VMware Live Recovery Reviews

In this scenario of disaster recovery, we start simply with our VMs. We have just two packs of 25 VMs. We just protect just about 15 VMs.

Thanks to SRM, we haven't had any kind of disaster in our environment.

The disaster recovery has been good. 

In the case of a disaster, the product is very simple. We have security and lower downtime. 

It's very reliable. The solution is stable. 

Its design is good and it does what it is intended to do. 

We are limited to 50 VMs.

The main limitation is the fact we can just activate the product in a disaster scenario. Sometimes we need to activate some VMs in the backup or disaster recovery sites, even if our main site is okay. However, in our current environment, we cannot do this due to the limitations of SRM.

The back sites sometimes are very, very complicated. It is the nature of the product. Sometimes we use vMotion to achieve this kind of objective.

We've used the solution for four years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The soluton is scalable. We are doing preparing our environment to be active site-to-site - both the production site and secondary site.

We have 900 people in total on the solution. 

We're in the process of changing things now. 

Technical support is good. We've been very pleased with the responsiveness and helpfulness. 

Positive

We've only used SRM. We did not use anything previously.

More or less, due to the product itself, it's relatively easy to set up. However, in our environment, we have a VM, and that VM application is very complicated. Sometimes we have some issues in running this application on the backup site. This is not due to this SRM. Rather, it is due to our environment.

The deployment took about two years. 

We have a team of four people that can handle deployment and maintenance duties. They are all specialists. 

Sometimes we talk to the local reseller of VM products. We also consult with the vendor of the hardware product. In Brazil, for the government, we have a procurement process. It is not personal. We can just publish our request for a quotation. Any local reseller or national reseller can offer their services.

We've never calculated ROI. 

We pay 400,000 Brazilian Reals for the license. There are no other fees associated with the product.

Most of our VMs are VMware. However, we are changing some VM products, and maybe we will use something else. We are just evaluating at this time. We haven't really seriously evaluated anything. We just update our existing license to support and update.

We are just a customer. 

I'm not sure which version of the product we're using. However, we are updating right now, in the next month. 

Right now, our environment is on-prem. We want to install the hyper-converged to start moving to the cloud.

I'd advise others to maintain the solution and keep it up to date. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I mainly use VMware SRM for automation, creation of VMs, and monitoring.

VMware SRM's most valuable features are its convenience and its use of stretched clusters.

SRM has to be installed on two separate data centers, so both have to be coordinated very well, which becomes complicated when configuring the software for disaster recovery. It would be much simpler if there was just one centralized, cloud-based place to manage both sites.  

I've been using VMware SRM for five years.

VMware SRM is stable.

VMware SRM is quite scalable.

The initial setup is complex and took almost a week to deploy. I would rate the installation experience as two-and-a-half out of five.

We used an in-house team.

VMware SRM is quite expensive.

If you're able to overcome the initial hump of setting up VMware SRM, it works very well. I'd give VMware SRM a rating of seven out of ten.

We use the solution primarily for off-site disaster recovery. A site act as the headquarters, and there is also DR site. This means that we move application data from primary to secondary sites for storage level replication purposes. We also back up our virtual machines and their applications to the DR site. Essentially, we do disaster recovery from the primary site to the DR sites.

Before using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, we were running on a batch storage solution backup, which was conducted by one of my team members. However, prior to carrying out the copying, he backed up the application to local storage before copying it to the tape drive. This means that the storage controller must be up before copying was made to the tape drive, which clearly precluded the possibility of us restoring the backup. There was nothing we could do when this happened. Now, subsequent to the installation and implementation of the VMware Cloud Solution, there is no need for us to rely solely on a single storage controller. This makes things easy for us once the storage level application replicates our data to the DR site. This means that even if the entire primary site goes down, we can still fall back on the data and the application that is available on the DR site. This allows us to consistently maintain the state of our application and business data.

We feel the ability to move virtual machines while they are still running to be the most valuable feature. Consequently, the application can be migrated from one host to another in respects of virtual machines without the user taking notice.

The automation should be simplified or improved. Usually throughout the day, during peak periods, one or another task cannot be carried out. Moreover, if one wishes to move large data, the user's application response may be affected. So, it would be best if such tasks can be automated to allow such tasks to be undertaken not during peak periods. As a consequence, this would lessen the impact to the underlying resources. 

I would also like to see interoperability between various virtualization and cloud solutions. It would be nice to be able to move my VM from Windows or Hyper-V to VMware and from this to Citrix. The adding of these features would be awesome.

