We compared Dell NetWorker and Zerto based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data, and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Dell NetWorker is recognized for its intuitive graphical user interface, integration with Data Domain, and impressive speed. Users say Zerto offers excellent data protection, and it’s easy to create VMs. Zerto users also like its real-time replication features. Dell NetWorker needs improvements in reporting, integration, and documentation. Zerto could improve cloud environment configuration, PowerShell scripting, and multi-site replication.
Service and Support: Dell NetWorker received mixed reviews, with some customers expressing frustration about delayed responses and unresolved problems. Customers have generally had positive experiences with Zerto's customer service, noting their quick response times and ability to resolve issues. Some customers have encountered slower response times and needed to go through multiple levels of support to get their issues resolved.
Ease of Deployment: Some users consider Dell NetWorker's setup to be effortless, but some said it was somewhat complex. The setup process for Zerto can be either simple or complicated, depending on the individual's experience with backup solutions.
Pricing: Some reviewers consider Dell NetWorker to be expensive, while others find it to be reasonable and cheaper than other options with similar features. Zerto’s price tag is considered reasonable and in line with industry norms. Others said it was somewhat expensive but still worth the cost.
ROI: Users have provided no feedback about Dell NetWorker’s ROI so far. Zerto reduces risks while saving costs and time. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance, and helps businesses grow.
Comparison Results: Dell NetWorker is regarded as a reasonably priced, high-performing backup solution with a user-friendly GUI. At the same time, many users were dissatisfied with Dell’s support and asked for improvements in reporting and documentation. Zerto offers top-tier data protection, excellent customer service, and real-time replication, but some users say its cloud and multi-site functionality could be better.
"It is an extremely stable product."
"Data domain is a good feature."
"The extensive information provided on tool properties has been very useful, specifically the information on databases"
"The solution is stable."
"It has the ability to support all kinds of backups. It can be used to back up databases, operating systems, virtual machines, Lotus Notes, and Exchange. It can also do remote image backups for remote sites. It integrates and works with Data Domain. It is an enterprise-class product that can be used for anything and everything across multiple sites and locations. It is also very scalable."
"The backup feature for this product is good. It is easy to set up and easy to scale."
"The backup capabilities and the automatization of the backup - along with the potential to make the back up on a virtual machine - are the solution's most valuable aspects."
"Dell EMC NetWorker integrates well with our domain and the performance is quite good on-premise. We receive approximately 1 terabyte within one hour."
"I like the less than one-minute RPO, the ability to IP customize during failovers, and the cloning feature that I can use to clone VMs over at the target location. As part of the automation failover, if we need to change an IP when it fails over to the other data center, Zerto will handle that; there's no need for manual intervention. As far as the cloning, we use that to do quick testing of a VM in the remote data center for lift-and-shift processors."
"I really like how you can test the failover as often as you need."
"Zerto's continuous data protection is unmatched. It's phenomenal. It's also very easy to use. The menus are self-explanatory. Once you understand the terminology of the product, what the VPGs (Virtual Protected Groups) are, you're able to pretty much do what you want in the product. It's very easy to use."
"We selected Zerto because the RPO is extremely low, so you can get that server back up almost immediately. That was a huge thing. Also, the ability to do failover tests, where you can test your environment, but not have it impact your production environment, was huge."
"RPO time for the copied-off VMs appears to be quite short."
"The instant recovery at DR locations is the most valuable feature. We're required to do periodic DR tests of critical databases, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL. We have recovery point objectives set for specific databases and we need to be able to achieve them. Zerto helps solve that business problem."
"Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration."
"Its ease of use is valuable. You do not have to do much to install Zerto or implement Zerto on the infrastructure. It is not very complicated."
"Currently, the NetWorker server only supports the Windows server bare-metal recovery, so an improvement would be built-in support for Linux and UNIX BMR."
"It's not easy to integrate. We have to read a lot of documentation in order to configure the solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see better pricing and more integration with the other products in Dell EMC."
"We are able to do direct backups, but analyzing the logs is not straightforward."
"Its console UI should be better. It should also have more out-of-the-box reporting functionalities. It should also have easier cloud integration. They have got cloud boost and things like that, but if you want to directly back up to the cloud, I'm not too sure whether you can do it. For example, you can easily send data from Commvault to AWS, Azure, or a container, but it seems to be not so easy in NetWorker."
"The solution could be graphically better."
"NetWorker's major problem is its legacy software."
"The configuration is too complex."
"There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions."
"Some of the ability to automate selections and automate VPG creations could be better."
"Improvements in stability would be welcome; there are some software bugs that can affect RPOs. We want more of a guarantee that we won't lose any of our backups, even in the event of a disaster."
"The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product."
"Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent when it works. I'm trying to be nice to them because I like the product a lot, but we're having a lot of difficulty with it in our environment."
"It has a file restore feature, which we have tried to use. We have had some issues with that, because the drives are compressed in our main file system. It is a Windows-based file server. So, it compresses the shares and can't restore those by default."
"It took me a little bit of time to get used to Zerto's terminology and to relate it back to how you do a backup traditionally. It was a little different. It took a little while to understand what a VPG is and what it does. That's an area that they could probably improve on a little, making the documentation easier to understand."
"The post-configuration part could be improved. For example, it would be super helpful to have the ability to modify DNS. Once the migration is done, we want to do some more modifications to the endpoint."
Dell NetWorker is ranked 14th in Backup and Recovery with 73 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 236 reviews. Dell NetWorker is rated 7.8, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell NetWorker writes "A stable tool that has an easy-to-use GUI that enables quick restoration". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Dell NetWorker is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Dell Avamar, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veritas NetBackup and Commvault Cloud, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Commvault Cloud and Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines. See our Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto report.
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