We compared Dell Avamar and IBM Spectrum Protect based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. IBM Spectrum Protect is highly regarded for its ability to integrate with tape libraries and its customization options. Users also praised Spectrum Protect for its compatibility with various products, scalability, and stability. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface. IBM Spectrum Protect could improve its integration with cloud services and make its interface more user-friendly.
Service and Support: Some customers express satisfaction with Dell support, but others said there is room for improvement. IBM’s customer service is described as high quality, friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive. At the same time, some said the support process can be lengthy.
Ease of Deployment: Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary. IBM Spectrum Protect's initial setup is challenging and demands skilled professionals to configure multiple parameters and features. This process can be time-consuming.
Pricing: Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive. IBM Spectrum Protect is considered expensive. The pricing model is complex, taking into account factors like processor type and volume.
ROI: Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression. Users have realized benefits from IBM Spectrum Protect’s data protection and retrieval. They appreciate its ability to reduce storage requirements with larger tape sizes.
Comparison Results: Dell Avamar is a scalable solution that offers excellent data compression and fast compression. However, Avamar earned mixed reviews for support, deployment, and pricing. Users also requested better Azure and bare-metal backups and restoration capabilities. IBM Spectrum Protect is a reliable, customizable solution that allows smooth integration with tape libraries. At the same time, some say that the user interface could be more intuitive and Spectrum Protect could integrate better with the cloud.
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"We have a lot of backups, and this tool helps us with the RMAN Backup."
"The backup is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very reliable."
"All the features in the system are highly valuable."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations."
"The installation process is pretty straightforward."
"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."
"Data archiving is easier and less time-consuming."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"The most valuable features are compression and de-duplication."
"It covers all the different operating systems. If you need backup, it can pretty much do everything."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups."
"It protects our data. That is what it is there for."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups."
"Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."
"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."
"There also needs to be single sign-on support."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."
"Dell Avamar could improve by adding more backup features."
"It does what we need it to do, but it could be better with VM backups. It could be better integrated with virtual machines or VM backups, but that's why they have their Plus out now. Plus version is more geared toward VM backups. The regular version is more for endpoint clients."
"The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority."
"It needs agents that take into account more databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.)."
"Its price can be better. It is very expensive. Its interface is very old and not user friendly. They can improve its interface. Their support can also be better. My clients are not very satisfied with the support because they are not really quick."
"The product should be improved to save more space."
"The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement"
"For Spectrum Protect Plus, I would like to see more enhanced reporting features and integration with Spectrum Protect."
"If IBM could provide a partial module, that would be great."
Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews while IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews. Dell Avamar is rated 7.6, while IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), whereas IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Rubrik and IBM Storage Protect. See our Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.
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