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.
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"Dell EMC Avamar is very good with endpoint backups."
"I like Dell EMC Avamar's compression of data."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"The source site replication feature is valuable."
"The solution is very stable."
"Source based deduplication is the most attractive feature as it drastically reduces the backup window."
"It's stable and offers good performance."
"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."
"We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security."
"It is pretty scalable. It will scale to anything."
"It is scalable beyond anything my customers ever aspire to."
"The customization and the ability to backup across all platforms are the most valuable features."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."
"More integration would be helpful, as well as the addition of more applications."
"Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better."
"This solution could improve by introducing daily verifications and another repository."
"When you get down to doing certain things, such as somebody wants a particular file restored, the process by which you do that is stupid. You kind of have to know exactly where to look for in order to find it. Even on older backup products that I've used, I didn't have that kind of problem. If we were looking for a file with a particular kind of a name, the solution would find that file anywhere irrespective of where it resides within the backup system. So, we didn't have to know the name of the specific server, the specific timeframe, almost all the characters of the file name, and all kinds of data in order to find a file. In Avamar, we got to know these details. We've gone around and around with them on that, and their attitude seems to be that it is working just fine. There is nothing for them to improve. The organizational system of other products that I'm working with, such as Zerto and Cohesity, seems to be centered around the tasks that you would most commonly do and want to do, as opposed to we've laid it out in a really neat technical hierarchy."
"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"It would be better if we could integrate easily with other platforms."
"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."
"It could use single store. The ability to mark an archive from my backup for long-term retention."
"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."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"This solution is not mature in terms of disaster recovery and could be improved."
"We did not see any drawbacks to IBM Spectrum Protect before assisting a customer using Windows that wanted to migrate to using UNIX. IBM Spectrum Protect does not offer an option to migrate from other operating systems."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."
"High availability (HA) is a scalability challenge."
"The version that we had when I first started made it look really bad. We are talking about commands that should have run in two seconds, but instead took four to eight hours. Other components were sluggish."
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.
See our list of best Backup and Recovery vendors.
We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.