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.
"Source based deduplication is the most attractive feature as it drastically reduces the backup window."
"The stability is okay."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It is a very complete product."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates."
"We've found the product to be stable."
"The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware."
"The backup is very good. In other backup systems, you need a lot of storage to gain the same backup policy."
"The addition of the retention set feature provides a reduction in storage costs. It also reduces RTO and RPO so that you can respond quickly to your clients and services in case of data loss."
"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."
"Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time."
"The product helps us do data protection and restoration for disaster recovery (DR)."
"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
"The product could be improved by simplifying the components available."
"Backup image browse times should be faster."
"The UI is not easy to use. There are other products such as Veeam that are easy to use for the end-user which is why they are moving away from Avamar or Networker."
"Technical support should be more knowledgeable."
"The bare-metal restores could be improved."
"The product could offer more integration capabilities."
"A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"They are behind on many things, especially security. They are catching up a little bit now, but the competitors are doing better security-wise. There should be malware detection and prevention and higher security."
"They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."
"We are having a balance issue between the reclamation and the backup function. It has to take the space back from the tapes before it can record to those tapes, but sometimes those two processes are overlapping."
"I need two separate solutions for virtual and physical systems. I need IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for virtual systems and Spectrum Protect for physical systems and that's a pain. It would be an improvement if they were combined."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"Our new leadership has pushed us to go more toward the cloud, so we are definitely going to leverage anything we can in that direction."
"Scalability is poor. As you get to bigger environments, this is where our gaps have been introduced. As we have grown over the past couple of years, the gaps have become more apparent."
"We would like to see capabilities of long-term archiving and more support for hardware platforms."
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, Rubrik and IBM Storage Protect. See our Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.
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