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.
"Client deduplication."
"Every product is good and bad, but its claim to fame is that it is scalable. We're doing more than 3,000 VMs. Every single night a complete image backup to disks and replication are easily done in under four hours."
"Its stability and deduplication capabilities are most valuable."
"Avamar's source side deduplication is very strong, it can easily back up remote sites' data, and not much bandwidth is required on the Avamar side."
"Duplication and the speed of backup are great."
"We've been using this solution to backup our servers. It is a simple backup and restore data application."
"They are extremely reliable and scalable — they provide the best de-duplication on the market."
"What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain."
"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."
"The backup is very good. In other backup systems, you need a lot of storage to gain the same backup policy."
"We can freeze and start databases for consistent backups."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware."
"Everyone wants a full backup. It gives them safety and peace of mind, like an insurance policy for that rainy day when they may need to restore a system."
"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."
"Nothing beats this solution for file backup."
"It is very scalable, and that's its claim to fame, but that also makes it hard to make changes. Anytime there is a large piece of software, changing that piece of software is harder. You've got a larger install base, so you can't just rapidly change. We also use another product called Veeam, and it has this new feature called Continuous Data Protection, which basically lets you get very close to the way the system was in time. We have a system or two up there on which we have set 10 minutes Continuous Data Protection. So, we can roll it back to whatever it was 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, or 30 minutes ago. This feature doesn't exist in Avamar Data Domain. That's the one feature I'd like to see first."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"It was challenging to back up our Exchange database, which is one of the reasons we did not continue using this solution."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"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 client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"Backup image browse times should be faster."
"The user interface needs to be improved. It's not as good as it could be."
"They took some of the funding off of it for a while. Therefore, instead of being a market leader, they took their position for granted. Then some competitors developed new bells and whistles that they advertise, and due to that lag a few years ago, there are not the resources to explain the differences."
"The solution needs to work on disaster recovery integration. Basically, VMware applications to the cloud, for example. There needs to be integration with the storage, and integration with VMware."
"We should be talking about the capacity of the tape drives. That's the only problem."
"Ease of use."
"Getting technical support all the necessary diagnostic information is still very painful."
"This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers."
"They should have a proper technical support team serving the customers and get issues resolved earlier."
"We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center."
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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