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.
"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."
"In terms of resiliency, the most valuable aspect of SRM has been its effectiveness."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, where you press a button and everything fails over seamlessly."
"Testing failover capabilities."
"VMware SRM is a very nice tool for disaster recovery for virtual environments."
"VMware's tech support gets a nine-out-of-ten. They are responsive and get you a useful reply."
"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 solution can be deployed in a couple of hours."
"It is incredibly granular and I really appreciate that."
"Journaling is by far the most valuable feature. We have used it several times for customers who have gotten ransomware and had to do a rollback. Having the right time period was important. Some of them had their backups encrypted. So, they didn't encrypt the Zerto machine seven days previously, and we were able to bring that back up."
"One of the most valuable features, something that I wasn't even anticipating, is the file backups. We weren't even considering Zerto to do restores, but it actually is able to do that. Eventually, we could just use this as our backup solution."
"We can use Zerto to help protect our VMs."
"The ability to fully test your entire environment without actually performing a failover is invaluable."
"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 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 time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great."
"The configuration process could be improved."
"The price, in general, could be lower."
"The primary site lacks adequate equipment, such as power backup and cooling, which can lead to downtime during issues like power outages or overheating."
"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."
"In my view, if VMware comes up with an appliance-based solution like vCenter Server (which was also Windows-based), it will be much easier for deployment. I"
"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."
"The product's dashboard is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"One thing which is lacking from the SRM is reporting."
"It would also be nice if you could update without having to download a new installation file for Zerto Virtual Manager. Within the app, it could prompt you to install and perform the installation from within the application. Generally, it's relatively easy to use, but it gets a little complex when customers have special network requirements and need to customize how long they want the save points to be retained. We need to work with the storage team on the backend to see what makes the most sense for the client."
"I'm not sure if it has throttling, meaning, what's going over the wire and how we can throttle that to reduce the amount of data that's going across the bandwidth. I can't remember if that's something that's in this product. It might be in the more recent version."
"Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms."
"Compared to other products, I would praise the intuitiveness of the product. But I think that can always be improved. The intuitiveness of the graphical user interface, while it is very solid and I don't have issues navigating it. I would say that it can always be improved."
"The backup end of this solution could be improved. We tried using it as a full backup solution and it took way too long to complete at least one backup."
"A slight disadvantage of Zerto is that it requires the Windows Server operating system as the base OS. Over time, I would like to see more offerings in that regard. There should be more deployment options other than just the Windows operating system."
"I had to have my colleague contact technical support because we had an issue where VMs in VMware were getting blocked, and we weren't able to delete them."
"I wish Zerto had better file restoration capabilities. We have not been able to use that because of the limitations of Zerto's de-duplication technology."
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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