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.
"Stable and scalable backup and recovery software, with good technical support."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Data Domain and your VM stacks."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The solution integrates well with Unix, Windows, Hyper-V and VM."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"Source based deduplication is the most attractive feature as it drastically reduces the backup window."
"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."
"The ability to migrate between media over a long period of time. My customers are long-time users, and they have benefited from being able to move between tiers. They have been able to do this within the product."
"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"It is a very mature product."
"The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good."
"Enterprise-wide type of architecture supports a lot of different platforms."
"Their GUI has improved quite a bit. It's made the solution a lot simpler and less complex."
"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."
"Technical support should be more knowledgeable."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"Setting up Avamar wasn't so easy, and we had a partner doing the installation for us. Though it was hard at first, it's getting better. The main difficulty was finding plugins for Oracle Database. It took some time to open a ticket with Dell, but everything was fine after that."
"The product could be improved by simplifying the components available."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup."
"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."
"The installation process could be simplified."
"If IBM could provide a partial module, that would be great."
"The reporting could be better."
"The software is very complicated. You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"I would like to see monitoring within the platform: monitoring for storage pools and monitoring for the server's health (e.g., CPU and memory)."
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.