We performed a comparison between VMware SRM (Site Recovery Manager) and Zerto based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Zerto wins out in this competition. Its consistent sub-second response for RTO and RPO makes it one of the most responsive and fastest in the marketplace today. Users are able to easily run tests and change scenarios without any effect on an organization's production.
"If you want to do failover, it works without any problem."
"It eliminates the need for complex compliance requirements, making it a highly effective solution."
"The thing I like the most about SMR is the reduced cost of management."
"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of operations."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the automatic recovery of the virtual machine if it goes down."
"The product is evolving and the vendor is committed to change."
"It is a stable solution...The solution's technical support is excellent."
"The solution is simple to use and has effective automation."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is allowing a failover from our remote sites to our data center. Our remote sites have failed several times, and on each occasion, we were able to bring a plant back online within 30 minutes, even though the hardware repair took many days."
"Zerto gives us peace of mind knowing that if we were attacked by ransomware, we would be able to recover data from the time before the ransomware to get us back to being fully functional."
"It is very user-friendly. There is no wondering about what a feature does. It is easy to use."
"The one-to-many replication functionality is helpful. While we were protecting our VMs in Azure, we were able to use the one-to-many feature to also replicate the same VMs to our new data center, in preparation for data center migration."
"We are in the process of switching over our production data center and Zerto has been a true time-saver that has cost us zero downtime."
"The most valuable tool is the dashboard, which allows us to immediately check the DLP status, replication data, and all other data needed to have cleaner and immediate control of the situation."
"It is the backbone of our DR solution for critical databases that hold the data we can't afford to lose. It provided new opportunities to change how we approach disaster recovery."
"When we replicated our data, I turned up the machine, and it was up in seconds. It blew my mind. I could not believe it."
"SRM has to be installed on two separate data centers, so both have to be coordinated very well, which becomes complicated when configuring the software for disaster recovery."
"The administration guides can be complicated and difficult to use, so it would be helpful if it was made easier."
"In my view, if VMware comes up with an appliance-based solution like vCenter Server (which was also Windows-based), it will be much easier for deployment. I"
"The solution could improve by removing some of the limitations we have been facing. There could be better integrated."
"We have had an issue when some customers have traditional designs and sites. For example, on one another site, they are using hyper-converged, using VMware, or Nutanix. We have a problem with the synchronization between the storage for site to site. This is the main issue. We are adding some other tools to support the synchronization to allow the movement of the workload from site to site easily."
"Technical support can take some time to respond."
"The solution currently has a five-minute RPO, meaning if the VM goes down we can lose up to five minutes of data which is a big deal when it relates to database replication."
"In my opinion, the integration with Peer Persistent Storage could be improved."
"I would like to see improvement on the Zerto Virtual Replication appliances, so that they are a little bit more streamlined as opposed to now where they just span multiple ZVR appliances like there were gremlins... as this thing grows it just spawns unlimited numbers of additional ZVR appliances and you end up with a bunch so that you can't really tell which is which."
"The monitoring and alerting functionality need to be improved."
"The tech support on my latest issue wasn't so great. I had to figure a lot of stuff out myself. It could be that I had a Level 1 tech who was new or something, but it seemed like the tech was spitballing, which does not help me."
"Zerto added the backup feature, but it's not quite up to speed yet when you compare it with the backup capabilities of other solutions out there."
"The onset of configuring an environment in the cloud is difficult and could be easier to do."
"I wouldn't mind seeing Zerto sold at a cheaper price point, although the cost is comparable to VMware SRM."
"Not all of the knowledge required for implementing Zerto is available in their online documentation for non-partners."
"The alerting has room for improvement as it is the biggest pain point with the software. It is so bad. It is just general alerting on or off. There are so many emails all the time. You have no control over it, which is terrible. It is the worst part of the entire application. I have voiced this to Zerto hundreds of times for things like feature changes. Apparently, it's coming, but there is nothing concrete as to when you can do it."
VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 27 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 127 reviews. VMware SRM is rated 8.0, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of VMware SRM writes "Robust reliability tool ensuring high availability and disaster recovery for virtualized environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Our average recovery time is now in seconds, and we can spin up a test version without affecting our production environment". VMware SRM is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, Azure Site Recovery, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery and Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service , whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, Commvault Cloud and VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. See our VMware SRM vs. Zerto report.
See our list of best Disaster Recovery (DR) Software vendors.
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