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VMware SRM vs Zerto comparison

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VMware SRM

Read 22 VMware SRM reviews
9,673 views|7,228 comparisons
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Zerto

Read 103 Zerto reviews
12,016 views|7,409 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
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Buyer's Guide
VMware SRM vs. Zerto
September 2023
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 1, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions indicate that setup, installation, and deployment are straightforward and easy to complete.
  • Features: VMware SRM users feel it offers great virtualization, automation, and good failover. The UI is user friendly and makes testing very easy. Many users feel the solution needs to be more scalable. They say the solution can be unstable and needs to be monitored regularly. There have been scenarios where, if the configuration is off a bit, it will affect the failover process.

    Zerto users tell us they can easily and quickly create protection groups and that Zerto’s ability to maintain a sub-second RPO over a group of machines, and that the group of machines could be spread across multiple storage hardware, makes it unique in the marketplace. Zerto integrates well with many other hypervisors. Users would like to see Zerto move beyond manual failover and offer automatic failover. Users feel that Zerto has some limitations regarding deduplication, which affects their file restoration capabilities, and that documentation processes need to improve.
  • Pricing: Users of both solutions feel they are expensive.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions are happy with the service and support.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware SRM vs. Zerto Report (Updated: September 2023).
Download the complete report
735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Wladimir Furtado
Reliable with good disaster recovery and a generally good design
Thanks to SRM, we haven't had any kind of disaster in our environment.
Anonymous User
Researched VMware SRM but chose Zerto: Easy to use, scalable, and fast migration and recovery
We can recover a VM at any point. It probably takes five minutes, which is very important for us because if I lose my active node, I will have my... Read more →
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is strong when it comes to protection and analytics, with the latter being added later on.""We find the back up feature of this solution to be particularly valuable.""The replication is a key feature.""It has a good and effective user interface.""VMware SRM is a very nice tool for disaster recovery for virtual environments.""The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can independently run the disaster recovery without disturbing the production instances.""VMware is one of the best products in the industry when it comes to virtualization.""The most valuable feature of VMware SRM is its integration with the VMware platform."

More VMware SRM Pros →

"We can failover to an isolated environment and validate the application without impacting the production environment. We can do more testing in a non-impactful way...""We've seen a massive benefit from using Zerto in terms of time savings and consistency. You see a consistent outcome every time you do the conversions. We're moving from one platform to another, but the payloads in what we're moving are different. We see consistent delivery.""Zerto has improved our restoration time and made it easier to test software upgrades. It has simplified tasks like decommissioning a site and replicating virtual machines from one location to another.""The ease of use is one of the best features. Previously, we were using Site Replication Manager with VMware and it was a little bit cumbersome. With Zerto, we liked the fact that it was hardware-agnostic and we were able to spin it up pretty quickly and get it working.""It gives us a seamless, performant data center migration. When we were migrating between physical data centers, we did what normally would have been a 72-hour job in about 18 hours. A large part of that was thanks to Zerto being able to rate limit and throttle how much data was being sent or transfers were happening. Being able to script around it and create governors was important. We didn't have that previously. That is one big use case that has saved an immense amount of time and effort.""With Zerto, all you have to do is deploy the executable and start setting things up. So, it was very easy.""We are moving to a new data center. There are several VMs that we have to move over there that have RDM disks or SQL clusters. Those are the hardest things to move at this point in time, but now that I have the setup and it is ready to go, all we have to do is just flip the switch and get everything over where they are supposed to be. It is going to be a lifesaver for me. It will save me a whole lot of time in putting things back together.""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."

More Zerto Pros →

Cons
"VMware SRM lacks certain functions that other platforms have, such as better prioritization of allocation of resources and Boot profiles.""Technical support needs improvement, they are not very responsive.""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 solution could improve by removing some of the limitations we have been facing. There could be better integrated.""It would be good if this solution could integrate configuration management software such as Chef Infra.""The administration guides can be complicated and difficult to use, so it would be helpful if it was made easier.""In my opinion, the integration with Peer Persistent Storage could be improved.""Lacks stability and as a result requires continuous monitoring."

