Zerto 8.0: IT Resilience Across Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

Zerto released version 8.0 of its IT resilience platform, targeting disaster recovery, data protection, and workload mobility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The release is notable for introducing first-class Google Cloud support and expanding existing integrations with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and VMware.

Google Cloud Integration via Continuous Data Protection

The headline feature of Zerto 8.0 is support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), delivered through Zerto’s Continuous Data Protection (CDP) technology. Specifically, the integration targets Google Cloud’s VMware-as-a-Service offering, allowing organisations to protect and migrate native VMware workloads running on GCP without abandoning the VMware tooling they already use on-premises.

According to Zerto, the GCP integration supports the company’s headline recovery metrics — Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), and workload mobility — bringing them to VMware workloads hosted on Google Cloud.

Google Cloud’s director of partnerships, Manvinder Singh, commented on the launch:

“We’re excited to partner with Zerto and to integrate its capabilities in disaster recovery and backup with Google Cloud. Zerto’s expertise in supporting and securing VMware workloads in the cloud will be a benefit to organisations that are increasingly running mission-critical workloads on Google Cloud.”

Manvinder Singh, Director of Partnerships, Google Cloud

Expanded VMware Support: vVols and vCloud Director

Zerto 8.0 adds support for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols), enabling storage policy-based management to coexist with Zerto’s data protection layer across both traditional storage and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). This is relevant to VMware environments where consistent storage policies are enforced at the VM level rather than the datastore level.

The release also expands the VMware vCloud Director (vCD) integration, adding a self-service recovery portal aimed at Managed Service Providers (MSPs). This gives MSP customers more autonomy when initiating recovery operations without needing direct access to the underlying infrastructure.

A VMware VP of marketing for HCI noted the significance of the vVols support:

“Zerto support for VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) helps our mutual customers protect their digital infrastructure. As an Advanced tier Technology Alliance Partner, Zerto is helping customers realise the unique VMware ability to offer consistent storage policy-based management across traditional storage and hyperconverged infrastructure.”

VMware VP Marketing, HCI BU

Microsoft Azure: Hyper-V Gen 2 VM Support and Failback Improvements

Zerto 8.0 deepens its Microsoft Azure integration with two significant additions:

• Hyper-V Gen 2 VM support: Organisations using UEFI-based virtual machines in on-premises Hyper-V environments can now use Azure as a disaster recovery target directly, without converting those VMs to legacy BIOS formats. This removes a common friction point for enterprises standardising on Gen 2 VMs.
• Incremental snapshots and failback across all regions: Zerto’s failback functionality, built on incremental snapshots of Azure managed disks, is now available across all Azure regions rather than a subset, broadening coverage for geographically distributed deployments.

AWS Storage Gateway as a Cloud Archive Target

On the AWS side, Zerto 8.0 introduces support for AWS Storage Gateway as a target site for cloud archive and data protection workloads. This allows organisations to route long-term retention data through Storage Gateway into AWS object or tape storage tiers, extending Zerto’s Virtual Protection Group (VPG) framework to archival use cases alongside live recovery scenarios.

New Data Protection and Operational Management Features

Beyond cloud integrations, Zerto 8.0 introduces several operational improvements:

• Single pane of glass reporting: A unified reporting view covers the status, performance, and capacity of all protected workloads managed through VPGs, reducing the need to correlate data from multiple consoles.
• Unified alert management: A prioritised alert view surfaces critical alerts with customisable notification settings, helping operations teams focus on events that require immediate action.
• Impact analysis: New capability allows teams to assess both protected and unprotected environments, whether on-premises or in the cloud, to understand exposure and prioritise protection efforts.
• Resource planning: A dedicated view surfaces unprotected VMs across the environment, giving teams a clear picture of gaps in their protection posture.
• Automated failover configuration: Zerto added automated OS configuration and automatic failback configuration to streamline failover and recovery workflows in public cloud environments, reducing manual steps during high-pressure recovery events.

Leadership Perspective

Zerto CEO Ziv Kedem framed the release in the context of the company’s long-term direction:

“With Zerto 8.0, our mission is to deliver IT resilience everywhere, by introducing a range of new and powerful features along with deeper integration with market-leading public cloud providers. We give customers the protection they want, wherever they need it. Zerto has been moving the dial on resilience for the past decade, and the ongoing development and wider integration of our platform shows the importance of technology leadership in an era where businesses can never stand still on data protection and recovery.”

Ziv Kedem, CEO, Zerto

Summary of Key Zerto 8.0 Changes

Zerto was subsequently acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in 2021. Readers researching current product versions and feature availability should consult the HPE Zerto documentation directly.

Overview: The Global Data Protection Index

Dell EMC released the results of its third annual Global Data Protection Index, a large-scale survey examining how organizations manage and protect their data. The study surveyed 2,200 IT decision-makers from public and private organizations with 250 or more employees, spanning 18 countries and 11 industries. The findings provide a detailed view of data protection maturity, the impact of cloud adoption, and the growing risks posed by data loss and system disruption.

