Disaster recovery using Zerto Virtual Replication enables recovering from a disaster to any point between the moment just before the disaster and a specified amount of time in the past up to 14 days. The recovery is done in real time at the recovery site with a minimal RTO.

If there is an additional requirement to extend the recovery ability to more than 14 days, Zerto Virtual Replication provides an offsite back up option that enables saving the protected virtual machines offsite for up to one year in a state where they can be easily deployed.

The virtual machine files are saved in a repository for the required period. Each virtual machine can have multiple offsite backups created according to a fixed schedule.

The offsite backups are managed by a Windows service, the Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA). The VBA is installed as part of the Zerto Virtual Replication installation. During an offsite backup, the VBA communicates with the VRAs on the recovery site to create the virtual machine files, such as the configuration and virtual disk files in a repository. The offsite backups are fixed points saved either weekly or monthly in the repository. Before you can create an offsite backup for virtual machines, you must first create one or more repositories for the offsite backup jobs.