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"I don't feel like we're a big enough customer to warrant being called every week or every month but it would be good to get a little bit more contact with a salesperson or engineer group.""More user support would be best for me because I'm not in the product all the time. So, having strong support is probably the most important decision on any products that we buy.""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.""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.""The time between releases is too long. Zerto doesn't seem to really keep up with the products with which they need to be compatible. For instance, the 9.5 updates 3 took about 90 days to come out after the latest version of vCenter 7.0 update 3 was released.""It would be nice if Zerto offered OVFs, which are custom-built VMs that you can install on your virtualized environment. At the moment, I have the Zerto sitting on two custom-built Windows servers, which creates a lot of overhead. I'm waiting for them to create an OVF file, which is a built and hardened version of their Zerto server that I can just install wherever with a couple of mouse clicks.""I don't have any input for improvement or a critical feature request at this moment. If anything, a lower price is always better.""Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."

More Zerto Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is an annual license to use this solution."
  • "The price of VMware SRM depends on how many VMs the customer has to move. There is a difference between the standard and enterprise license. I'm presenting the standard license to my customers because the total of VMs is not more than 50. The customer needs only the standard license and the cost is very effective for him."
  • "The price could be lower, in general. My clients pay for an annual license."
  • "VMware SRM is quite expensive."
  • "SRM is reasonably priced for the functionality it provides."
  • "The level of licensing required for this solution is dependent on the server instances in use."
  • "We have a standard enterprise license for the solution."
  • "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."

    • More VMware SRM Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing Zerto was very simple. They had a product that fit our size and scale. It made it really easy to choose."
  • "It was a little bit expensive. It took a long time for us to get DR for our workstations. It's one thing when you have 15 servers, but when we needed to bring on almost another 200 users, and each was the same price as the servers, it was too expensive. But Zerto worked with us and gave us a solution that was pretty decent in terms of price."
  • "Obviously, I wish it were cheaper and more affordable. But I get what I pay for, so I can't complain."
  • "Everyone knows Zerto is a little on the expensive side, but what else is there on the market that does the same thing?"
  • "The only negative part that I have seen so far has been the cost. It is kind of pricey, but you get what you pay for. Zerto is a lot faster than other solutions and you get enhanced performance."
  • "It works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds."
  • "Zerto is fairly expensive, but worth it."
  • "In general, it's pretty fair because it is software. In our case, we built our own colo. So, the cost of the colo was very expensive, and that's where a lot of the equipment is. The same thing is there if we were going to spin up in the cloud, but as a solution, in general, it's pretty fair for what you get out of it and how it works. It's not cheap, but at the same time, you get what you pay for, and it's definitely worth the cost. You just have to understand that the cost of the software alone is not the total cost of the project of doing ransomware protection or disaster recovery. It's a piece of the pie, not the entire pie."

    • More Zerto Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    What do you like most about VMware SRM?
    Top Answer:The thing I like the most about SMR is the reduced cost of management.
    Read all 31 answers   →
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware SRM?
    Top Answer:SRM is quite pricey and the license is renewed annually. I think that they do a lot of ULAs, the universal license agreements, where you pay a set amount and get unlimited usage. That's how it usually… more »
    Read all 22 answers   →
    What needs improvement with VMware SRM?
    Top Answer:VMware SRM lacks certain functions that other platforms have, such as better prioritization of allocation of resources and Boot profiles.
    Read all 32 answers   →
    What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
    Top Answer:Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1 =… more »
    Read all 16 answers   →
    What do you like most about Zerto?
    Top Answer:It's very stable. It doesn't require a lot of intervention.
    Read all 91 answers   →
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?
    Top Answer:It could always be less money.
    Read all 111 answers   →
    Ranking
    6th
    out of 39 in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
    Views
    9,673
    Comparisons
    7,228
    Reviews
    20
    Average Words per Review
    367
    Rating
    8.0
    2nd
    out of 39 in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
    Views
    12,016
    Comparisons
    7,409
    Reviews
    99
    Average Words per Review
    1,093
    Rating
    9.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
    Zerto Virtual Replication
    Learn More
    VMware
    Zerto
    Overview

    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."

    Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, specializes in data protection and empowers customers to run a business by simplifying the protection, disaster recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. Zerto uses advanced hybrid cloud IT technologies to recover and protect business-critical applications in on-premises and cloud environments, enabling them to deliver continuous service without compromising security. Zerto’s foundation is based on continual data protection (CDP) technology. Users can benefit from a single, unified, and automated recovery and data management experience across all virtualized or container-based workloads.

    Zerto's native clustering technology creates a resilient, fault-tolerant system that automates recovery of critical virtual machines while supporting software updates, new OS releases, and upgrades. With native clustering, a creation, migration, or deletion of a virtual machine is automatically replicated to all nodes in the cluster. This creates an automated failover and availability solution with the features of high-end dedicated servers running at a fraction of the cost.

    Zerto Features

    Zerto has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Continuous data security
      • Continuous replication
      • The industry's lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs
      • App and database protection and recovery on a granular level
    • Agility across hybrid and multi-cloud
      • Protection between clouds
      • Simple on-premises to cloud migration
      • User-friendly native cloud services
    • Simple to scale
      • Automation and orchestration are built-in
      • Cross-platform, multi-site analytics
      • Unified experience regardless of cloud
    • Software-based
      • Hardware, hypervisor, and cloud are all independent
      • No physical appliances
      • Future-proof

    Zerto Benefits

    • Robust disaster recovery: Continuous data protection enables recovery of entire clusters, multi-VM applications, or even a single server with the lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs. Zerto allows users to safeguard, manage, and recover all of their key digital assets, whether they’re recovering to a secondary location, the public cloud, or a managed service provider.
    • Constant backup: Instead of making backups every 12 or 24 hours, Zerto creates backups every 5-15 seconds. Zerto backup has no impact on production and eliminates the burden of micromanaging backup windows by using CDP instead of snapshots. Its backup provides immediate recovery of data, folders, or virtual machines (VMs) that are only seconds behind the original, which is a simple approach to completely avoid ransomware or erase inadvertent deletions.
    • Strong long-term retention: Send data to the cloud or a purpose-built storage appliance of your choice for months or years of retention. These long-term copies can be made from local backups or DR replicas, and they can be kept wherever is most convenient for your company. Its powerful indexing and search makes discovering and restoring data simple. For data you want to maintain but only use infrequently, use cost-effective cloud tiering to shift LTR copies from hot to cold to deep-freeze storage.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Zerto stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its disaster recovery abilities and its ease of use. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Justin C., Director of IT at Arnott Inc. writes of the solution, “If we had to deal with a ransomware event, Zerto would be one of the first things I would use, because it is going to be the fastest to restore data to a certain point. If there were a fire in our building, Zerto would be a big thing too, because we would shut down everything that's in our building… It's definitely going to be one of our prevalent DRBC layers of protection."

    Brad W., Vice President of Information Technology at a financial services firm, notes, “The file restoration is very helpful. They've improved it over the years to make it a lot more user-friendly and easy to do, which I appreciate. So, we use that quite a bit. The failover process is quite simple and intuitive. Even the configuration and setup are pretty easy to do.”

    Offer
    Learn more about VMware SRM
    Learn More
    Learn more about Zerto
    Learn More
    Sample Customers
    Acorda Therapeutics, Columbia Sportswear, Mainfreight, Nippon Express, Sin Chew Media, Fisher & Paykel, Siam City Bank
    United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, Spirit Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Epiq. JLL, KIND Snacks, Kingston Technologies
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Government13%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Insurance Company13%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise62%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    VMware SRM vs. Zerto
    September 2023
    Free Report: VMware SRM vs. Zerto
    Find out what your peers are saying about VMware SRM vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    VMware SRM is ranked 6th in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 22 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software with 103 reviews. VMware SRM is rated 8.0, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of VMware SRM writes "Stable, useful, and offers great technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Our average recovery time is now in seconds, and we can spin up a test version without affecting our production environment". VMware SRM is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Azure Site Recovery and Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service , whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, Commvault Complete Data Protection 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.