore Points

In-Cloud Protection: Delivering Resilience between Azure Regions

Public cloud resources run in a data center somewhere, making it susceptible to disruption. With multidisk consistency support and new Azure VRAs, this also improves region-to-region protection for Azure. Users can easily protect workloads between regions within Microsoft Azure for in-cloud protection against regional outages and other disruptions like cyberattacks.

Zerto for Azure Region-to-Region Protection Architecture

Continuously Evolving Zerto for Azure

Zerto for Azure empowers businesses to simplify data protection and disaster recovery, by using Microsoft Azure as a disaster recovery site or protect across DR regions to eliminate the capital costs associated with owning and operating your datacenter.
Subscribing to Zerto for Azure in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, users can immediately take advantage of its scalable multi-VRA architecture which enhances replication and recovery, multidisk consistency that guarantees complete disk protection during replication and recovery, and region-to-region protection that defends against regional outages and cyberattacks.
With these new features, Zerto for Azure can easily scale protection up to thousands of VMs, reducing management complexity. Its multidisk consistency improves efficiency and simplifies operations. And users now have in-cloud protection for workloads between Azure regions.
Overall, Zerto for Azure continues to improve an already industry-leading offering, giving users the most powerful, flexible DR infrastructure on the market.

Interested in trying Zerto for Azure first? Sign up to test it plus many more for free in our Hands on Labs.

Anthony Dutra