Key headline figures from the India-focused results include a 130% increase in data volumes managed by Indian organizations between 2016 and 2018, and a nearly 50 percentage point jump in data protection “adopters” over the same period.

Explosive Data Growth Is Outpacing Protection Strategies

The Index highlights a dramatic rise in the average volume of data managed by organizations:

Despite this growth, awareness of data’s business value is high: 93% of Indian respondents and 92% of global respondents acknowledged the potential value of their data. The challenge lies in translating that awareness into effective protection practices—most respondents admitted they struggle to adequately protect the data they hold.

Disruption Incidents Are Frequent and Expensive

The volume and business criticality of data make disruption incidents increasingly costly. The research found that more than three-quarters (76%) of respondents—both in India and globally—experienced at least one type of disruption in a 12-month period. More concerning, approximately 30% of Indian businesses (27% globally) reported they were unable to recover data using their existing data protection solutions.

Around 85% of Indian respondents use at least two data protection vendors, compared to 75% worldwide. Among organizations using multiple vendors, the most common disruption types experienced in India were:

1. Unplanned system downtime (51%)
2. Data loss (36%)
3. Local disaster affecting data access for an entire site or group (34%)

The Real Cost of Downtime and Data Loss

While unplanned downtime is more prevalent, data loss carries a significantly higher financial impact. According to the survey:

• Indian organizations that experienced downtime averaged 29 hours of downtime over 12 months, at a cost of approximately $958,583—compared to a global average of 20 hours costing around $526,845.
• Indian respondents lost an average of 3.31 terabytes of data, with an associated cost of approximately $1,287,788—versus a global average of 2.13 terabytes at $995,613.

These figures underscore a growing recognition—95% in India and 81% globally—that organizations need to take data protection more seriously, particularly for data categories with the highest monetary value.

Challenges Surrounding Data Protection

Despite the growing urgency, implementation remains difficult. The research found that 94% of Indian respondents (95% globally) faced at least one significant challenge related to data protection. The top three challenges cited in India were:

1. Lack of data protection solutions for emerging technologies
2. Inability to track and protect all data due to the growth of DevOps and cloud environments
3. Complexity of configuring and operating data protection software and hardware

For organizations struggling to find solutions for newer technologies, the gaps are significant:

• 71% in India could not find adequate data protection solutions for AI and machine learning workloads.
• 58% struggled to protect cloud-native applications.
• 46% lacked solutions for robotic process automation (RPA) data.

Despite these challenges, confidence in future readiness varies sharply by region: only 32% of Indian respondents believe their current data protection solutions will meet all future business needs, compared to just 16% globally—suggesting Indian organizations may be more optimistic, or have different expectations, about their existing tooling.

Cloud Is Reshaping Data Protection Infrastructure

Public cloud adoption has grown significantly among Indian enterprises. According to the Index, public cloud now accounts for 44% of the total IT environment in Indian organizations (up from 34% in 2016), compared to a global figure of 40% in 2018 (up from 28% in 2016).

Notably, 100% of Indian organizations reported using public cloud as part of their data protection infrastructure (98% globally). The top use cases for cloud-based data protection in India include:

1. Backup/snapshot services to protect workloads built on public cloud using modern application architectures (62%)
2. Cloud-enabled versions of on-premises data protection software to protect public cloud workloads (59%)
3. Backup/snapshot services to protect workloads developed using legacy application architectures (52%)

These findings point to a hybrid strategy: organizations are not simply migrating to cloud-native backup tools but are also extending traditional on-premises data protection approaches into cloud environments.

Regulatory Compliance: Confidence Varies Widely

Regulatory compliance is emerging as a key driver of data protection investment. The Index found that 72% of Indian businesses felt very confident that their current data protection infrastructure and processes are compliant with regional regulations—a stark contrast to just 35% of global respondents who expressed the same level of confidence.

This gap may reflect differences in the maturity or stringency of regional regulatory frameworks, or differences in how “compliance” is defined and assessed across markets.

Industry Perspective

“With the rapid change in industry dynamics and the advent of newer technologies, it has become imperative for organizations to focus on the practical application of emerging technologies like AI and IoT to accelerate their digital transformation journey. The key in organizations’ digital transformation journey is the generation and analysis of data. Businesses in India are seeing better potential in the value of data and are monetizing it more than their global counterparts.”

— Ripu Bajwa, Director & General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell EMC India

Key Takeaways for DevOps and IT Teams

• Data volumes are growing faster than protection strategies can keep up. Teams should audit their current backup and recovery coverage against actual data growth rates.
• Multi-vendor complexity is a real risk. Organizations using two or more data protection vendors report higher rates of downtime and data loss—consolidation or tighter integration may reduce exposure.
• Cloud-native and AI/ML workloads remain under-protected. If your stack includes containerized apps, serverless functions, or ML pipelines, verify that your data protection tooling explicitly supports these architectures.
• Regulatory compliance cannot be assumed. The wide gap between Indian and global confidence levels suggests that self-assessed compliance may not reflect actual readiness for audits or incidents.
• Recovery testing matters as much as backup configuration. With 30% of organizations unable to recover data using existing tools, regular recovery drills are essential—not optional.