I have been using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery since 2012. 

The solution is very stable. We have hardly had any issues with it. VMware is perfectly stable, except there is a problem with the underlying hardware infrastructure. 

The solution is very scalable. While using it we upgraded from 5.0 to 5.5, from this to 6.0, and from 6.0 to 6.7. As part of this process we also upgrade the underlying hardware. We are able to migrate our data with ease.

I found the support to be excellent. I am in Nigeria and, at the time, so we got the procurement through HPE Nigeria.
We benefit from VR support with HP, in addition to our support license which, too, is covered.

Before going with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery we used Windows Backup, solely for backing up the page. 

I found the initial setup to be okay. It doesn't require much to accomplish, as it is not very complex. Its installation and commencement are very easy.

The solution took less than a month, perhaps no more than two weeks, for us to deploy.

Yes, the solution was implemented through a vendor. Their customer support and service were excellent.

I feel the solution has given us a very good return on investment since having implemented it in 2012. At the time, I believe we implemented the 5.0 or 5.5. The solution has supported our business over the years and generated tens of millions of dollars in revenues. 

I would say VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery is very expensive in comparison with other available virtualization solutions.

We did evaluate other solutions before settling on VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. We are talking about a global company that has a presence in Nigeria and other countries, where the clients were already implementing such solutions in the business units of these countries. As a consequence, we simply adopted the use of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. At the time we did contemplate alternatives.

The solution is mostly on-premises and private cloud.

There are as many as 100 users in our organization that are using the applications running on VMware.

I rate VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery as at least a nine out of ten.

The advice I would give to others who are considering implementing the solution is that they should do proper planning and make sure their needs are met. Someone who does not have the benefit of experts or support personnel may consider engaging an experienced consultant. This would minimize mistakes. 

We have implemented SRM to replicate around the 800 virtual machines to the data recovery files. Due to the fact that we implemented to data centers as well as the primary and secondary data center, we use SRM to replicate around most of the virtual machines in order to be the secondary site.

If you can plan and create a recovery plan correctly, it will do and replicate virtual machines and when a disaster occurs, you can easily replicate off the secondary site. If you create a proper primary recovery plan, you have good protection.

The most important features that we're using are the replication of VMs as well as the integration with the EMC recovery platform. The replication solutions to replicate the LAN and data storage to the secondary external storage.

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had an issue with the performance.

The solution is very flexible. 

VMware introduced the two next versions of the solution. They are SRM 6.5 and 6.7. I don't have any experience with these two products. However, if I was to talk about version 6, which we are using, at that time we faced a problem specifically when we create recovery plans. After the creation of the recovery plan, sometimes an issue happened in the GUI, in the Center. I'm not sure if that has since been resolved.

We've faced issues with the licensing. If you don't choose a specific license, you can only cover around five or ten virtual machines.

The biggest issue for us is that this product does not have any demo for customers. They should offer demos so that clients can try it out before they commit to buying a license.

At this point, I have been using the solution for about two or three years.

The stability of the solution is very good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable.

In terms of scalability, you can integrate the POC and you can distribute SRM on three sites. At our project, we use VPLEX architecture to distribute storage between two data centers and therefore we could publish an important file related to SRM virtual machines and the active LANs, which is distributed between two data centers. In terms of scalability and holding of data storage, we can put a doc online whenever we need to.

Our team has around six members for virtual support and maintenance of the VMware infrastructure. In terms of the customers that are related to using the VMware services, there are around 800 people.

Due to the sanctions in my country, in Iran, we can not use direct support from VMware and there is not a partner in my country. Therefore, we need to study, we need to design, we need to support everything directly and focus on providing maintenance service to our customers ourselves.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not too complex. 

Deployments can typically take two months.

In the first month, I dedicate focus on learning and conducting POC sessions. For around two or three weeks, I also spend some time implementing SRM at the site.

I am responsible directly for installations.

I work with a specific team that includes three members. I'm responsible as a team lead and VMware engineer. I have two other team members, one member has a specific focus on its storage concept and another is working on the networking.

We are always looking for solutions that are more affordable. SRM is more expensive than, for example, VirtualBox.

I have looked into Zerto. I attended a seminar two years ago. If we ever moved off of this solution, we may switch to that. It is quite affordable and is very hands-on. It may even be easier in terms of deployment. They are very similar solutions overall.

