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."
"The backup and recovery speed is very fast."
"The fast backup and recovery and the Full Backup features are valuable."
"Its stability and deduplication capabilities are most valuable."
"The most valuable features are image backups and file backups."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"Effective in protecting the virtualization system and end points."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"From a tech perspective, utilizing deduplication is one of the most valuable features."
"Incremental forever: This feature helps us reduce backup time and backup storage space."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"We cannot live without it, since it gives us the confidence to move forward."
"You can scale the product."
"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."
"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."
"We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup."
"The management of this solution is a little bit difficult for IT administrators. They have to be trained before going through the system."
"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"It's very slow to backup and store information. It has two consoles and an application which are more difficult to use than a solution like Veeam."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"It should have the ability to break down the data that's being backed up. It should have better reporting."
"I would like a little more ease with the virtual platforms, because it is a huge thing that is coming up."
"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."
"I should be able to backup Linux. I would like SUSE for Linux on POWER. Right now, we have to use Storex, which is a pain to use."
"It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that."
"It could use single store. The ability to mark an archive from my backup for long-term retention."
"IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time."
"There have been scalability issues. The core product does not support scale out. We needed to create a new system and manage resources separate from the existing one."
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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