Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

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12,632 views|8,894 comparisons
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7,719 views|5,477 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 20, 2023

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The product is good for backups.""The tool's most valuable features are backup management and speed.""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.""Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported.""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.""Stable and scalable backup and recovery software, with good technical support.""It is a very complete product.""Client deduplication."

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"It seems very scalable and robust. It can do what we require it to do.""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.""Reliability: It has never had a problem with backups or restores. If you store something, it is there.""We are able to run it in an enterprise quite easily with one or two resources.""With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site.""It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state.""The solution offers very good flexibility.""IBM Spectrum Protect is stable."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Pros →

Cons
"Setup and deployment of this solution is complex and requires expert engineers.""Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway.""If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on.""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 Avamar could improve by adding more backup features.""Desktop-laptop backups and backup over the WAN needs lot of improvisation. For DTLT there must be a provision to push agents from the management console.""The bare-metal restores could be improved.""The solution should improve its tape-connectivity features."

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"Replication of data could be more user friendly.""Sometimes we experience trouble with the backup transfer of the control files.""The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority.""It might be seen as leaning towards the legacy side, missing some features of newer solutions. The main drawbacks would be its complexity and high pricing.""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).""Any feature that is compliant with virtualizing the application should be improved.""They are behind on many things, especially security. They are catching up a little bit now, but the competitors are doing better security-wise. There should be malware detection and prevention and higher security.""There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
  • "This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
  • "I'm not sure, but perhaps the pricing could be done better at the moment."
  • "The price is the main thing I'd like to see them change. If they can come down in price, that would be a good thing. It's very cost competitive in the entry level range, because Veeam pricing is much cheaper than Avamar."
  • "It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years."
  • "Licensing was generally on a per VM or terabyte basis. They changed their licensing model a couple of times and turned it into socket-based licensing, which is an improvement in their licensing model."
  • "When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
  • "The price of this product should be lower."
  • More Dell Avamar Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."
  • "Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
  • "At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."
  • "Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
  • "We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
  • "We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
  • "Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
  • "It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
  • More IBM Spectrum Protect Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly… more »
    Top Answer:It's stable and offers good performance.
    Top Answer:The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a six to seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups.
    Top Answer:The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement. There could be an agent-less backup and recovery mechanism. In the next release, I would recommend the inclusion of a… more »
    Ranking
    13th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    12,632
    Comparisons
    8,894
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    467
    Rating
    7.6
    17th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,719
    Comparisons
    5,477
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    522
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Avamar
    IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    Dell Avamar data protection software delivers flexible and efficient backup and recovery operations that can scale from daily backup protection for endpoints to high-performance protection for large enterprises with diverse applications and workloads. With application consistent recovery, automation and fast backup and restores, Avamar can help you meet your SLAs and optimize your backup and recovery processes

    If you are deploying all or part of your backup environment to the cloud, Avamar enables you to make the most of your cloud investment, enabling replication, disaster recovery and long-term retention for customers using AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

    Avamar is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. Avamar is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

    IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.
    Sample Customers
    Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
    CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Retailer13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company13%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise62%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell Avamar is ranked 13th 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 7.8, 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 NAKIVO Backup & Replication. 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.