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.
"What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain."
"Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations."
"For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates."
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Data Domain and your VM stacks."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"We have a lot of backups, and this tool helps us with the RMAN Backup."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the centralized enterprise backup."
"The archiving feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"We optimize our costs of media and storage use, thanks to the Incremental Forever backup. The TDP software provides us many ways to protect our data, so we don't need to use monstrous scripts for doing backups now."
"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."
"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."
"We work very closely together with IBM using their Support Center, but we have a strong contact in their development teams, and we have dedicated people from IBM working with us."
"I think they could also move more towards cloud solutions. It already has some cloud tiering, but I think that could be more extensive. They should work with all cloud providers and I think in the future they will be on all cloud platforms."
"More integration would be helpful, as well as the addition of more applications."
"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."
"Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot."
"A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"Backup image browse times should be faster."
"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."
"Ease of use. That has got to be the one thing that I routinely hear from clients and customers, that it's a little bit more difficult than it should be. What I'm finding is that IBM has heard that and they're responding with updated interfaces and things like that."
"The solution should have better integration with VMware and with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus."
"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."
"It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved."
"The product should be improved to save more space."
"I find the Level 1 and Level 2 support spend 80% of the time communicating the same information that I have already provided."
"My customers are not always happy with the Level 1 support. Sometimes, it just takes too long for the response to come, which is probably something that needs to be addressed."
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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