Zerto Virtual Replication 5.5 Beta: Thoughts From a Zerto Customer

A critical part of any new release for Zerto is working closely with customers on testing our new features and functionality to make sure we’re ready for prime-time!

Take a behind the scenes look of what you can expect in our new release with longtime customer and 5.5 beta tester Jayme Williams, Sr. System Engineer of Tencate.

What new features did you test?

• Failback from Azure
• AWS RTO improvement

What excited you the most about the features you tested in 5.5?

I’m most excited about how easy the failback from Azure is. Failing out is the same exact experience as on-premise we’re seeing a similar RPO (8 seconds) and RTO (15 minutes) to what we see with site to site replication. This gives us the confidence we need to start moving more workloads to Azure.

I’m also impressed that Zerto has been able to add capabilities without any complexity. This has been especially important to me as I’ve started to train others on how to use ZVR.

I know if I train them on the solution today, no matter what enhancements Zerto decides to make that user interface will remain easy to use and not require additional training.

We also tested the RTO improvement in AWS and we’re able to reduce our RTO from 12 hours down to 35 minutes!

How does 5.5 support Tencate’s overall IT strategy and future initiatives?

Azure has moved up in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and we have put more priority there. Because of the affordability, we don’t have to make a case for capital and can spin up a tenant instantly.

Additionally, even though our plan is to have VMs stay in Azure, we love the comfort of knowing we can move them back and forth. Our company is planning to rollout one Azure tenant per operational company per region. Having Zerto removes some of the challenges of us shifting around the VMs behind the scenes.

Were there any surprises during your Beta experience?

The background checks 5.5 does against your Azure tenant are very useful during validation. Pointing out things such as a shortage of vCPU in your tenant is extremely useful prior to an event and were an added bonus since it’s not something you would necessarily know or think of without a deeper knowledge of Azure.