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.
"Dell EMC Avamar is very good with endpoint backups."
"We love the instant recovery functionality. It's very useful."
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"So far, Avamar covers everything we want. We are replicating to other sites for disaster recovery, so it's working well for us."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Data Domain and your VM stacks."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"The most valuable feature of Avamar would have to be the way it works over needing very little bandwidth to move data across a WAN or LAN."
"We've been using this solution to backup our servers. It is a simple backup and restore data application."
"It has to ability to backup DV2, Oracle, and Informix."
"Our performance is better."
"It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."
"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."
"Spectrum Protect's best feature is that I can use it practically anywhere, on any platform, and for any servers or clients."
"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the centralized enterprise backup."
"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."
"If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on."
"In my opinion, the user interface and the user friendliness could be improved. The specific thing I have in mind are the graphics, which are not quite user-friendly."
"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."
"The solution should improve its tape-connectivity features."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier."
"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."
"It lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center."
"A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email."
"This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short."
"I am not really impressed with the Level 1 support, but once I get past that and go to Level 2, then we will usually get some type of resolution."
"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."
"I find the solution somewhat difficult to use with virtual environments or VMware."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
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, Cohesity DataProtect and Iron Mountain Connect. See our Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.
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