Zerto Virtual Replication 3.0 was designed to provide replication at the hypervisor level. Zerto Virtual Replication provides a business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) solution in virtual environments, enabling the replication of mission-critical applications that also provides automation of failovers and recoveries.
Zerto has moved physical array based replication to the hypervisor which follows the trend of abstracting hardware functionality to software for the software-defined datacenter. Their solution dramatically simplifies disaster recovery designs, and gives IT professionals the option of using cloud DR solutions from one of Zerto's cloud partners.
The Zerto components include:
- Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM): A Windows service, which manages everything required for the replication between the protection and recovery sites, except for the actual replication of data. The ZVM interacts with the vCenter Server to get the inventory of VMs, disks, networks, hosts, etc. and then service the Zerto GUI within vSphere Client console for the user to create and manage protected virtual machines. The ZVM also monitors changes in the VMware environment and responds accordingly. For example, a VMotion operation of a protected VM from one host to another is intercepted by the ZVM so the Zerto GUI will update it accordingly to the user.
- Virtual Replication Appliance (VRA): A virtual machine installed on each ESX/ESXi hosting virtual machines to be protected or recovered, to manage the replication of data from protected virtual machines to the recovery site.
- Zerto Cloud Connector (ZCC): A cloud connector routes traffic between two networks belonging to different organizations, such as between a customer network and a cloud provider replication network, in a secure manner. Using a ZCC means that a cloud provider does not need to go through complex network and routing setups to ensure complete separation between a customer network and the cloud provider network.
- Zerto vSphere Client console plug-in: A plug-in in the vSphere Client console that enables managing recovery using Zerto Virtual Replication from the console.