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 most valuable feature of the solution is that you can independently run the disaster recovery without disturbing the production instances."
"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."
"It eliminates the need for complex compliance requirements, making it a highly effective solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the automatic recovery of the virtual machine if it goes down."
"Its capability to schedule, write and configure the recovery and scheduled steps, such that you don't have to come in and start manually trying to recover the entire machine. You just push a button to recover the VMware and everything is done."
"This SRM solution can improve your footprint within a data center."
"It is easy to implement for my clients."
"The stability of SRM has been excellent. It gets a nine-out-of-ten."
"The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario."
"The most valuable feature is Zerto's ability to precopy data to a remote destination prior to the actual live migration period. That saves us a lot of time and has been very helpful. For example, if we had migrations occurring in waves over a period of several weeks with a VPG or VPG setup of approximately 50 VMs, that is multiple gigabytes of data, even terabytes in many cases. Having that data already copied on the evening of the migration saves considerable hours of time. It easily saves us four to six hours a night."
"Its ease of use is most valuable. The online documentation is very clear and helpful. We are able to solve a lot of problems on our own without having to contact support."
"Using Zerto, you can have your VM up and running in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is flip a switch, then you are good to go."
"Zerto is low maintenance, so I can set it and forget it. It has a great process and an excellent solution."
"There are several valuable features because of the way we use it. The backup and restore features are definitely indispensable."
"Zerto is essential for protecting critical workloads. We don't protect all of our VMs, but some need to be recovered in a timely manner. The recovery time is almost immediate."
"The replication and recovery features are the most valuable... On two occasions, other departments in our organization reported issues with specific virtual machines. We used the checkpoint feature of the Zerto to enable the recovery of those machines to a point that was a few minutes prior to the problem."
"This product is not appropriate for those moving to a broader cloud footprint."
"The user experience could be more friendly."
"The administration guides can be complicated and difficult to use, so it would be helpful if it was made easier."
"The version we are currently using is not the latest and greatest but it has buggy behavior in some browsers."
"If you have a failover case, you need to work on it manually. It would be helpful if this could be automated. It would simplify things."
"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."
"The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers."
"In my opinion, the integration with Peer Persistent Storage could be improved."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent when it works. I'm trying to be nice to them because I like the product a lot, but we're having a lot of difficulty with it in our environment."
"It would be beneficial if Zerto also offered integration with other cloud management platforms, such as VMware Aria Automation."
"Zerto requires these thick provision walls for virtual machines that are always running."
"Its initial setup can be better. It looks easy, but if you do not have things in the right place, it is not as easy as it looks. Some of the instructions were not clear. They were a little bit confusing. For example, while setting up SSH initially, it was a little bit unclear if I needed to use a regular credential or some other credential. This was one of the things that was a little fuzzy, and we had to get somebody else involved to help us out."
"We'd like to be able to migrate data without its operating system or any other functionality and without having to go through a virtual machine or server."
"One improvement that could make it easier would be to have an easier way to track journal usage and a little bit more training around journal sizing. I've done all the training and the journal is still a gray area. There is confusion surrounding how it's billed and how we should bill clients. It would be easier if it had billing suggestions or billing best practices for our clients to make sure that we're not leaving money on the table."
"Maybe the reporting for the failover test could be a little better."
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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