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 most valuable features are image backups and file backups."
"The installation process is pretty straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the virtual backup."
"The deduplication feature is the best aspect of the solution."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"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."
"It was very simple to deploy the solution to the client that you wanted to backup."
"The product is good for backups."
"Their GUI has improved quite a bit. It's made the solution a lot simpler and less complex."
"It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection."
"The backup is very good. In other backup systems, you need a lot of storage to gain the same backup policy."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"It is a very mature product."
"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment. They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution."
"The support is very bad."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."
"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."
"If there is a need to move the data from one backup solution to another, it might be difficult since there is no option for a straightforward migration."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."
"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."
"We need everything cloud. Strong support for cloud services. S3 connectivity, which is mandatory for us in the future along with this integration of Spectrum Copy Data Management or Spectrum Protect services together with these Spectrum Protect Plus functionalities, e.g., hardware, snapshots, and Copy Data Management. They should come together in one solution."
"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."
"It needs some software upgrades to fix some of its current bugs."
"The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement."
"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."
"We should be talking about the capacity of the tape drives. That's the only problem."
"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."
"Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment."
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.
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