Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 20, 2023

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups.""It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers.""We've found the product to be stable.""The product has a proven track record of good backups without much of a failure ratio. It also has a good backup in terms of the compression ratio.""The fast backup and recovery and the Full Backup features are valuable.""Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations.""We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment.""It's stable and offers good performance."

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"We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security.""When I have to do disaster recoveries, I can do it with this tool.""It saves you a lot of storage.""It is very stable. A plus is to use POWERAge for the SNR copy of the Spectrum Protect, then it is more reliable.""The deduplication and compression features are the most valuable features.""The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests.""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.""It scales well for the amount of clients that we use with it."

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Cons
"The user interface still needs to have some level of improvement. It could be more user-friendly and intuitive.""It was challenging to back up our Exchange database, which is one of the reasons we did not continue using this solution.""The stability could improve, a lot of scheduled backups failed at one time.""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 screen design is a bit back-dated.""A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier.""What would make Dell Avamar better is if it can do faster backups because right now, PowerProtect Data Manager is better in this area with its new UI and a new way to implement backups. Customers nowadays also expect more up-to-date solutions, and this is another area for improvement in Dell Avamar. It's not as up-to-date, so I'm counting on PowerProtect Data Manager, but customers who have Dell Avamar don't want to switch because you don't have as many backup problems in Dell Avamar compared to other solutions. What I'd like to see in the next release of Dell Avamar is an updated UI and a different way to manage backups because currently, backup management is a bit heavy for customers using Dell Avamar.""The management of this solution is a little bit difficult for IT administrators. They have to be trained before going through the system."

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"Replication services would be nice. If these could be enhanced to be always on so multiple storage backup services could be added as a cluster pool. This would provide a better availability service.""They need to reduce the complexity and make the learning curve easier.""The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority.""I would like to see a way to have "always on" implemented.""We recently had a situation where we quickly got code, and the number of tapes exceeded the library capacity so we were waiting a while to change. We got a fix for this right away.""It's difficult in terms of the configuration at set up. In our case, it required another admin, one person dedicated to the backup.""We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library).""The solution's initial setup process wasn't easy...The solution is overly complicated in terms of architecture, especially compared to other tools in the market."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
  • "This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
  • "I'm not sure, but perhaps the pricing could be done better at the moment."
  • "The price is the main thing I'd like to see them change. If they can come down in price, that would be a good thing. It's very cost competitive in the entry level range, because Veeam pricing is much cheaper than Avamar."
  • "It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years."
  • "Licensing was generally on a per VM or terabyte basis. They changed their licensing model a couple of times and turned it into socket-based licensing, which is an improvement in their licensing model."
  • "When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
  • "The price of this product should be lower."
  • More Dell Avamar Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."
  • "Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
  • "At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."
  • "Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
  • "We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
  • "We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
  • "Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
  • "It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
  • More IBM Spectrum Protect Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly… more »
    Top Answer:It's stable and offers good performance.
    Top Answer:The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a six to seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups.
    Top Answer:The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement. There could be an agent-less backup and recovery mechanism. In the next release, I would recommend the inclusion of a… more »
    Ranking
    13th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    12,632
    Comparisons
    8,894
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    467
    Rating
    7.6
    17th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,719
    Comparisons
    5,477
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    522
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Avamar
    IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    Dell Avamar data protection software delivers flexible and efficient backup and recovery operations that can scale from daily backup protection for endpoints to high-performance protection for large enterprises with diverse applications and workloads. With application consistent recovery, automation and fast backup and restores, Avamar can help you meet your SLAs and optimize your backup and recovery processes

    If you are deploying all or part of your backup environment to the cloud, Avamar enables you to make the most of your cloud investment, enabling replication, disaster recovery and long-term retention for customers using AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

    Avamar is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. Avamar is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

    IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.
    Sample Customers
    Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
    CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Retailer13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company13%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise62%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.

    See our list of best Backup and Recovery vendors.

    We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.