Zerto Virtual Replication 3.5 - Architecture Overview.

By | July 9, 2016

Zerto Virtual Replication provides a business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) solution in a virtual environment. This is a competitor of VMware Site Recovery Manager and EMC Recover Point for Virtual Machines.

Some main features:

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – seconds. (async replication available)
  • Zerto Virtual Replication is storage-agnostic. Any storage supported by VMware (including FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, and DAS) is supported by Zerto.
  • Orchestration of DR workflows, including test, failover and failback of a single VM or VMs group
  • Zerto can replicate source RDMs (Raw Device Mappings) to target VMDKs and source
    VMDKs to target RDMs.zerto_rdm
  • WAN bandwidth consumption optimization
  • Zerto does not uses snapshots

Zerto Virtual Replication comprises the following components:

Zerto_ArchitectureZerto 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.

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 vSphere Client console plug-in – A plug-in in the vSphere Client console that enables managing recovery using Zerto Virtual Replication from the console.

Zerto GUI – Recovery using Zerto Virtual Replication is managed via a user interface, Zerto DR Management UI, vSphere Client console or vSphere Web Client.

 

zerto_statusInitial VM sync

zerto_sumTwo paires sites (Sikoku and Kyushu)

Update: Zerto 4.0 introduced some cool features and totally new UI based on HTML 5!

Author: Mariusz

Architect (~ 15 years experience based on passion...) with strong background as a System Administrator and Engineer. Focused on Data Center Solutions: Virtualization/Cloud Computing and Storage/Backup Systems. Currently living in Poland.