Single service comparison

ASR orchestrates managed-machine replication across Azure regions and heterogeneous sources (VMware, Hyper-V, physical, AWS) with unified recovery plans and runbook automation. Huawei splits this model: SDRS (Business Recovery Service) provides cross-AZ/cross-region storage-level asynchronous replication for ECSs only, with RPO of seconds and one-click switchover, while SMS handles one-shot OS/application migration from x86 physical/virtual sources to ECS. Neither offers ASR's source-agnostic orchestration or policy-driven recovery plans.

Control-plane and data-model boundaries differ. ASR exposes Recovery Services vaults, replication policies, fabrics, containers, protected items, and recovery plans via Azure Resource Manager and the Site Recovery REST API. SDRS exposes protection groups and protected instances bound to ECS/EVS within a region pair; SMS exposes migration tasks per source server. Expect to re-platform your DR topology rather than perform API-level translation, and rebuild runbook automation against SDRS switchover and SMS cutover primitives.

Scaling, HA, and operational responsibility diverge. ASR runs replication servers and orchestration as a regional managed control plane. SDRS replication is storage-driven and bound to EVS/region-pair constraints with availability governed by the supported region list; SMS throughput depends on agent concurrency over public or Direct Connect links and source OS compatibility (40+ distributions). Cross-cloud continuity and failback require CBR backups and manual network reassembly rather than ASR's built-in reverse-protected failback.

Assessment and target choice: inventory ASR-protected items, source hypervisors, RPO/RTO, region pairs, and recovery plans. Decide per workload: use SMS for one-time re-hosting of on-premises, AWS, or other-cloud x86 servers onto Huawei ECS; use SDRS (BRS) for ongoing cross-AZ/cross-region DR of ECS-resident workloads after migration. Confirm SDRS region-pair and EVS disk support, and verify SMS source OS support before committing.

Data and configuration migration: install the SMS Agent on source servers, run feasibility checks, and use incremental synchronization to shrink the cutover window, replicating disk partitions and file systems over VPN or Direct Connect. Reconstruct ASR recovery-plan ordering manually through SDRS protection groups, and capture VM disk, NIC, and security configurations as IaC templates, since ASR runbooks do not translate to the Huawei control plane.

Validation and cutover: perform SDRS DR drills (online and non-disruptive) to verify RPO/RTO and data consistency, then execute SMS cutover for migration workloads during a planned window. Validate application startup order, DNS, VPC/EIP, and Cloud Connect routing before declaring success. ASR's automated test failover has no single Huawei equivalent, so document drill and rollback procedures explicitly.

Gaps and cost-model changes: ASR bills by protected-instance sizing plus storage, transaction, and egress costs; Huawei costs span SDRS protected instances and replication, EVS/OBS, CBR backups, SMS (often free tooling with underlying resource cost), and inter-region or Cloud Connect traffic. Rebuild TCO using peak load, retention, and DR-site compute. Mind gaps: no source-agnostic VMware/physical-agent replication equivalent and no policy-driven recovery plans, so compose SDRS + CBR + SMS.