451 Research Gives Insight on Zerto for Kubernetes

451 Research calls Zerto a data protection veteran and reviews their beta offering and leadership in backup and recovery for containerized applications.

The growth rate of containerized applications has been astounding. Industry analysts at Red Hat Global predict increases in container usage by 89% over the next two years. In fact, according to 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Storage, Data Management & Disaster Recovery study¹, 43% of organizations with containers in use indicated that they rely on legacy or preexisting data protection tools as their primary data protection strategy for containerized applications and associated data volumes. Although such tooling is still important for protecting VMs, dynamic cloud-native applications require a different approach that necessitates new tooling.

Without protection, your organization’s data is left susceptible to human error, attacks from external entities, and losses due to disruption.

Innovative containerized technology demands a new way of thinking when it comes to data protection and disaster recovery. The technical and organizational advantages of platforms like Kubernetes, have propelled the popularization of containers. With a lightweight and modular approach, containers supply developer agility, decoupling of layers, and cloud-native microservices. Kubernetes is all about staying agile, but as some organizations have discovered already, combining containerized technology with an outdated protection system doesn’t provide this level of efficiency.

In their new report², 451 Research highlights Zerto as a veteran leader of the IT resilience industry and explores their new platform, Zerto for Kubernetes, or Z4K. The report recognizes Zerto’s reputation for highly granular disaster recovery (DR) and commented that Z4K takes the same technology, with our journal-based workflow and applies it to Kubernetes.

It is this reputation that has allowed Zerto to build a well-established foothold in the data protection market.

451 Research also captures Zerto’s ability to gain an edge over vendors by relying less on the continuous snapshot-based approach. The report explains how Z4K leverages the existing Kubernetes Storage Classes to simplify setting up volumes used for recovery and journaling. Zerto’s journal-based system is known for its multiple checkpoints, even as often as seconds apart.

Z4K even offers a tagging mechanism that offers users increased application consistency and the ability to recover or restore to a known good point in time.

Z4K is platform-agnostic and offers continuous data replication for backup, DR, and mobility for Kubernetes-based applications that use persistent volumes to store data. The addition of Z4K to Zerto’s portfolio addresses an emerging market and enables their technologies to target the overlap of containers and VMs, serving customers required to manage the backup and DR needs of both on-premises and containerized storage. 451 Research states that Zerto’s position as a pure-play data management vendor provides many opportunities for partnerships with organizations looking to continue with either option.

Zerto has just kicked off the Z4K beta stage, with general availability expected early in 2021. 451’s report provides insight into Zerto’s strategy for testing, including tech partners and managed service providers. The report recognizes Zerto as an industry leader and key educator for emerging markets that may be unfamiliar with routine data protection.

Whether you’ve already switched over to containerized applications, or are just diving into this space, 451 Research’s report will explain why Zerto for Kubernetes should be at the top of your list. Read the 451 Research report for an expert’s take on Zerto’s position of leadership in this new world of data protection. Interested in more? Visit the Zerto for Kubernetes site where you’ll find the hands-on lab, beta program sign-up and other thought leadership articles.

1. ^{Voice of the Enterprise: Storage, Data Management & Disaster Recovery, Henry Baltazar, Liam Rogers, April 2020, 451 Research, a part of S&P Market Intelligence}
2. ^{“VM data protection veteran Zerto sets its sights on Kubernetes-based stateful apps”, Liam Rogers, October 2020, 451 Research, a part of S&P Market Intelligence}