Demand for multi-cloud solutions has shaped Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0, a disaster-recovery and data-protection platform that debuted Tuesday.

Zerto Virtual Replication, or ZVR, has always provided functionality for moving data and workloads between different host environments, such as from on-premises VMware data centers to the Azure cloud.

However, the new release, ZVR 6.0, extends the platform’s multi-cloud support. Users can now move data among three major platforms: Azure, AWS and the IBM cloud. Data mobility from on-premises locations to these clouds is supported as well.

In addition, Zerto supports data replication between different regions of the same public cloud. The feature is designed to provide resilience in the event that a public-cloud data center based in one region comes under threat from extreme weather or another disruptive event.

For now, ZVR does not support public clouds other than Azure, AWS and IBM. The decision about which clouds to support reflects customer demand, according to Rob Strechay, SVP, product, at Zerto, who added that support for Google Cloud is “on the road map.”

Zerto also plans to add full support for containerized workloads in the future, he said. Currently, ZVR only supports containers embedded within VMware virtual machines.

Strechay said that Zerto’s decision to expand multi-cloud support in ZVR reflects growing interest in multicloud strategies among the organizations that use Zerto’s disaster-recovery and data-protection features.

“Most of our customers are saying they don’t want vendor lock-in” in the cloud, Strechay said. “Some are too worried about being locked into VMware, and they don’t want to fall into the same trap with public cloud. They want their data to be able to move.”

Rob Strechay

Rob Strechay

Fear of being stuck with a single public-cloud provider is not the only lock-in concern associated with the cloud. Customers also are worried about not being able to move data and workloads back from the public cloud to on-premises infrastructure.

“One of the constraining factors our customers saw with using the public cloud is that they wanted a get-out-of-jail card,” Strechay said. “They wanted to be able to go home again with their data.”

ZVR 6.0 also extends the platform’s data protection and recovery features. Users can now easily recover specific files and directories from backups, rather than having to recover an entire backup.

In addition to reducing overall backup costs, this feature also is useful for responding to ransomware attacks, Strechay said, because users can recover files from virtual disks when they are in offline mode, without having to spin infected machines back up.

Disaster recovery is perhaps not as hot a topic in the channel today as it was a few years ago. By integrating disaster-recovery features with multi-cloud data mobility solutions, however, Zerto is eyeing two distinct sets of use cases with one product — which might be just what it needs to maintain a strong channel presence as standalone disaster recovery becomes old news.