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HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS
Your applications now run on EC2. Their recovery plan shouldn’t be a folder of snapshot scripts — HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS copies grouped EC2 instances to another region, AZ or account — agentless, from EBS snapshots, with failover, tests and reverse protection from one appliance.
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Same software. Better outcome — at a lower cost.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
The Zerto platform family
This page covers HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS — EC2-to-EC2 disaster recovery, licensed on its own. The rest:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Agentless DR for Amazon EC2 across regions, AZs and accounts
- Maker
- Zerto, an HPE company since September 2021
- How it copies
- EBS snapshots copied to the recovery region on a schedule
- Recovery point
- Set per protection group; the default is 30 minutes
- Scale
- 1,000+ EC2 instances, per the Marketplace listing
- Price
- $17,970 for 10 EC2 instances over 36 months, AWS Marketplace
- Per instance
- About $599 a year, before AWS snapshot and transfer costs
- Trial
- 30 days for 10 VMs when deployed from AWS Marketplace
- India
- No region list published — confirm Mumbai and Hyderabad
- In India via
- TechBag — scoping, HPE private offer, INR/GST and support
Understand in-cloud DR before you buy it
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is in-cloud DR for EC2?
In-cloud DR keeps EC2 workloads recoverable in a different region, AZ or account, so one failure cannot take both copies.
Snapshot scripts in one region vs HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | Snapshot scripts in one region | HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS |
|---|---|---|
| Where copies live | Snapshots in the same region as the instances | EBS snapshots copied to another region, AZ or account |
| Failing over | Hand-run scripts, one instance at a time | A whole group from a chosen checkpoint in one action |
| Testing recovery | Rarely, because nobody wants to risk it | Failover Test in the target, stopped when checked |
| Several AWS accounts | Separate scripts and roles per account | Member accounts run from one appliance |
| The bill | Snapshot storage plus engineer time | About $599 per instance a year, plus AWS storage |
| What it is NOT | — | Not a CDP journal, not backup, not for RDS or on-prem |
The cheapest test is the 30-day Marketplace trial: protect up to 10 instances, then run one failover test into your recovery region.
The five pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
ZIC
One EC2 instance, m6a.large by default on Debian 12, launched by CloudFormation into your own account at the source or the target region.
DynamoDB
The appliance is stateless: settings sit in DynamoDB tables, which can be made global tables so a fresh appliance takes over in another region.
Snapshots
For every volume of every instance in a group, ZIC takes EBS snapshots and copies them to the recovery region; a checkpoint is logged once all land.
Accounts
Member accounts let one appliance protect and recover across AWS accounts; scale accounts get past AWS’s 20 concurrent snapshot copies per region pair.
One stateless appliance in your AWS account — EBS snapshots copied to another region, zone or account, ready to fail over.
Nine capabilities. Protect, recover, prove.
HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS keeps EC2 workloads recoverable in another region, zone or account — without an agent in any instance.
Nothing inside the instances
Protection runs through AWS APIs — EBS snapshots and snapshot copies — so no agent is installed in the EC2 instances it protects.
Groups with their own SLA
Instances sit in Virtual Protection Groups, each with its own recovery account, region, RPO and history; one instance can join two groups.
Encrypted volumes across accounts
Volumes encrypted with customer-managed KMS keys replicate across accounts, one CMK per region per account; the default EBS key cannot.
Fail a whole group over
Failover Live recovers a group’s instances from a chosen checkpoint into the target AZ, region or account, from the GUI, CLI or REST API.
Protection back the other way
Since v1.5 a failover can reverse-protect the recovered group automatically; failing back needs the old production instance terminated.
Recovery settings by template
Since v1.8 an AWS Launch Template can set tags, key pairs and other properties of recovered instances; its storage settings are not supported.
Tests that leave production alone
Failover Test brings a group up from a chosen checkpoint in the target location, then is stopped from the same wizard once checked.
SLA alerts and CloudWatch
A dashboard and alerts flag any group missing its RPO, with the reason; metrics also feed Amazon CloudWatch and Zerto Analytics.
DR inside your pipelines
A REST API, Swagger and the ZIC-CLI let tools such as Ansible, Jenkins or Terraform create groups and run failovers, Zerto says.
Watch HPE Zerto in action
Two sessions from Zerto’s legacy official channel on cloud DR and migration. Neither is specific to In-Cloud for AWS — HPE has published no official In-Cloud video.
