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Read 233 Zerto reviews
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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 1, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions indicate that setup, installation, and deployment are straightforward and easy to complete.
  • Features: VMware SRM users feel it offers great virtualization, automation, and good failover. The UI is user friendly and makes testing very easy. Many users feel the solution needs to be more scalable. They say the solution can be unstable and needs to be monitored regularly. There have been scenarios where, if the configuration is off a bit, it will affect the failover process.

    Zerto users tell us they can easily and quickly create protection groups and that Zerto’s ability to maintain a sub-second RPO over a group of machines, and that the group of machines could be spread across multiple storage hardware, makes it unique in the marketplace. Zerto integrates well with many other hypervisors. Users would like to see Zerto move beyond manual failover and offer automatic failover. Users feel that Zerto has some limitations regarding deduplication, which affects their file restoration capabilities, and that documentation processes need to improve.
  • Pricing: Users of both solutions feel they are expensive.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions are happy with the service and support.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware SRM vs. Zerto Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is simple to use and has effective automation.""It made the DR process a lot faster and easier for recovery after we were familiar with the product operation.""This SRM solution can improve your footprint within a data center.""The product functionality is fairly high-quality.""The most valuable feature is the automation, where you press a button and everything fails over seamlessly.""The solution is strong when it comes to protection and analytics, with the latter being added later on.""The solution is consistent.""The thing I like the most about SMR is the reduced cost of management."

More VMware SRM Pros →

"We have seen ROI. It reduced the time for failover and failback by 90%.""In terms of the most valuable features, having the failover tests where you can see where your actual RTO and RPO would be is really nice, especially for the management level. I really liked the ease of when I need to do a file or folder restore off the cuff. Usually, it takes me less than five minutes to do it, including the mounting of the actual image. That was one thing with Unitrends, it was a similar process but if that backup had aged off of the system, then you had to go to the archive and you find the right disks, load them in, and then actually mount the image.""In situations of failback or moving workloads, it saves us hours. If I were to have to move a four or five terabyte machine using something like VMware's virtual copy it has to install on the machine and copy the data over. Then it has to shut the machine down and do a final copy, which means there's a lot of downtime while it's doing the final copy.""Managing the system is easy and reliable, you can choose any VM you want to replicate to your DR Site in Combination with other VM's.""During a failover to a DR site, Zerto can automatically change the IP address of servers.""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.""Four years ago when we did a PoC between two other vendors and Zerto, there were two features of Zerto that sold it, hands-down. One was the ease of creating protection groups, the ease with which our engineers could create protection, add virtual machines into the Zerto product, and get them under DR protection.""We use to use VMware replication appliances to attempt to replicate our VMs to remote locations and servers, but Zerto's one-to-many replication options with deduplication have made the process much simpler without having to constantly worry about the versions of each driver."

More Zerto Pros →

Cons
"Currently, there is a limitation of consolidating only 15 sites per SRM.""The solution is on the expensive side.""The back sites sometimes are very, very complicated.""Sometimes it can cause a bit of downtime during switchovers.""The version we are currently using is not the latest and greatest but it has buggy behavior in some browsers.""We would like the patching management function of this product to be improved.""Flexibility to choose different PITs would be nice.""What I think can be improved is the data replication aspect."

More VMware SRM Cons →

"We have had some issues with trying to get certain parts of the backup or restore functionality to work.""The technical support has room for improvement.""It would be helpful if the reports can be generated periodically, on a schedule.""We would like more mobile options. If we are at a restaurant or out and about in our normal daily lives, we would like to be able to interface via our mobiles.""I wish they would...develop their PowerShell module to be more robust. So instead of having to rely on the API to actually include a PowerShell command, it would let you create VPGs, delete VPGs, modify VPGs, etc. This would ease the automation effort of deployment and decommissioning and I'd really appreciate that.""If I have to reboot a virtual machine host, I have issues with Zerto catching up afterward. That's about the only thing I would say needs improvement. Sometimes, when I have to do maintenance, Zerto takes a little bit to catch up. That's understandable.""The biggest pain points we have experienced are related to some of the SQL-intensive workloads just because the VPGs struggle a little bit to keep up. That might be because we are pushing too many transactions.""I would like to have an overall orchestration capability that would enable you to do multiple VPGs in some sort of order, with delays in between."

More Zerto Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Compare to hardware-based replication, I think software based replication is best and cheap."
  • "Licensing costs explode after 75 VMs."
  • "The price of this solution is on the expensive side."
  • "The cost of SRM is a little bit high, especially for smaller companies."
  • "The cost of SRM is on par with market rates."
  • "The licensing costs are increasing."
  • "It is about $3,000 a year for the 25 pack. The package gives you the ability to protect up to 25 virtual machines."
  • "There is an annual license to use this solution."
  • More VMware SRM Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing depends on your future growth. Start small and then scale up."
  • "Zerto’s licensing model has changed a bit over the last year and they are in alignment with others. It is pretty simple and more economical."
  • "Licensing is based on the number of VMs to replicate. The first thing should be to get the number of VMs to replicate based on your business needs."
  • "Licensing is VM based so you can buy packages or single VM. Price is not low but the power of application is high, so you will get your money back."
  • "It's a little bit expensive."
  • "We believe the pricing, setup costs, and licensing are easy to understand. The pricing seems very reasonable."
  • "The solution is very cost-effective and very easy to set-up but does not compromise on features."
  • "While we find the twenty-five VM license somewhat inflexible, the actual setup costs are minimal as the product is so easy to install."
  • More Zerto Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Disaster Recovery (DR) Software solutions are best for your needs.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I rate the product price a five to six on a scale of one to ten, where one is a very high price, and ten is a very low price.
    Top Answer:The solution must provide better integration with third-party vendors.
    Top Answer:Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1 =… more »
    Top Answer:It is cost-effective and stable. It protects virtual machines, and there is a fast recovery time.
    Ranking
    Views
    8,603
    Comparisons
    6,684
    Reviews
    25
    Average Words per Review
    402
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    11,784
    Comparisons
    6,522
    Reviews
    122
    Average Words per Review
    928
    Rating
    9.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
    Zerto Virtual Replication
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    VMware
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    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.”

    Sample Customers
    Acorda Therapeutics, Columbia Sportswear, Mainfreight, Nippon Express, Sin Chew Media, Fisher & Paykel, Siam City Bank
    United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Government14%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Insurance Company12%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    VMware SRM vs. Zerto
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about VMware SRM vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.

    We monitor all Disaster Recovery (DR) Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.