VMware SRM vs Zerto comparison

VMware SRM (Site Recovery Manager) is a business continuity and disaster recovery solution that is part of the vSphere virtualization suite. It helps you plan, test, and run the recovery of virtual machines between a protected vCenter Server site and a recovery vCenter Server site. VMware SRM aims to minimize data loss and system downtime by letting you automate backups and orchestrate the recovery of entire VMware storage systems. VMware SRM is offered on-premises and on the AWS cloud.

VMware SRM is most commonly used for:

• Disaster recovery
• Disaster avoidance
• Data center migrations
• Site-level load balancing
• Maintenance testing for enterprise applications

As a disaster recovery tool, VMware SRM:

• Provides replication technology.
• Supports policy-based management of backup programs.
• Lets you run non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans.

VMware SRM Key Features

Some of VMware SRM’s key features include:
Good scalability and stability, fast and reliable recovery, automated orchestration workflows, automated recovery of network and security settings, non-disruptive recovery testing, orchestrated cross-vCenter vMotion, stretched storage support, and self-service provisioning.

VMware SRM Benefits

The main benefits of using VMware SRM include:

• Integration: VMware SRM integrates with other VMware technologies and architectures.
  
  
• Non-disruptive testing: VMware SRM allows you to conduct tests during business hours without disruptions.
  
  
• Reduced recovery time: By using automated orchestration workflows, VMware SRM helps to decrease recovery time to just minutes.
  
  
• Automated failback: With automated failback, you can resume business operations as normal very quickly.
  
  
• Extensibility for custom automation: With VMware SRM, you can use the Orchestrator plug-in to build custom automation workflows.
  
  
• Automated network mappings: You can automatically map network settings across the two sites when creating a recovery plan.
  
  
• Eliminate the need to re-configure IP addresses: With VMware SRM’s automated recovery of network and security settings, it is not necessary to e-configure IP addresses on recovered VMs via integration with NSX. Configurations are also reduced post-recovery by implementing security policies.
  
  
• Centralized recovery plans: VMware SRM’s centralized recovery plans help you protect thousands of VM’s and also make it possible to eliminate manual runbooks.
  
  
• Protect investments: With supported replication, VMware SRM helps protect investments and tailor RPOs.
  
  
• Lower TCO: By using VMware SRM, you can lower your TCO and incur lower expenses for disaster recovery.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are reviews from PeerSpot users who are currently using the solution:

PeerSpot user Eslam E., Senior Solution Architect at ICT Misr, explains his experience using the solution and says that "VMware SRM is very effective between two sites with identical twin storage, you can have synchronization between the two sites."

A founder at a comms service provider commented on the solution's efficiency, noting, "If you want to do failover, it works without any problem."

Reviewer Rakesh-P., who is a consultant at Ashtech Infotech (India) Pvt.Ltd., mentions why he finds VMware SRM to be a good product, commenting that “The most valuable feature is disaster recovery testing. The reports are very good.”

Ahmed F., a consultant at Daniyals Inc, says that the solution doesn’t require a lot of resources and that "The UI is very user-friendly and testing is easy."

Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, specializes in data protection and empowers customers to run a business by simplifying the protection, disaster recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. Zerto uses advanced hybrid cloud IT technologies to recover and protect business-critical applications in on-premises and cloud environments, enabling them to deliver continuous service without compromising security. Zerto’s foundation is based on continual data protection (CDP) technology. Users can benefit from a single, unified, and automated recovery and data management experience across all virtualized or container-based workloads.

Zerto's native clustering technology creates a resilient, fault-tolerant system that automates recovery of critical virtual machines while supporting software updates, new OS releases, and upgrades. With native clustering, a creation, migration, or deletion of a virtual machine is automatically replicated to all nodes in the cluster. This creates an automated failover and availability solution with the features of high-end dedicated servers running at a fraction of the cost.

Zerto Features

Zerto has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Continuous data security
  • Continuous replication
  • The industry's lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs
  • App and database protection and recovery on a granular level
• Agility across hybrid and multi-cloud
  • Protection between clouds
  • Simple on-premises to cloud migration
  • User-friendly native cloud services
• Simple to scale
  • Automation and orchestration are built-in
  • Cross-platform, multi-site analytics
  • Unified experience regardless of cloud
• Software-based
  • Hardware, hypervisor, and cloud are all independent
  • No physical appliances
  • Future-proof

Zerto Benefits

• Robust disaster recovery: Continuous data protection enables recovery of entire clusters, multi-VM applications, or even a single server with the lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs. Zerto allows users to safeguard, manage, and recover all of their key digital assets, whether they’re recovering to a secondary location, the public cloud, or a managed service provider.
• Constant backup: Instead of making backups every 12 or 24 hours, Zerto creates backups every 5-15 seconds. Zerto backup has no impact on production and eliminates the burden of micromanaging backup windows by using CDP instead of snapshots. Its backup provides immediate recovery of data, folders, or virtual machines (VMs) that are only seconds behind the original, which is a simple approach to completely avoid ransomware or erase inadvertent deletions.
• Strong long-term retention: Send data to the cloud or a purpose-built storage appliance of your choice for months or years of retention. These long-term copies can be made from local backups or DR replicas, and they can be kept wherever is most convenient for your company. Its powerful indexing and search makes discovering and restoring data simple. For data you want to maintain but only use infrequently, use cost-effective cloud tiering to shift LTR copies from hot to cold to deep-freeze storage.

Reviews from Real Users

Zerto stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its disaster recovery abilities and its ease of use. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Justin C., Director of IT at Arnott Inc. writes of the solution, “If we had to deal with a ransomware event, Zerto would be one of the first things I would use, because it is going to be the fastest to restore data to a certain point. If there were a fire in our building, Zerto would be a big thing too, because we would shut down everything that's in our building… It's definitely going to be one of our prevalent DRBC layers of protection."

Brad W., Vice President of Information Technology at a financial services firm, notes, “The file restoration is very helpful. They've improved it over the years to make it a lot more user-friendly and easy to do, which I appreciate. So, we use that quite a bit. The failover process is quite simple and intuitive. Even the configuration and setup are pretty easy to do.”