# Zerto **Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/zerto **Vertical:** Backup + Disaster Recovery **Subcategory:** Continuous Data Protection and DR **Tier:** Leader **Website:** zerto.com **Last Updated:** 2026-04-14 ## Summary Zerto delivers continuous data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized and cloud workloads, enabling near-zero RPO recovery as a Hewlett Packard Enterprise product. ## Company Overview Zerto is a continuous data protection and disaster recovery platform that uses journal-based replication to capture every write operation to protected virtual machines and cloud workloads, maintaining a rolling recovery journal that enables point-in-time recovery to any second within the journal window rather than only to the most recent backup snapshot. This approach collapses the recovery point objective for protected workloads to near-zero — seconds rather than hours — fundamentally changing the data protection economics for organizations whose business-critical applications cannot tolerate the data loss that snapshot-based backup schedules produce. The platform's continuous replication engine operates at the hypervisor level without agents in protected VMs, capturing changes with minimal performance impact while maintaining the journal that enables granular recovery point selection. Zerto's disaster recovery orchestration capability allows organizations to define recovery plans that automate the failover sequence for multi-tier application stacks — spinning up database tiers before application tiers, updating DNS records, running validation scripts — with one-click execution that does not require manual step sequencing during an actual recovery event when time pressure is highest. The platform supports non-disruptive DR testing using a sandboxed bubble environment that activates a copy of the protected workload in isolation without affecting replication continuity, enabling organizations to test and document their recovery procedures on a regular schedule without scheduling maintenance windows or pausing protection. Zerto's cloud mobility features allow workloads to be failed over to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud as the DR target rather than requiring a physical secondary data center. Zerto was founded in 2011, acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2021, and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts under the HPE portfolio. The platform serves enterprise customers in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology that have stringent RPO and RTO requirements for business-critical application stacks. Zerto competes with VMware Site Recovery, Veeam, and Druva in the disaster recovery platform market, differentiating through its continuous data protection model and its journal-based recovery granularity that snapshot-based solutions cannot match. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the difference between Zerto's continuous data protection and a standard daily backup? Standard daily backups create a recovery point once per day, meaning up to 24 hours of data can be lost in a failure. Zerto's continuous replication captures every write to a rolling journal, enabling recovery to any point within the journal window — typically seconds of data loss — which is critical for transactional applications where hours of lost data represent significant business impact. ### What is Zerto's core technology and how does it differ from traditional backup? Zerto uses continuous journal-based replication at the hypervisor level to capture every write operation as it occurs — creating a continuous recovery journal rather than periodic snapshots, enabling recovery to any point in time within seconds rather than the nearest hourly or daily backup, and fundamentally different from snapshot-based backup that can leave hours of data at risk between protection points. ### What platforms does Zerto support for replication and recovery? Zerto supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Microsoft Azure as both replication source and target, and AWS as a recovery target — enabling workloads to replicate from on-premises VMware to Azure or AWS, between data centres running different hypervisors, and from one cloud region to another within Azure, with the same Zerto interface managing all replication relationships. ### What recovery time and recovery point objectives can Zerto achieve? Zerto's continuous replication delivers recovery point objectives of seconds — typically 5 to 15 seconds — because every write is captured and replicated in near-real-time, and recovery time objectives of minutes because failover starts the replicated VMs from the most recent journal checkpoint without needing to restore data from a backup repository, making it suitable for the most stringent business continuity requirements. ### How does Zerto's Virtual Protection Group work? Zerto Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs) allow administrators to group related VMs — such as all VMs in an application stack — into a single protection unit that replicates, fails over, and recovers together with consistent crash-consistent or application-consistent checkpoints across all VMs in the group simultaneously, ensuring that interdependent application components recover to the same point in time. ### How does Zerto help organisations recover from ransomware attacks? Because Zerto's journal captures every write with timestamps going back up to 30 days, ransomware recovery involves identifying the last clean point in the journal before encryption began and recovering all protected VMs to that exact moment — avoiding data loss measured in days that occurs when recovering from daily or weekly backups, and enabling precise recovery without paying ransom or relying on decryption tools. ### What is Zerto's cloud mobility capability? Zerto cloud mobility allows workloads to be migrated non-disruptively from on-premises to cloud, between cloud regions, or between clouds by replicating the live VM to the target environment and performing a brief cutover window during which the source VM is quiesced and the target VM takes over — with the continuous replication minimising the cutover window to seconds and eliminating the extended downtime of traditional lift-and-shift migrations. ### How does Zerto fit into the Hewlett Packard Enterprise portfolio? Zerto was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2021 and is now offered as part of HPE's storage and cloud portfolio, available through HPE GreenLake as a consumption-based service and integrated with HPE's partner ecosystem — while continuing to operate as a standalone software product that works independently of HPE storage infrastructure, allowing customers to use Zerto regardless of their server and storage vendor relationships. ### What is Zerto and what makes its continuous data protection approach unique? Zerto delivers continuous data protection (CDP) and disaster recovery for virtualized and cloud workloads using journal-based replication that records every change in real time. Unlike snapshot-based backup that creates point-in-time copies every hour or more, Zerto's CDP enables recovery to any point within seconds of a failure or ransomware event, dramatically reducing data loss. ### Who owns Zerto? Zerto was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in 2021 for $374 million. As an HPE product, Zerto integrates with HPE's GreenLake cloud services and benefits from HPE's enterprise sales and support infrastructure, while continuing to operate as an independent product line within the HPE portfolio. ### How is Zerto priced? Zerto is priced per virtual machine under protection, with annual subscription licensing. Enterprise discounts are available based on VM count and multi-year commitments. As an HPE product, Zerto is also available through HPE GreenLake consumption-based purchasing models for organizations preferring OpEx billing. ### What environments does Zerto protect? Zerto protects VMware vSphere (its core platform), Microsoft Hyper-V, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud workloads. Its journal-based replication works across on-premises and cloud environments, enabling hybrid cloud DR where production runs on-premises and recovery targets run in a public cloud. ### What is Zerto's journal-based replication and why does it matter for ransomware recovery? Zerto continuously replicates every write operation to a journal that records changes at second-level granularity. For ransomware recovery, this means organizations can rewind to the exact moment before encryption began — potentially just seconds before an attack — minimizing the amount of data re-entered after a recovery. ### How does Zerto compare to Veeam or Rubrik for disaster recovery? Zerto specializes in near-zero RPO continuous replication and multi-site DR orchestration, while Veeam and Rubrik are primarily backup platforms that add DR capabilities. Zerto is the choice for organizations needing sub-minute RPO for critical systems, while Veeam and Rubrik provide broader backup coverage at longer RPO. ### What is Zerto's non-disruptive DR testing capability? Zerto allows non-disruptive failover testing by bringing up protected VMs in a test bubble using cloned journal data, without impacting production or replication. IT teams can run full DR tests, including application-layer validation, without scheduling maintenance windows or interrupting ongoing replication. ## Tags saas, b2b, enterprise, platform, infrastructure, security, technology, global, cloud-native --- *Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*