Zerto 5.0 – Replication to Microsoft Azure

This article is part of a series of posts that deep dive into the new Zerto Virtual Replication 5.0 feature set. To view the other posts check out the index post here.

Zerto has expanded its public cloud support with the release of Zerto Virtual Replication 5.0. With the release of ZVR 4.0, support for Amazon Web Services was added to Zerto’s replication package.

Architecture

If you are familiar with Zerto’s architecture for AWS you will find that Azure operates the same way from the Zerto perspective. All of the Zerto components at your private cloud site (ie VMware / HyperV) are the same – you still have a Zerto Manager and VRA’s.

There is only one component at the Azure site, a ZCA, or Zerto Cloud Appliance.

Zerto's Azure Architecture
Zerto’s Azure Architecture

Your replicated data is stored as Azure blobs. Journals get 16MB block blobs, and replica disks are stored as single page blobs. If you don’t know how to set up Azure blobs, don’t worry, Zerto takes care of all of the Azure storage requirements for you.

Requirements

The Azure specific requirements include a working Azure account, a connection to Azure, and a ZCA to be configured. Connectivity options include VPN, or Azure ExpressRoute, and the ZCA should be configured as size: D3 v2.

In order to replicate to Azure you will need to be running ZVR 5.0 at your VMware/HyperV site, and you will need to contact your Zerto account team in order to get access to the Azure bits.

Limitations

As with anything, there are some limitations with Zerto replication for Azure. The largest of which is that today replication is only “to” Azure, and any failback operations have to be done with a V2V type tool. Microsoft’s level of involvement has been tremendous from what I have heard though, and I suspect that automated reverse replication and failback is right around the corner.

Some other things to keep in mind:

  • Maximum disk size of 1TB (per disk), which is the maximum Azure page blob size
  • Only Windows and Linux OS versions supported by Azure are supported for replication
  • RTO’s are much better than they are with AWS

Leave some feedback

Zerto is always looking for customer feedback. Please, feel free to leave a comment here, or shoot me an email, or open a support ticket. We want to constantly improve, and the best way to do that it to understand your real world use cases.

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