Which DR Solution is Right for You?

VMware has multiple disaster recovery solutions available for different customer needs. This post provides a high-level overview of the options and a comparison matrix of the specific differences.

Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager is primarily an on-premises disaster recovery automation and orchestration tool. It now also supports hyperscalers (AVS, GCVE & OCVS) and, along with vSphere Replication, serves as the basis for VMware Site Recovery for VMware Cloud on AWS.

When Site Recovery Manager is used between sites that both support array-based replication, which would most frequently be on-premises to on-premises, it supports additional capabilities only available with array-based replication.

VMware Site Recovery

VMware Site Recovery is a DRaaS offering available with VMware Cloud on AWS. It utilizes Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication to provide DR automation and orchestration capabilities. Like the rest of VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Site Recovery is an ‘as-a-service’ offering. VMware Site Recovery is deployed, managed, and maintained by VMware.

VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery

VMware Cloud DR provides on-demand disaster recovery-as-a-service as part of VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery supports flexible deployment options, including an SDDC that is only deployed on-demand, significantly reducing costs. It also supports many immutable snapshots, an integral part of its advanced ransomware protection and recovery capabilities.

	VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery	VMware Site Recovery	Site Recovery Manager
Topology
Source/Protected Site	On-prem or VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC	On-prem, VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, VMware Cloud on Dell SDDC note: on-prem site cannot be both source and target	On-prem, hyperscalers SDDC (AVS, GCVE, or OCVS) Note: currently, hyperscaler to hyperscaler protection is only supported between the same hyperscaler, e.g., AVS to AVS
Targets / Recovery Site	VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC	On-prem, VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, VMware Cloud on Dell SDDC note: on-prem site cannot be both source and target	On-prem or hyperscalers SDDC (AVS, GCVE, or OCVS) Note: currently, hyperscaler to hyperscaler protection is only supported between the same hyperscaler, e.g., AVS to AVS
Recovery site SDDC requirement	No	Yes	Yes
Replication
RPO	Min 30 mins (with high-frequency snapshots) 4 hours (with standard frequency snapshots)	Min 5 mins	0 mins with synchronous replication (array-based replication only), 5 mins with vSphere Replication
Recovery points	1000’s per VM (up to 1MM per Scale-out Cloud File System)	24	24 with vSphere Replication Various depending on array-based replication solutions
Synchronous replication support?	No	No	Yes (only when using array-based replication)
Multi-writer disk support?	No	No	Yes (only when using array-based replication)
Physical RDM support?	No	No	Yes (only when using array-based replication)
Operations
RTO	Fast RTOs When used without an SDDC, it requires SDDC deployment, which increases RTOs Instant power-on with live mount reduces recovery times	Faster RTOs because of pre-provisioned failover capacity	Faster RTOs because of pre-provisioned failover capacity
Offered ‘as-a-service’?	Yes	Yes	No
GovCloud support?	No	Yes	No
Management
Ransomware recovery and orchestration	Yes	No	No
Costs	Per VM/hour + per TB	Per VM/hour	Per protected VM
Deployment	SaaS in the cloud. Requires a minimum of a single appliance installed on-prem	SaaS in the cloud. Requires a minimum of 2 appliance installs on-prem	Manual software installation
Lifecycle management	VMware Managed	VMware Managed	Customer managed/maintained

What about VMware Cloud Director Availability?

VMware Cloud Director Availability is a disaster recovery and migration solution specifically for cloud providers. It isn’t offered directly to customers and is only available to customers through VMware Cloud Provider Partners.

What about VMware HCX?

HCX is an application migration and workload rebalancing solution. When its networking capabilities are combined with the DR solutions discussed in this post, it can enhance those solutions. While it has some DR capabilities, they are limited to bare recovery. They don’t include advanced orchestration capabilities like those in VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Site Recovery Manager, and VMware Site Recovery.