We are using two product versions. We are using product versions 6.0 and 6.5.

We need to use only on-premises deployment models. This due to the fact that there are sanctions in my country. We cannot use the cloud services directly as there is no support.

For customers who are using VMware infrastructure, I recommend using VMware SRM due to the fact that it has the ability to integrate with other products like HP, SRA, or even CSRA. It has good features that integrate well with a storage concept.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We use VMware SRM for disaster recovery.

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.

Currently, there is a limitation of consolidating only 15 sites per SRM.

Ransomware recovery or early detection could be incorporated into VMware SRM.

I have been using VMware SRM for three years.

VMware SRM is a stable solution.

VMware SRM is a scalable solution. I work with mostly small and medium businesses.

VMware SRM’s technical support is good.

Positive

We previously used Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator, which is more suited for small businesses. It doesn't offer as much flexibility as VMware SRM. For namesake, it's a DR solution, but it cannot compete with VMware SRM.

VMware SRM's initial setup is easy.

Two people can install VMware SRM in two to three hours.

We pay a yearly licensing fee for VMware SRM, which is not very expensive.

The fee is for the solution's license plus support. There are two options. One is subscription-based, which would be for a one or two years term base, and the other one is perpetual with support.

Just one person is enough to maintain the solution.

I highly recommend VMware SRM to other users.

Overall, I rate VMware SRM a nine out of ten.

In my company, we use VMware SRM for virtual machine replication.

The most valuable feature of VMware SRM is RTO, better described as recovery time. In most places, my company uses SRM along with backup software since SRM cannot be used as a backup product as it is just a replication tool.

VMware SRM is not a popular product anymore since all the other backup products can provide the same functions as SRM. With Veritas, Arcserve, or Commvault, you can take care of the replication part. VMware SRM is not a popular choice among users anymore since it is a highly costly product while also being complex to configure. When it comes to backup products, you can use RTO and RPO, so there is no need to have a separate solution like SRM. 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 have been using VMware SRM for six to seven years. My company has a partnership with VMware.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

At the moment, just one of our company's customers uses the solution since we have replaced the native backup software used in our company. We need to take care of the renewal of SRM since, right now, we only take care of the renewal of vSphere in our company.

The solution's technical support is excellent.

The solution's initial setup was easy, but if you try to integrate it with other storage solutions, then it gets complex and difficult.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

For first-time users, VMware SRM can be a very difficult tool to use, especially considering the product's configuration part. The configuration is very difficult.

With VMware SRM, you have to download the separate appliance and think about Windows to build a separate native appliance while also having knowledge about ESXi, making it a difficult process. When it comes to VMware SRM, the technical things are very difficult to start in the first place.

I rate the overall tool a five out of ten.

We use the product to implement discovery for server and database solutions.

The software is user-friendly. It has a good and effective user interface.

The product's stability could be better.

We have been using VMware SRM for eight years.

I rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. Sometimes, we need to restart the system as it stops working. It needs improvement.

We have 400 VMware SRM users in our organization. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

The initial setup is straightforward. We need to download the application file and deploy it in vCentre Server. Later, we need to register a static manager to create a bridge between two environments. After that, we check if the static environment is configured with the data centers.

The software is expensive. There is a one-time cost involved in purchasing the license.

I recommend VMware SRM to others and rate it a ten out of ten. I advise other users to always install the latest version.

We primarily use the solution for migrating our DR site.

We have a system that can now move us to a DR site. I have yet to experience any major crisis, however, so I haven't yet tried it. 

The solution runs well in the background, just in case we need it. 

It is stable. 

The solution has the capability to scale well. 

I don't have any notes for improvement.

I'd like the installment and configuration to be more seamless.

The user experience could be more friendly.

It's, by definition, a complicated product. 

We'd like the entire solution to be more automated. We'd like as much automation as possible. 

The solution is very expensive. 

I've been using the solution for more than five years. 

We haven't had any stability issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable.

We have not tried to scale the solution. However, we are aware that it can be quite scalable. It depends on the license. 

The initial setup and configuration can be complex. It's a complicated product. I'd rate the complexity of implementation eight out of ten. 

It took us a few months to fully deploy the solution. 

We had an in-house team and professional service to manage the setup process. We did not do it fully by ourselves.

The pricing is very high. However, you get what you pay for. You need to invest a lot of money in order to gain any functionality. In order to have a DR site and maintain it, you need the investment. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's expensive. However, it's a good investment.