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.
"It is a very stable solution...I was involved in VMware SRM's deployment phase two years ago, and it was an easy process."
"It has a good and effective user interface."
"The product is evolving and the vendor is committed to change."
"It eliminates the need for complex compliance requirements, making it a highly effective solution."
"The most valuable feature of VMware SRM is its integration with the VMware platform."
"The most valuable feature is disaster recovery testing."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the automatic recovery of the virtual machine if it goes down."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with our Nutanix environment."
"Its ease of use is valuable. You do not have to do much to install Zerto or implement Zerto on the infrastructure. It is not very complicated."
"For us, the most valuable features are the quick upload time and how the sync works... We have VMware SRM and Veeam, and they have been pretty slow and sluggish."
"The granularity enables us to failover specific workloads instead of an all-or-nothing type of scenario, where you have to move your entire IP block and your data center, or you have to move large chunks of VMs. Those situations also make it prohibitive to test effectively."
"In our DR testing, Zerto allows us to go work on other things while it takes care of everything. That's valuable because we know that we can still hit all of our SLAs in a real disaster."
"The time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great."
"We relocated all our virtual machines from Belgium to Budapest, Hungary. I am not sure how we would have done it without Zerto, because we were able to keep the data in sync. We would have needed to have a lot more expensive storage products online at the time that could have kept that replication. From what I have seen from other methods, that would have required a much higher amount of bandwidth as well, then the cost would have been extreme. The mechanisms available to us with a storage space replication would have been more labor-intensive and prone to error. It was much easier and more successful with Zerto than other ways at our disposal."
"VMware VM replication over narrow WAN bandwidth."
"With Zerto, all you have to do is deploy the executable and start setting things up. So, it was very easy."
"You need a lot of knowledge to work with the interface because it is not really easy to use, and it would be great if the dashboard were simplified."
"There needs to be better stability during heavy capacity in future releases."
"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."
"The initial setup of VMware SRM isn't straightforward because many customizations are required since it helps in the recovery of your IT environment."
"Technical support can take some time to respond."
"Currently, there is a limitation of consolidating only 15 sites per SRM."
"The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers."
"We do have some sites that are very low-bandwidth sites. Zerto is able to set throttling in the solution, but the throttling is set at a site-wide level. In those instances that have very low bandwidth, I can't reduce the throttling on that site. It would be nice if there were a way to control the throttling by the protection group for a specific workload."
"When we do failover and failback, it doesn't maintain some of the settings that it should and I don't really understand why that happens."
"The long-term recovery is a little bit weak in its granularity."
"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."
"There are a couple of areas in the interface that are not very intuitive. Most of them are pretty easy, but there are a few areas in the journal and replication that, unless you've done it before, you really have no idea what to do."
"If they already do not have it, they can have some APIs for the Horizon environment. Instead of having to use some scripts to get around, they can make it a lot more user-friendly for integration."
"The only thing I really don't like about Zerto is that the ZVM has to be a Windows server. I can spin up any OBA template whenever I want to, but if it has an OS that's tied to it, then I have to involve the OS team from my company. That drives me crazy."
"I would like to see a couple of details regarding awareness of VM events coming outside of ZVR."
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.