The Managing Zerto: Setup, Protection, and Recovery course prepares beginner to intermediate Zerto users to deploy, configure, and manage the solution in VMware vSphere® environments. Ideal for hands-on practitioners, the training focuses on Zerto’s core concepts and components, including the major recovery operations such as failovers, tests, and restores. Hands-on labs are included to give learners firsthand experience with setup and protection.

Audience

• Zerto customers
• Zerto partners

Prerequisites

No prior Zerto experience is required. The class assumes familiarity with VMware vSphere® and virtualization technologies.

Course Objectives

By the end of this class, you should be able to:

• Articulate the top use cases for Zerto and the architectures needed for each
• Describe the major Zerto components and how they interoperate
• Install, setup, and configure Zerto in a vSphere environment
• Protect virtual machines replicating locally and to a secondary peer site
• Perform the most common recovery operations, including file restores, failover tests, live failover, and moves

Detailed Course Outline

Module 1: Zerto Overview 

• Introduction to Zerto
• Primary use cases
• Core technology and differentiators

Module 2: Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) 

• ZVM overview
• ZVM specifications and prerequisites
• Sizing and security hardening
• Installation

Module 3: Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs) 

• VRA overview
• VRA resources: compute, memory, networking, and storage
• Deployment and setup

Module 4: Architectures 

• Basic on-premises architecture
• Operational recovery architecture
• Disaster recovery (DR) architecture
• DR with long-term retention architecture
• Operational recovery and DR architecture

Module 5: Journal 

• Role of the journal
• Basic data path
• Sizing and settings

Module 6: Zerto Replication 

• Diving deeper on data path
• Checkpoints and write-order fidelity
• Initial, continuous, bitmap, and delta syncs

Module 7: Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs) 

• Role of VPGs
• VPG types and creation
• VM auto-protection
• VPG prioritization
• One-to-many replication

Module 8: Long Term Retention (LTR) 

• Overview of LTR
• Structure of LTR repositories
• LTR read and write flows
• Index and search

Module 9: Zerto Analytics and Monitoring 

• Overview of Zerto analytics
• Zerto reports
• Zerto analytics architecture
• Resource planner

Module 10: File and VM Restores 

• File restore process and considerations 
• VM restore process and considerations

Module 11: Recovery Concepts 

• Scratch disks
• Commits and commit policies
• Reverse protection
• VM shutdown options

Module 12: Recovery Operations: Failover Test 

• Test overview
• Failover test process
• Additional use cases

Module 13: Recovery Operations: Live Failover 

• Failover overview 
• Failover process

Module 14: Recovery Operations: Move 

• Move overview
• Move process
• Move parameters
• Comparison: move vs failover

Module 15: Recovery Operations: Clone 

• Clone overview
• Clone process
• Recap of recovery operations

Module 16: Course Wrap-Up

Detailed Lab Outline

• Exercise 1: Introduction to HPE Virtual Labs
• Exercise 2: Express Install
• Exercise 3: License and Pair Zerto Sites
• Exercise 4: VRA Installation
• Exercise 5: Create a Virtual Protection Group
• Exercise 6: Using Zerto Analytics
• Exercise 7: Create a Local Virtual Protection Group
• Exercise 8: Copy a Virtual Protection Group
• Exercise 9: Edit a Virtual Protection Group
• Exercise 10: Restore Files and Folders
• Exercise 11: Failover Test
• Exercise 12: Perform a Live Failover
• Exercise 13: Perform a Move Operation
• Exercise 14: Create a Long Term Retention Repository
• Exercise 15: Create the LTR Search Index
• Exercise 16: Edit a Virtual Protection Group to Enable Long Term Retention
• Exercise 17: Restore a VM