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 strong when it comes to protection and analytics, with the latter being added later on."
"The thing I like the most about SMR is the reduced cost of management."
"This SRM solution can improve your footprint within a data center."
"If you want to do failover, it works without any problem."
"SRM's best feature is automation."
"VMware SRM replicates the VM from one site to another, and it helps us orchestrate the powering of VMs and DR when the DC goes down."
"I would rate the ease of setting up and configuring my recovery plan in VMware SRM, a ten out of ten, with ten being the easiest."
"We find the back up feature of this solution to be particularly valuable."
"The most important feature is that the recovery point (RPO) is less than one minute. The is really good for our customers, as they can keep their data loss to a minimum."
"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 key. That has allowed us to provide the low RPOs that we promise. For key systems, that has been the deciding factor."
"The feature I've found most valuable so far has been the ability to migrate the VMs from Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor. It's made our migration seamless. In the beginning, we were looking at freeware tools, and it was just a massive headache. Zerto solved a lot of the roadblocks that we'd run into in the past."
"We've never had any major headaches with the virtual-protection groups. They seem to work exactly as they should. If there's ever an issue with replication, we know right away, so it's all been very reliable."
"I like that Zerto is easy to move and that there is no effect on the user. That is, the user doesn't even know it. We're in the healthcare industry and work for a hospital. We can set up a server in no time whatsoever. It's easy for us to schedule the time because it takes only about one minute."
"Zerto saved us a lot of money compared to the cost of replicating at the LUN level. It also really simplified it and gave us shorter RTOs and RPOs."
"Zerto is essential for protecting critical workloads. We don't protect all of our VMs, but some need to be recovered in a timely manner. The recovery time is almost immediate."
"The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers."
"We would like the patching management function of this product to be improved."
"The product's dashboard is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution could improve by removing some of the limitations we have been facing. There could be better integrated."
"The technical support is not very good and needs to make an effort to improve."
"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 initial setup of VMware SRM isn't straightforward because many customizations are required since it helps in the recovery of your IT environment."
"In general, the drawbacks of VMware SRM, where improvements can be made, stem from the fact that it is an expensive and complex product."
"I would like them to add a VM host replication option. Being able to replicate host configuration between sites would be a huge benefit."
"Zerto could add text alerts if there are critical problems and alerts if changes affect our replication."
"Not all of the knowledge required for implementing Zerto is available in their online documentation for non-partners."
"In general, the solution is pretty good, but because it is geared toward simplicity, sometimes, when things go wrong, the answer is not very detailed so that things can be solved quickly. If things do go wrong, it does require a little bit deeper troubleshooting to resolve the issues. That's the only area where improvement could occur. There should be a little bit more details about if things go wrong, how to remedy them."
"An integrated encryption would allow for faster initial install and connection to the remote cloud site."
"The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product."
"The alerting has room for improvement as it is the biggest pain point with the software. It is so bad. It is just general alerting on or off. There are so many emails all the time. You have no control over it, which is terrible. It is the worst part of the entire application. I have voiced this to Zerto hundreds of times for things like feature changes. Apparently, it's coming, but there is nothing concrete as to when you can do it."
"They are not cheap. They are more expensive than others."
VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 69 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 234 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.
