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.
"The replication is a key feature."
"SRM's best feature is automation."
"In terms of recovery, if you have a test job script, you can put it on top of it. You can create custom steps so that it will be more granular. It will be an easy, one click solution when it comes to the recovery application."
"Virtual Machine Recovery during DR situation, with automation and easy to use menus and options."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, where you press a button and everything fails over seamlessly."
"We find the back up feature of this solution to be particularly valuable."
"It's very reliable. The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with our Nutanix environment."
"It is very user-friendly. There is no wondering about what a feature does. It is easy to use."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and easy. We were able to start replication within minutes of the initial setup."
"The instant recovery at DR locations is the most valuable feature. We're required to do periodic DR tests of critical databases, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL. We have recovery point objectives set for specific databases and we need to be able to achieve them. Zerto helps solve that business problem."
"We had a disaster recovery four or five years ago. I can't remember what happened, but I believe something crashed in our data center, like a power outage. We did a failover of our network using Zerto from production to disaster recovery. We successfully completed the failover process in three or four hours without issue. The data was current, and the application owners could access their data and continue working while the issue was resolved."
"The Zerto university for training staff is very useful."
"Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration."
"Most of the time, this is at least a two person job. We used to have three people doing it. Previously, when we had a disaster recovery drill, the way it worked was 12 of us would show up in the office on a Friday night and work overnight from 12:00 AM on Friday night to 8:00 AM in the morning on Saturday. Then, three of us would be working for four hours out of those eight or nine hours just getting applications up and running in Arizona. Now, for the disaster recovery drill, I just stay onsite to help and assist anybody else as they need during that time frame and my work is done in about a 30-minute time frame. This is compared to the four or five hours it used to take for the three of us to do it."
"Zerto is low maintenance, so I can set it and forget it. It has a great process and an excellent solution."
"Technical support can take some time to respond."
"SRM may hit some OS issues related to IP changes, but they are usually OS related, especially in the 2008 realm."
"The configuration process could be improved."
"Technical support needs improvement, they are not very responsive."
"The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers."
"The solution is on the expensive side."
"You cannot use VMware SRM in conjunction with storage replication software."
"We've had configuration issues on occasion. We start to fail over, and then we have to call it off because the configuration is not right, or the data stores aren't configured correctly in the secondary data center. Oftentimes, it is just the experience level of the team, and we have to bring in the vendor to help and validate our configuration."
"There is a need to allow the source vCenter Inventory to be imported with a single click."
"Zerto's price has room for improvement."
"When we are trying to upgrade any virtual machines, we have to stop the virtual machines that have been replicated in Zerto and then upgrade or update to the virtual machines onsite. Instead of having to do it manually, there should be some way of automating that particular function."
"Analytics has a 90-day window, where it keeps data. It would be nice to have on-prem storage instead of cloud storage for that so we can keep the data for longer. Unless you discover the problem within three months, you don't know that you need the data. Then, it is gone by the time you realize there is an issue."
"From the relationship standpoint, we have never had a local rep in South Bend, Indiana. It has always been somebody in Boston, and there is not a lot of communication. That is one of the big things. We would like help driving the business and talking to our sales people as well as more involvement from them. We could really utilize it more, drawing more customers in, but we need help with that."
"The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product."
"While going in, we were looking at the backup tool so that we had a DR tool and a backup tool, but they stopped developing their backup solution built into it. That was a bummer for us, so now, we have a DR solution, and we have a backup solution."
"The onset of configuring an environment in the cloud is difficult and could be easier to do."
VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 69 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 234 reviews. VMware SRM is rated 8.0, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of VMware SRM writes "A scalable solution that integrates well with the VMware platform, but its platform agnostics do not support on-cloud usage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". 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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