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.
"The entire system operates seamlessly, with minimal hands-on involvement, allowing us to focus on monitoring rather than constant adjustments or deployments, as seen in larger, more dynamic environments."
"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."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"The most valuable feature for me in Dell Avamar is the automation, which is good for completion."
"It's stable and offers good performance."
"It works quickly and is very stable."
"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."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is mostly stable."
"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."
"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."
"In general, the solution is quite user-friendly. The GUI is very nice."
"Good deduplication and compression features."
"It is pretty easy to use and maintain."
"The solution is not complex, it's very easy to configure agents or VM backup and restore. Upgrades from one version to another are very fast and the product is very stable."
"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."
"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."
"If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on."
"This solution could improve by introducing daily verifications and another repository."
"The solution should improve its tape-connectivity features."
"It would be better if we could integrate easily with other platforms."
"The UI is quite old. We've been using this UI since last year, and they haven't changed it. It would be better to update the UI periodically and create attractive dashboards from an administrative point of view."
"Avamar cannot back up Nutanix as a virtual solution."
"If you need to pull data out of it to offload to tapes, that's messy. You have a mechanism for it, but it is painful."
"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."
"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."
"When it comes to virtualization in IBM it's not perfect."
"Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly."
"We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack."
"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."
"The features should be a little bit closer together."
"Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment."
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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