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Disaster recovery option: Veeam VS SRM

Andanet
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hi all, 
I need your help to know a specific info for the subject pillar.

We are preparing proposals for a client which will have to decide a DR solution between Veeam and VmWare SRM. 
I know both VMware SRM and Veeam with VDRO are great products.
VMware SRM is focuses on DR/BC of VM but without application aware  
Veeam includes application aware consistency. 
I add some better features than SRM for me. 

  • Failover plan with ordered start
  • Sure-Replica
  • LOW RPO in 2 seconds
  • CDP feature
  • VDRO with dynamic documentation


So I ask you which SRM features can be better than Veeam B&R? 
Thanks for your reply

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Best answer by Chris.Childerhose 8 March 2023, 21:30

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Antonio D'Andrea | VCP6-DCV | VMCE 2021 | VMCA 2022 | VMTSP2023 | Veeam Legend 2023 | VUG Italy Leader | I want it written on my tombstone "Please start a restore to the last valid backup"

4 comments

Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

I would take a look at the comparison that Victor Wu did on the community hub here - Comparison of Veeam VDRO and other solutions | Veeam Community Resource Hub

It compares VDRO/SRM/Zerto - I know you are not asking about Zerto but nice to see the comparisons of all three.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
dloseke
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

One thing to note is that Veeam doesn’t care about your storage in most cases but does have some storage integrations depending on the type of arrays you’re using and if you’re performing any storage-based replication.  If you’re performing your replication of VM’s at the VM/Host/vCenter level then it doesn’t matter there for SRM.

But the one gotcha I learned is that if you’re performing storage-based replication, your storage must match on both ends.  SRM uses SRA’s (Storage Replication Adapters - basically a driver written by the storage vendor), and SRM requires (or at least, but I would guess still does) that the SRA is the same on both ends, meaning the storage needs to be the same on both ends. 

It’s been a few years, but my use case was that I had a Dell SC (Compellent) in the primary datacenter and was replicating to a Dell PS (Equallogic) on the recovery datacenter.  Those use different SRA’s and thusly wasn’t able to use SRM.  The solution I presented was to upgrade their VMware licensing so that we could perform VM-based replication, but the client instead chose to replace the Equallogic with another Compellent and it worked great after that.  Had this client been using Veeam (instead of Quest RapidRecovery), then it would have been a non-issue.

May not apply to everyone, but just a tid-bit that I learned and share whenever I can.

Derek M. Loseke, Senior Systems Engineer | Veeam Legend 2022-2023 | VMSP/VMTSP | VCP6-DCV | VSP/VTSP | CCNA | https://technotesanddadjokes.com | @dloseke
Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

One thing to note is that Veeam doesn’t care about your storage in most cases but does have some storage integrations depending on the type of arrays you’re using and if you’re performing any storage-based replication.  If you’re performing your replication of VM’s at the VM/Host/vCenter level then it doesn’t matter there for SRM.

But the one gotcha I learned is that if you’re performing storage-based replication, your storage must match on both ends.  SRM uses SRA’s (Storage Replication Adapters - basically a driver written by the storage vendor), and SRM requires (or at least, but I would guess still does) that the SRA is the same on both ends, meaning the storage needs to be the same on both ends. 

It’s been a few years, but my use case was that I had a Dell SC (Compellent) in the primary datacenter and was replicating to a Dell PS (Equallogic) on the recovery datacenter.  Those use different SRA’s and thusly wasn’t able to use SRM.  The solution I presented was to upgrade their VMware licensing so that we could perform VM-based replication, but the client instead chose to replace the Equallogic with another Compellent and it worked great after that.  Had this client been using Veeam (instead of Quest RapidRecovery), then it would have been a non-issue.

May not apply to everyone, but just a tid-bit that I learned and share whenever I can.

Yes, I remember the SRAs being a pain if they did not match on both sides.  Luckily, I was testing Nimble, so they had the proper SRA, and it was in both cluster we used SRM.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
dloseke
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Yes, I remember the SRAs being a pain if they did not match on both sides.  

 

In my case, I was just getting ready to enable things and just happened to come across a single line about it in one of the guides/manuals.  It wasn’t glaringly obvious.  Opened a case up with VMware right aware and they confirmed that the SRA’s must match.

Derek M. Loseke, Senior Systems Engineer | Veeam Legend 2022-2023 | VMSP/VMTSP | VCP6-DCV | VSP/VTSP | CCNA | https://technotesanddadjokes.com | @dloseke

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