AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery vs VMware SRM comparison

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) minimizes downtime and data loss with fast, reliable recovery of on-premises and cloud-based applications using affordable storage, minimal compute, and point-in-time recovery.

Set up AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery on your source servers to initiate secure data replication. Your data is replicated to a staging area subnet in your AWS account, in the AWS Region you select. The staging area design reduces costs by using affordable storage and minimal compute resources to maintain ongoing replication. You can perform non-disruptive tests to confirm that implementation is complete. During normal operation, maintain readiness by monitoring replication and periodically performing non-disruptive recovery and failback drills. If you need to recover applications, you can launch recovery instances on AWS within minutes, using the most up-to-date server state or a previous point in time. After your applications are running on AWS, you can choose to keep them there, or you can initiate data replication back to your primary site when the issue is resolved. You can fail back to your primary site whenever you’re ready.

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."