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 the automatic recovery of the virtual machine if it goes down."
"It made the DR process a lot faster and easier for recovery after we were familiar with the product operation."
"It has a good and effective user interface."
"It is a very stable solution...I was involved in VMware SRM's deployment phase two years ago, and it was an easy process."
"The stability of SRM has been excellent. It gets a nine-out-of-ten."
"It eliminates the need for complex compliance requirements, making it a highly effective solution."
"The replication is the solution's most valuable feature. If we have some issues on the VM in the main site we can migrate it to another site automatically."
"Our systems fail over using SRM. So, we do a big bang DR, which is biannual, and we fail over our fairly massive Epic electronic health record (EHR) and our core applications. It takes us about 30 minutes to fail over using SRM, which is pretty good. In most hospitals that have Epic installed, Epic does the audit to make sure that we can fail over if something were to happen. Normally, sites will have a DR solution specific to the EHR, but right now, our pain point is the third-party tier-one clinical applications."
"Zerto helped our organization meet compliance requirements by ensuring data protection and recovery strategies align with our regulatory standards."
"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."
"The whole package is valuable. The most useful feature for the company is the rapid RTO, which offers a faster return to operations and brings us back online quicker. The last time we had an issue, we recovered within about 36 minutes, which was probably the most valuable thing for us because, previously, it took four to seven days."
"I've been fortunate enough not to need to rely on Zerto in an actual disaster, but we do testing every year. Sometimes, it's multiple times annually or at the year's end. It takes the recovery workflow, which would normally take a lot of planning, and reduces that to just a few minutes."
"The near-synchronous replication is one of the primary reasons we're using Zerto because we have recovery intervals of sub-five seconds. On a scale of 10, where 10 is "very important", this feature is a 10."
"The most important features are the simplicity of recovery and the wider capabilities and feature sets than VMware SRM has."
"Since the log files are continuously transmitted, the granularity of restores is amazing."
"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."
"The price, in general, could be lower."
"The configuration process could be improved."
"The user experience could be more friendly."
"The solution could improve by removing some of the limitations we have been facing. There could be better integrated."
"They could enhance the automation features for the product."
"An improvement for SRM would be better interface compatibility with other products."
"There is room for improvement in the automation and orchestration aspects of this solution."
"The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers."
"We had a situation where we had to relicense VMs once they were moved over. We later found out that that feature is built-in, but it's not easy to find. The way it's done is that you have to go to the target site to turn it on. If that were explained a little bit better up front, that would be helpful."
"For what we got it for, it does it great. I use a different solution for my disk-to-disk local backups to where I can have a local backup of files. I don't think Zerto does that well to where it keeps a memory of the files that are there. Basically, when something is deleted on Zerto, it gets deleted on the replicated version. So, some sort of snapshotting or something where I could have backups at different points in time of files would be a really helpful tool."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Migration of complex VMware and Hyper-V solution. Using Zerto to replicate to azure and S3."
"You can create a VPG and put anywhere from one to 17 servers in that group. We build them one by one. If something changes in VMware, it would be nice to be able to go in and change that VPG, having it update without messing up. When you change them now, it only applies to the copies from the points when you changed it. I wish it would purge that older data from the past. Right now, we have to build a new VPG, which is not a big deal as it is just a few screens."
"They could iron out the licensing aspect of it, so we might be a bit quicker when implementing and starting to use it."
"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."
"It has some quirks. We have quirks with appliances. Some things don't really work as expected, but it is minor."
VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 69 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 233 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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