VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto comparison

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VMware Live Recovery

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 15, 2024

Zerto and VMware Live Recovery compete in the disaster recovery category. Zerto is recognized for its cost-effectiveness and support, whereas VMware Live Recovery wins over users with its comprehensive features, offering substantial value for the cost.

Features: Zerto provides continuous data protection, non-disruptive testing, and flexible recovery options. VMware Live Recovery boasts robust integration with VMware environments, automated failover, and a feature set more aligned with enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: Zerto could improve its integration capabilities and the automation of failover processes. It may also lack in enterprise-specific features compared to VMware. VMware Live Recovery can benefit from reducing complexity in its initial setup and enhancing its support system. Its pricing could also be more accessible for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zerto is easy to deploy with a user-friendly process and provides quick support. VMware Live Recovery might require a more complex setup but integrates well into existing VMware ecosystems, offering support that benefits organizations already using VMware products.

Pricing and ROI: Zerto is notable for lower setup costs and a rapid ROI, making it appealing for cost-conscious businesses. VMware Live Recovery, while more expensive initially, justifies its price with a feature-rich offering that provides long-term value, especially for businesses prioritizing advanced recovery options and integration.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware Live Recovery vs. Zerto Report (Updated: December 2024).

VMware Live Recovery vs. Zerto

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

VMware Live Recovery

Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Disaster Recovery as a Service (1st)

Zerto

Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

279

Ranking in other categories

Backup and Recovery (2nd), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Backup (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of VMware Live Recovery is 15.4%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 15.4%, down from 19.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Disaster Recovery (DR) Software

Featured Reviews

Siva Kuppala

Enterprise Architect at Wipro Limited

Offers simplified management and automated recovery process, which reduces the need for manual intervention during a disaster

Automated recovery is one good feature, SRM also offers simplified management. It has a centralized interface for configuring, testing, and executing disaster recovery plans across multiple sites. This means management from a single point, even for many sites. Recovery plans can be different for customers. So, another important feature is the policy-based protection within SRM. Recovery plans can be customized based on business requirements, including Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). These objectives might differ between industries – healthcare might need a more aggressive RPO, for instance. Additionally, SRM offers failback capabilities and reporting features for compliance.

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Derrick Brockel

Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Good GUI, easy setup, and fast recovery

When we tested it, it had more functions than what we used it for, but it was a very good BCDR product. We liked the reliability and availability. Zerto enables you to do disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud, but we did not use that feature. We used Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. It was strong in that aspect. I would rate it an eight out of ten there. Zerto's speed of recovery was comparable. There was no synchronous and asynchronous replication. If I had to give it a number, it would be a seven out of ten. It was the same as others. There was not much difference. It was easy to migrate data. There was some initial configuration in syncing, but it was easy. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of the ease of migration. Zerto’s ability to keep our users collaborating with one another during a data migration was good. I would rate it a seven out of ten in this aspect as well as in terms of its impact on RTOs. Zerto helps reduce downtime in any situation. We can bring up a database in minutes. It probably takes five minutes for the final sync. The cost of downtime depends on the database. It may be 50,000 if you have call center people sitting around. Normally, most of our small outages like that ranged in the tens of thousands. Zerto did save time in a data recovery situation. We did not have ransomware, but there were times we had database corruption where the users would corrupt the database, and the database would not start. It would do snapshotting. It was not necessarily ransomware, but it was testing upgrades or Oracle upgrades. The data recovery happened within five minutes, if not sooner. A normal restore would probably be four to eight hours if we had to restore from a tape and apply logs. Zerto helps to reduce an organization's DR testing. You can spin off an extra database pretty quickly and have users test against the third or fourth copy. It saves one to three days of testing depending on test cycles. You could do sequential testing. I would probably measure it more in days than hours. All of that time can be used by a DBA to do something else. Zerto reduces the number of staff involved in a data recovery situation. One person could probably orchestrate it now versus one to three people. It did not reduce the number of staff involved in overall backup and DR management because we are pretty thin. We would not have gotten rid of anybody.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the integration with our Nutanix environment."

"Virtual Machine Recovery during DR situation, with automation and easy to use menus and options."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the automatic recovery of the virtual machine if it goes down."

"Technical support is very proactive and helpful."

"The solution is strong when it comes to protection and analytics, with the latter being added later on."

"It's easy to use and the interface is quite simple."

"Automated recovery is one good feature, SRM also offers simplified management. It has a centralized interface for configuring, testing, and executing disaster recovery plans across multiple sites. This means management from a single point, even for many sites."

"The solution is scalable."

More VMware Live Recovery pros

"The return to operations is the most valuable feature because it decreases the amount of time it takes us to recover."

"It provides real-time backup"

"The most valuable feature of Zerto is its overall flexibility, where it can be used for standard DR or you can also use it for server migrations, data center consolidations, etc."

"The most valuable features of Zerto are the ease of use and recovery speed."

"From a management perspective, one of the biggest benefits is to see the excitement of your engineers having a tool that truly enables them, really making their lives easier. That is something that I love. When we came out of the PoC, their eyes were just wide with excitement of what was possible now."

"The most valuable for us and for my company is that we are replicating most of our production customers to the DR site, and we can do testing whenever we want."

"Zerto's near-synchronous replication is extremely important to our organization."

"Zerto's two main features are ease of management and that the product just works. It does what they say it'll do."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"The back sites sometimes are very, very complicated."

"VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery could improve by enhancing the network bandwidth from the storage."

"There are many functionality problems with the product currently. It is also slow and unstable."

