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 solution is consistent."
"The UI is very user-friendly and testing is easy."
"We find the back up feature of this solution to be particularly valuable."
"The most valuable feature of VMware SRM is its integration with the VMware platform."
"It's very reliable. The solution is stable."
"It is a very stable solution...I was involved in VMware SRM's deployment phase two years ago, and it was an easy process."
"VMware SRM is a very nice tool for disaster recovery for virtual environments."
"It has a good and effective user interface."
"The ease of setting up replication, the speed, and the ease with which I can fail over and fail back are all excellent aspects of the solution."
"It's the easiest to use."
"The orchestration and automation of the DR and how it replicates the VMs and then picks them up in the DR site have been most valuable."
"VMware VM replication over narrow WAN bandwidth."
"Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration."
"Another advantage is the ease of use. You can click through instead of typing in the code. It's all already scripted down to the network adjustments within the VMs and the timed delays for servers that need to come up in sequence. Overall, it's a good package for us to use. We started using it in about 2018 and haven't looked back."
"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."
"The return to operations is the most valuable feature because it decreases the amount of time it takes us to recover."
"It would be good if this solution could integrate configuration management software such as Chef Infra."
"There are many functionality problems with the product currently. It is also slow and unstable."
"SRM has to be installed on two separate data centers, so both have to be coordinated very well, which becomes complicated when configuring the software for disaster recovery."
"An improvement for SRM would be better interface compatibility with other products."
"We have had an issue when some customers have traditional designs and sites. For example, on one another site, they are using hyper-converged, using VMware, or Nutanix. We have a problem with the synchronization between the storage for site to site. This is the main issue. We are adding some other tools to support the synchronization to allow the movement of the workload from site to site easily."
"There is room for improvement in the automation and orchestration aspects of this solution."
"Technical support needs improvement, they are not very responsive."
"The technical support is not very good and needs to make an effort to improve."
"Zerto's price has room for improvement."
"If we have multiple VMs in a VPG (Virtual Protected Group) and one VM is hung for DR, it holds things up. The only alternative is to create multiple VPGs. It would be nice to have one VPG where, if one VM is failing, it does not impact the overall process."
"The VPG model causes us a bit of concern. We are considering using Zerto to replace Site Recovery Manager. Site Recovery Manager is very easy when we have entire data scores being replicated. We don't have to make any decisions when it comes to groupings. It is all covered. If we move to Zerto, which we are considering, we will have to work much closer with the applications teams to develop the VPG configuration and determine how the VMs will be grouped. It will be a lot more overhead for us to go that route."
"The time between releases is too long. Zerto doesn't seem to really keep up with the products with which they need to be compatible. For instance, the 9.5 updates 3 took about 90 days to come out after the latest version of vCenter 7.0 update 3 was released."
"One thing I would like to see, and I know that this is on their roadmap, is the ability to use long-term storage in the cloud, like in Azure or AWS, making that even more seamless. Whether it's stored in glacier or on-prem, being able to retrieve that data in a quick manner would be helpful. They're just not there yet."
"We would like the LTR function to be able to retain the past 12 months."
"If something happens, and we are out and about, I would like to be able to interface with it on our mobile phones. That would be great."
"When I have a technical question, it sometimes takes a while for tech support to respond."
VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 69 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 235 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.