American Airlines’ DR and Migration Strategy Takes Flight with Zerto
A 2023 Zerto webinar on cloud DR and migration — not In-Cloud-specific; no official In-Cloud video exists.
The DRaaS Cookbook – Recipes for Hybrid Cloud Success
A 2021 Zerto session on cloud DR patterns, from before the HPE rebrand.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough for your environment?
Book a guided demo →AWS keeps your instances running, not recoverable somewhere else. In-Cloud copies them to another region, zone or account.
Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
DR that lives inside AWS
Many EC2 estates keep snapshots in the same region as the instances they protect. In-Cloud copies each instance’s EBS snapshots to another region, AZ or account on a schedule set per group, and keeps checkpoints to fail over to — with no agent inside any instance.
Groups that fail over together
Instances are protected in Virtual Protection Groups, each with its own target, RPO and history. A group fails over, is tested or is reverse-protected in one action from the GUI, CLI or API — though Zerto guarantees consistency per instance, not across the whole group.
The one Zerto price you can see
HPE publishes no list price for its on-premises Zerto software. In-Cloud is the exception: $17,970 on AWS Marketplace for 10 EC2 instances over 36 months, about $599 per instance a year, billed through AWS. Snapshot storage and cross-region transfer are AWS charges on top.
Where it stops
It protects EC2 only — not RDS, S3, EKS or on-premises servers, which are HPE Zerto Software’s job. Recovery points come from scheduled snapshots, not a CDP journal. No AWS region list is published, so Mumbai and Hyderabad must be confirmed, and the Marketplace contract carries no refunds.
The numbers behind the platform
What your HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS rollout looks like
Map instances and accounts
List EC2 instances by account, region and application, and note which volumes use the default EBS key rather than a CMK.
Settle the region question
Get HPE to confirm in writing that Mumbai and Hyderabad are supported, then pick the recovery region for each group.
Trial from Marketplace
Deploy the appliance by CloudFormation, protect up to 10 instances on the 30-day trial and watch the RPO alerts.
Run a failover test
Bring one application group up in the recovery region, check it at the application level, and time DNS and access.
Sign and scale
Size the contract in 10-instance packs, add member accounts, and make the appliance’s DynamoDB tables global.
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“Our EC2 recovery used to be a folder of snapshot-copy scripts. Grouping instances into VPGs with one failover button replaced all of it.”
“No agent meant no change tickets on two hundred production instances. Security signed off once they had read the IAM policy.”
“The fixed contract was easy to budget, but finance still asked about snapshot storage. That line comes from AWS, not Zerto.”
“Consistency is per instance, not per group. For our clustered database we added an application-level check after each failover test.”
“Member accounts let one appliance cover our production, staging and shared-services accounts, so DR stopped being per-team.”
“We had to confirm in writing that Hyderabad was a supported recovery region before the regulator would accept the design.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the EC2 disaster recovery market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag EC2 Disaster Recovery Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
$17,970 for 10 EC2 instances over 36 months on AWS Marketplace.
Recovery Placement × Orchestration Depth
The grid nobody publishes — how many places an EC2 workload can be recovered to vs how much of the failover, testing and failback is orchestrated for you.
Region, AZ or account per group; group failover, tests and reverse protection.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS vs the EC2 DR field
Against AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, AWS Backup, N2W Backup & Recovery, Druva DRaaS and Commvault Cloud Rewind — on how data moves, recovery point, targets, price, testing, security and India.
