Item: VMware Site Recovery Manager
Rating: 9
Author: Ravinder Gupta

Overall Satisfaction with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are currently hosting around 80 VMs on Production Site vCenter and 120 VMs on Non-Production Site vCenter. We use SRM to perform our bi-yearly disaster recovery drills for the virtual layer. We have been extremely please with the ease of configuring SRM and performing site recovery. Initially, we hired an SRM expert to do the job for us, but now our system admins are also able to perform the site recovery.
We have used VMware Site Recovery Manager for both failover and failback exercises without any issues. I like the way we can create multiple protection groups to facilitate recovery of virtual machines based on priority.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ease of configuration. You don't have to be a virtualization expert to learn how VMWare SRM is configured and executed.
Creation of multiple protection groups and recovery plans helps implementing recovery priority and partial/full site recovery as required.
No additional tasks for managing replication. SRM takes care of replication from failover site to old primary site automatically.

Cons

I am not very pleased with the overall licensing cost. It's pretty expensive. Especially if you have a small number of VMs, you are paying a lot.
We had a little struggle getting our support tickets resolved by VMWare support.

Return on Investment

Our overall ROI seems to be pretty good, as ease of using VMWare SRM has helped us reducing cost of hiring separate virtualization experts. The task is being performed by our System Admins.
SRM steps execution was pretty smooth in our DR exercise. This has helped us achieve our RPO and RTO well under contracted limits.

Alternatives Considered

Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam Backup & Replication is slower than VMWare SRM and doesn't suits our RTO (Recovery Time Objective).

Other Software Used

Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Likelihood to Recommend

It's quite well suited for a medium to large size VMWare virtualization infrastructure where your production infrastructure can be failed over to a disaster recovery site. There are other cheaper options for a smaller budget business. Also, for a non mission critical virtual infrastructure, you can simply use VM backups such as Veeam backups for restoring failed VMs.

VMware SRM Support

Support Rating

Sometimes we have to struggle explaining the problem and getting it resolved on priority. The overall quality of support team is not as good as it used to be in past.

VMware SRM Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Bug Resolution

Using VMware SRM

Usability

VMWare SRM is very easy to use and configure. You don't have to be a virtualization expert to learn SRM configuration and execution.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Creation of Protection Groups and Recovery Plan
Creation of SRM Plan
Execution of failover and failback

Difficult Tasks

Execution of cleanup after an unsuccessful failover

Comments

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