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Recovery Manager for Active Directory vs VMware Live Recovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Recovery Manager for Active...
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
23rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Recovery (1st)
VMware Live Recovery
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of Recovery Manager for Active Directory is 0.4%. The mindshare of VMware Live Recovery is 7.0%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Live Recovery7.0%
Recovery Manager for Active Directory0.4%
Other92.6%
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Nick Hairapetian - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Expert II TEC05 - Technical Manager at WTW
Good automation and worth the money with helpful disaster recovery
The initial setup requires a design and engineering phase. You can't just pick the product and click next, next, finish - especially if you're planning on making sure that it's going to be available during a disaster. It does require sitting down and designing it. So it's not like a home-use product that you can just go and install and start using it with no consequence.
SuhailAkhtar - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration Architect at App In Snap (Pvt) Ltd
Has enabled seamless VM management and automated failover while support response needs improvement
For support issues, they help with the issue, but it takes a very long time. The reason is that they engage a very initial resource and then escalate to another level, and during these level escalations, our time is wasted. They do not understand the severity of the issue. They go through step-by-step and then go to the upper level. This may be their SOP, but we require instant support and instant resolution of the problem, so here VMware Live Recovery is lacking. They follow their SOP, but they initially engage very low-level personnel who are not able to answer or resolve the issue, so they escalate or take a very long time to resolve the issue. The main issue is to improve the approach of resolving solutions. I may not be able to suggest new features because in these recent months, I have not been very close to it as we are exploring different solutions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the zero-touch or zero-intervention aspect the most when it comes to performing a forest restoration (FOHO). It is really automated. If you set everything correctly, it will restore your forest without any manual steps."
"Our impression of the solution for providing a clean, malware-free recovery and protecting our AD backups from compromise is that it is probably one of the best options available."
"The feature that automates most of the tasks is the most valuable since you do not have to worry about making sure that you follow the steps one by one manually during a disaster."
"The thing I like the most about SMR is the reduced cost of management."
"It takes us about 30 minutes to fail over using SRM, which is pretty good."
"VMware Live Recovery is a very useful tool for live recovery."
"For most customers about 2 years."
"It is quite good on ROI and year on year it is about 50%."
"VMware SRM's most valuable features are its convenience and its use of stretched clusters."
"This disaster recovery solution helps our clients with their mission-critical projects, allowing them to maintain business continuity and increase the reliability of their services."
"VMware SRM is a very nice tool for disaster recovery for virtual environments."
 

Cons

"One of the things they can do is give the user the ability to skip the prechecks and verifications."
"I identified a gap with their Recovery Manager for AD Forest Edition. That software can't recover for us if we have a complete malware/ransomware-type scenario where we lose all our domain controllers. If you lose the entire forest, you can't get it back up with the Forest Edition. You have to use their Disaster Recovery Edition."
"Inside the console, when you change something in the computer collection, there's no history or log showing what's been done. For example, if I add or remove a domain controller from the compare collection, the console doesn't record the time or the user who made the change. This makes it difficult to manage the console, especially for auditing purposes. It lacks login capability within Recovery Manager for Active Directory."
"In my opinion, the integration with Peer Persistent Storage could be improved."
"It would be ideal if they added advanced analytics or AI to the solution."
"For support issues, they help with the issue, but it takes a very long time."
"Cost is definitely an area where the product could be improved, I'd definitely say it should have cheaper pricing."
"I would say VMware has room for improvement with this product."
"The initial setup of VMware SRM isn't straightforward because many customizations are required since it helps in the recovery of your IT environment."
"The user experience could be more friendly."
"The technical support is not very good and needs to make an effort to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Comparing it to other vendors, it seems to be affordable. So, it is worth the money."
"The licensing costs for the product are perpetual in nature. A person needs to buy the license only once there is a need to buy support on a yearly basis. The licensing cost for VMware SRM is expensive."
"Compare to hardware-based replication, I think software based replication is best and cheap."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive."
"The pricing is good."
"The software is expensive. There is a one-time cost involved in purchasing the license."
"VMware sells in bundles of 50 VMs, so if we want to expand, we have to buy the whole bundle."
"It is an expensive platform. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten."
"The level of licensing required for this solution is dependent on the server instances in use."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Disaster Recovery (DR) Software solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory?
We use Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory to test disaster recovery, and we use it to restore objects as they get deleted by mistake or mistakes happen.
What needs improvement with Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory?
One of the things they can do is give the user the ability to skip the prechecks and verifications.
What advice do you have for others considering Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory?
Be willing to pay the extra money. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
We have been using VMware Live Recovery since 2015, and most of our effort relies on it. I personally feel that it is very easy to use, easy to manage, and provides many features compared to other ...
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
For support issues, they help with the issue, but it takes a very long time. The reason is that they engage a very initial resource and then escalate to another level, and during these level escala...
What is your primary use case for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
We are the partner as well as the integrator, and we mostly work in the integration industry. Integration is our core business, but we also do partnership activities. Most of our projects are based...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Datrium DRaaS , VMware SRM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Airlines, Bank of America, Ebay, intel, Uber, at&t, Ford, Microsoft, Visa, Barclays, Mars, Merck
Certainty Home Loans, VPay, ZEON
Find out what your peers are saying about Recovery Manager for Active Directory vs. VMware Live Recovery and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.