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.
"NetWorker has very good scalability."
"The possibility of recovering up-to-the-moment data is very useful."
"It is the best umbrella, serving the best applications."
"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."
"It's a good product that can be integrated easily with the Data domain."
"The solution has a longer lifespan."
"The support for legacy products is very good."
"The most valuable feature is NetWorker's integration with the data domain that transfers the data directly into the Dell appliance, so the data doesn't need to pass through the network. NetWorker acts like a pipe, allowing the data to flow directly from the database or the VMware environment to the data domain."
"Its user interface is excellent, and when it comes to data duplication, Zerto is very fast."
"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."
"The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario."
"If we lost our data center and had to recover it, Zerto would save us a great deal of time. In our testing, we have found that recovering the entire data center would be completed within a day."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to recover critical systems, such as public safety, within a few minutes. In addition, the RPO is six seconds of data loss, tops."
"When we use our VMware environment, sometimes the HP hardware is not compatible, and we start to lose data. I like that we can restore our whole application and public-facing system through Zerto."
"When we need to failover or move workloads, Zerto significantly decreases both the time it takes and the number of people involved. It only takes a single person to activate a failover and we can pretty much automate everything else."
"Four years ago when we did a PoC between two other vendors and Zerto, there were two features of Zerto that sold it, hands-down. One was the ease of creating protection groups, the ease with which our engineers could create protection, add virtual machines into the Zerto product, and get them under DR protection."
"It is not easy to understand and deploy. It is complex in nature. Simplicity is not there. When we deploy it, the customer always needs some training from us. To make it user friendly, there should be one agent that can be used to back up every product. Dell EMC NetWorker uses so many user agents. In PowerProtect Data Manager, you can just install its VM, import that VM into vCenter, and you can start to do backups directly from vCenter. However, in Dell EMC NetWorker, you always need one server, and from that server, you need to initiate all backups. You must know the interface and the CLI. It is not user friendly. It would be a great feature if we can deploy Dell EMC NetWorker on a virtual machine, like Avamar. The additional features that are required in Dell EMC NetWorker are already available in PowerProtect Data Manager and Avamar. Therefore, there is no need to enhance Dell EMC NetWorker. It would be better if they can just rename it to PowerProtect Data Manager or Avamar."
"Dell NetWorker could improve the GUI to include rack recovery."
"I haven't had a good experience with technical support. It takes them a very long time to resolve issues."
"The UI needs some enhancement to be more user-friendly."
"The product should provide integration with AWS."
"When you're working with VMware, you need to use vProxy machines. You have to install the vProxy for every host in the VMware environment."
"The end-user experience is not good."
"Regarding improvements for NetWorker, I believe implementing cross-platform restore functionality is essential. This feature would allow for compatibility with various backup software solutions, similar to Veeam."
"Its initial setup can be better. It looks easy, but if you do not have things in the right place, it is not as easy as it looks. Some of the instructions were not clear. They were a little bit confusing. For example, while setting up SSH initially, it was a little bit unclear if I needed to use a regular credential or some other credential. This was one of the things that was a little fuzzy, and we had to get somebody else involved to help us out."
"We would like the LTR function to be able to retain the past 12 months."
"The time between releases is too long. Zerto doesn't seem to really keep up with the products with which they need to be compatible. For instance, the 9.5 updates 3 took about 90 days to come out after the latest version of vCenter 7.0 update 3 was released."
"The only issue that I observed was that depending on the number of virtual machines that are being replicated, you will have to provision the appropriate bandwidth for the link that the replicated systems will traverse."
"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."
"The problem with the backup product is that it's not very mature and you really need a specific use case to be able to use it effectively. It's hard to explain to our customers, especially our large customers, that the use case is so limited."
"In terms of improvement, it would be helpful if the implementation team had a better best practices guide and made sure things like the journaling are very clearly understood."
"In general, the solution is pretty good, but because it is geared toward simplicity, sometimes, when things go wrong, the answer is not very detailed so that things can be solved quickly. If things do go wrong, it does require a little bit deeper troubleshooting to resolve the issues. That's the only area where improvement could occur. There should be a little bit more details about if things go wrong, how to remedy them."
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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