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.
"We have a lot of backups, and this tool helps us with the RMAN Backup."
"The stability is okay."
"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."
"We've been using this solution to backup our servers. It is a simple backup and restore data application."
"The source site replication feature is valuable."
"All the features in the system are highly valuable."
"It's stable and offers good performance."
"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."
"The backup on real-time, especially for the virtual machine, archiving, and retrieving the reader from the backup repository and getting it online, getting it validated, then performing the data consistency check over the backup."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"The product helps us do data protection and restoration for disaster recovery (DR)."
"The solution is very stable. It is one of the most important features that we look for in a product before putting it into the market and when establishing a strategy with our customers."
"Once it is completed properly, it is low maintenance. Most of the functions do not require much deliberation. It is all the blueprints and technologies laid out, and it is straight forward."
"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."
"High availability (HA): It is one of the best features."
"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."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"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 reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"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 there was cloud support."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"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."
"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."
"IBM's support hasn't been so good in the last few years."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."
"If you take Spectrum Protect into account, and you have it along with restrictions to Spectrum Archive by means of LTFS, this is also something which should be made better within the overall product's program."
"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)."
"The solution needs to work on disaster recovery integration. Basically, VMware applications to the cloud, for example. There needs to be integration with the storage, and integration with VMware."
"It could use single store. The ability to mark an archive from my backup for long-term retention."
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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