| Dimension | HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS | AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery | AWS Backup (cross-Region copy) | N2W Backup & Recovery | Druva DRaaS on AWS | Commvault Cloud Rewind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | EC2-native DR | AWS’s own server DR | Backup, copied away | Snapshot backup + DR | DRaaS into AWS | Cloud app rebuild |
| Workloads covered | EC2 instances only | EC2, on-prem, clouds | Many AWS services | EC2, RDS, DynamoDB… | On-prem VMs, not EC2 | Whole cloud apps |
| How data moves | Scheduled EBS snapshots | Continuous, block-level | Backup, then copy | Policy snapshots | From Druva backups | Discovery + snapshots |
| Recovery point | 30-min default | Seconds (AWS claim) | Hourly at best | Backup schedule | Hours | Snapshot schedule |
| Recovery targets | Region, AZ or account | Another AZ or Region | Region or account | Region, account, Azure | Your AWS account | New region or account |
| Orchestration and failback | Group failover, reverse | Recovery plans | None built in | Recovery Scenarios | Runbooks, failback | Rebuild, not failback |
| DR testing | Failover Test | Non-disruptive drills | Restore testing, paid | Dry Run | Test failovers | Rebuild drills |
| Pricing model | Contract or BYOL | Per server-hour | Pay per GB | Monthly by edition | Per VM, on quote | SaaS, on quote |
| Published entry price | $17,970 / 10 / 36 mo | $0.028/server-hour | $0.05/GB-month | From $249/month | Not published | Not published |
| AWS costs on top | Snapshots, transfer | Staging + snapshots | Storage is the bill | Snapshots + server | Failover compute | Rebuilt resources |
| Scale limits | 1,000+ instances | 300 per staging account | Copy-job quotas | 20 to 1,000+ instances | Not published | Not published |
| Security depth | CMK, Keycloak, IMDSv2 | Point-in-time rollback | Air-gapped vaults | Immutable copies | Out of your account | Clean-account rebuild |
| India region | Not verified | Mumbai and Hyderabad | Mumbai and Hyderabad | Your account; confirm | Mumbai available | Your target region |
| Best fit | Large EC2 estates | Agent-friendly fleets | Backup-first teams | Mid-size AWS shops | No second data centre | Cloud-native apps |
Which approach fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS if…
- ✓Hundreds of EC2 instances across several accounts need grouped failover to another region or AZ
- ✓Nothing may be installed inside production instances, so an agent-based tool is ruled out
- ✓A fixed 36-month contract suits your budget better than an hourly per-server meter
Compare alternatives if…
- ✓You need an RPO of seconds — AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery replicates continuously at the block level
- ✓Your DR must cover RDS, DynamoDB or S3 too — AWS Backup and N2W protect those services
- ✓The source is on-premises, not EC2 — Druva DRaaS and HPE Zerto Software are built for that
Do not expect…
- ✓A published list of supported AWS regions, Mumbai and Hyderabad included
- ✓Consistency across a whole group — Zerto guarantees it per instance only
- ✓Refunds on the Marketplace contract, or an analyst placement for Zerto
HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS is one of 27 disaster recovery products TechBag carries. The Disaster Recovery guide narrows them to a shortlist and shows the reasoning. →
What does hand-run EC2 recovery cost you?
Drag the sliders (EC2 instances protected; engineer-hour cost). Estimates model engineering time spent scripting snapshot copies, rehearsing failovers and fixing recovery settings, at an assumed 1.5 hours per EC2 instance a year, with 70% of it removed by grouped, automated failover and tests. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Published: AWS Marketplace lists HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS as a 36-month contract at $17,970 for 10 EC2 instances — about $599 per instance a year — with no refunds; BYOL is available through an HPE private offer, and a Marketplace deployment includes a 30-day, 10-VM trial. EBS snapshot storage, cross-region transfer and the appliance instance are billed by AWS on top. For comparison, AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery is $0.028 per source server per hour plus AWS resources. There is no INR price. TechBag maps your EC2 estate first, then prices it in INR with GST.
HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS
Best for large, multi-account EC2 estates
- $17,970 per 36 months for 10 instances
- About $599 per instance a year
- 30-day, 10-VM trial; no refunds
+ Platform add-ons
Best for a broader rollout
- Scoped to your estate
- Add-on modules as needed
- Phased, right-sized deployment
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, for comparison
Best for agent-based, pay-as-you-go DR
- $0.028 per source server per hour
- EBS, snapshots and EC2 billed on top
- Endpoints in Mumbai and Hyderabad
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
Are Mumbai (ap-south-1) and Hyderabad (ap-south-2) supported as source and recovery regions? No list is published.
Do RBI, SEBI or IRDAI rules require the DR copy in India? If so, get the recovery region confirmed in writing.
Is the 30-minute default good enough, or do some groups need a tighter RPO — and will scale accounts be needed?
Which applications span several instances? Consistency is per instance, so plan an application check after failover.
Do any cross-account volumes use the default EBS key? Only CMK-encrypted or unencrypted volumes are supported there.
Can the appliance reach zapps-registry.zerto.com over the internet? Locked-down VPCs need the manual install route.
What will snapshot storage and cross-region transfer add on top of about $599 per instance a year?
Marketplace contract or BYOL through HPE? The Marketplace contract is non-refundable, so size the packs carefully.
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate HPE Zerto In-Cloud for AWS?
Map your EC2 instances, accounts and regions first, or let a TechBag advisor confirm the Indian recovery regions with HPE and scope a trial.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.