"It would be ideal if they added advanced analytics or AI to the solution."

"It has a lot of dependencies on VMware infrastructure, and testing can be complex. Testing often requires extensive approval at the organizational level."

"If you have a failover case, you need to work on it manually. It would be helpful if this could be automated. It would simplify things."

"The solution currently has a five-minute RPO, meaning if the VM goes down we can lose up to five minutes of data which is a big deal when it relates to database replication."

"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."

More VMware Live Recovery cons

"The improvement that I would like to see is a little bit easier product knowledge, things like that. It's getting a lot better than it was before because it's not as old of a product as Cisco, but if you look for something like Cisco routing and networking, you'll find millions of articles out there and it's everywhere."

"If I had to pick anything, it would be the documentation for upgrades. They need to make it easier for users to do upgrades without having to contact support, by providing better documentation for that."

"If something happens, and we are out and about, I would like to be able to interface with it on our mobile phones. That would be great."

"The replication layer can probably be improved."

"We would like the LTR function to be able to retain the past 12 months."

"I wish they would...develop their PowerShell module to be more robust. So instead of having to rely on the API to actually include a PowerShell command, it would let you create VPGs, delete VPGs, modify VPGs, etc. This would ease the automation effort of deployment and decommissioning and I'd really appreciate that."

"One improvement that could make it easier would be to have an easier way to track journal usage and a little bit more training around journal sizing. I've done all the training and the journal is still a gray area. There is confusion surrounding how it's billed and how we should bill clients. It would be easier if it had billing suggestions or billing best practices for our clients to make sure that we're not leaving money on the table."

"When it comes to a solution, one of the things the management wants is to standardize platforms. That's why when Rubrik came out with their solution, they wanted to look at it. For instance, if you have multiple technologies, you're going to need admins to manage all those different ones. I would like Zerto to be something that fits all our needs, including the backup that Rubrik provides, but I understand that not all solutions can be that way."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 licensing costs are increasing."

"It is about $3,000 a year for the 25 pack. The package gives you the ability to protect up to 25 virtual machines."

"Compare to hardware-based replication, I think software based replication is best and cheap."

"VMware sells in bundles of 50 VMs, so if we want to expand, we have to buy the whole bundle."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight to nine out of ten."

"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."

"The price of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery should be lowered in order to compete better in the market."

More VMware Live Recovery pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is VM based so you can buy packages or single VM. Price is not low but the power of application is high, so you will get your money back."

"Zerto does a per-workload licensing model, per-server. It is simple and straightforward, but it is not super flexible. It is kind of a one size fits all. They charge the same price for those workloads. I feel like they could have some flexible licensing option possibly based on criticality, just so we could protect less important work. I would love to protect every workload in my environment with Zerto, whether I really need it or not, but the cost is such that I really have to justify that protection. So, if we had some more flexibility, e.g., you could protect servers with a two-, three-, or four-hour RPO at a certain price point versus mission-critical every five minutes, then I would be interested in that."

"I have heard that it is expensive, but that is not my world."

"Its price can be better, but it is not bad. Most small-scale organizations can afford it, but they can come up with more customer-friendly packages."

"Pricing depends on your future growth. Start small and then scale up."

"Zerto is affordable."

"The pricing is pretty competitive to that of other options out there. When we shopped around, it was in line with the price of other solutions."

"The cost is one of the only drawbacks of Zerto because it's very high, and the overall impact of the solution on our organization is relatively low. This is why we are trying to figure out if another product could fulfill the same role for cheaper."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Disaster Recovery (DR) Software solutions are best for your needs.

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824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user159711

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?

Setting up VMs can be done quickly. It is easy to use.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?

The solution is pretty expensive after the changes, and it depends on the size of the customer if it's worth it. Larger enterprise customers can automate several features, making it cost-effective.

What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?

The licenses need to be easier to quote. At the moment, it is complicated with all the changes. The pricing structure is pretty expensive, especially after the recent changes, and it's important fo...

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?

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...

What do you like most about Zerto?

Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?

I would rate the pricing, setup cost, and licensing around a seven on a scale of one to ten. The pricing model could be more flexible to accommodate startup companies with lower budgets.

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Live Recovery

Comparisons

Compared 24% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs VMware Live Recovery

Compared 17% of the time

Azure Site Recovery vs VMware Live Recovery

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service vs VMware Live Recovery

Compared 7% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs VMware Live Recovery

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Live Recovery Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 17% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Disaster Recovery as a Service vs Zerto

Compared 7% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

More Zerto Competitors

Product Reports

Download VMware Live Recovery product report

VMware Live Recovery

November 2024

Download Zerto product report

November 2024

Also Known As

VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Datrium DRaaS , VMware SRM

Zerto Virtual Replication

Learn More

VMware

Overview

VMware Live Recovery is a disaster recovery solution that protects and recovers virtual machines (VMs) across on-premise and public clouds. Key features include rapid ransomware recovery, an on-demand recovery environment for testing procedures without affecting production, live behavioral analysis to detect threats, push-button VM network isolation to contain threats, guided restore point selection, and immutable, air-gapped recovery points to prevent tampering. VMware Live Recovery provides a comprehensive solution to safeguard critical data and applications from cyberattacks and other disasters.

Zerto is used for disaster recovery, business continuity, data migration, and ransomware recovery, providing continuous data protection and near real-time replication. Valued for ease of use, efficient failover processes, and versatile integration, it enhances organizational efficiency, reduces errors, and boosts productivity.

Sample Customers

Certainty Home Loans, VPay, ZEON

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies