Zerto adds file level recovery to Virtual Replication

Virtual machine disaster recovery software provider Zerto has added file-level recovery in its upgrade to version 4.5 of its Virtual Replication product set.

Virtual Replication allows customers to automatically replicate virtual machine environments to a secondary site with failover and recovery possible in a few clicks.

The Zerto product can replicate between VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V environments, as well as between private cloud infrastructures and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The product is also storage-agnostic, so a VMware/NetApp environment at one site could be replicated to a Hyper-V/EMC setup at another, for example.

The addition to version 4.5 of Virtual Replication allows users to recover files to a specified point in time. Previously, users could only recover entire virtual machines to a point in time.

The Zerto product is deployed as a virtual appliance in each physical host and can scale up to 1,000s of machines. As writes come in, changed blocks are replicated to a journal at the customer’s disaster recovery site. Then, should an outage occur, the user can failover to the secondary site.

Virtual Replication allows recovery – now down to file level – to a set point in time. Users can, for example, recover to a state prior to being affected by a deletion, virus or data corruption. Application-specific boot-order can also be specified so that dependent applications are recovered in the correct sequence.

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The Zerto product only works with virtual servers, however. Currently, around less than half of all IT workloads are virtualised. So, does Zerto plan to offer its replication capabilities to physical environments?

Peter Godden, vice-president of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Zerto, said it is not likely. “Not today. We’re seeing the virtual space growing and we tell people that they need to have two separate products in place to protect virtual and physical environments, and a lot of people accept that.”

Zerto aims its products as a replacement for traditional backup. It claims around 2,000 enterprise and small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers, plus 500 service providers.