We compared IBM Spectrum Protect and Rubrik based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is highly regarded for its ability to integrate with tape libraries and its customization options. Users also like Spectrum Protect's compatibility with various products, scalability, and stability. Rubrik is praised for its automated policy enforcement and efficient ransomware detection. Spectrum Protect could improve its integration with cloud services and make its interface more user-friendly. Rubrik could expand compatibility with open-source databases, improve documentation, and strengthen its ability to back up remote sites.
Service and Support: 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. Rubrik customers appreciate the support team's expertise and fast response.
Ease of Deployment: IBM Spectrum Protect's initial setup is challenging and demands skilled professionals to configure multiple parameters and features. This process can be time-consuming. Rubrik's setup is simple, and users say the support team was available to assist as needed.
Pricing: IBM Spectrum Protect is considered expensive. The pricing model is complex, taking into account factors like processor type and volume. Some users find Rubrik's pricing expensive, but many say it’s justified by its encryption and security features. Rubrik's license includes both software and hardware without any additional costs.
ROI: 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. Rubrik provides peace of mind and some cost savings, but users say that quantifying the ROI is difficult.
Comparison Results: 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. Users like Rubrik’s advanced ransomware features, excellent support, and automated policy enforcement. However, some had issues with its remote backup abilities and high price tag.
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."
"Instead of taking three different backups of your systems, you're taking only one. You're able to crack that open and get what you need. The incident recovery, where it creates the VM and then you're running it, technically you're running it on Spectrum Protect. But then in the background, it's doing the storage motion and moving it off the Spectrum Protect back to your VMware environment. The users don't know the difference."
"It is also a product that has been maturing for a long time. This is good because customers need reliability in their enterprise initiatives."
"I love the TDP for VMware because of the web interface and the possibilities provided by this tool. It's amazing."
"Once setup, you do not need to touch it again. You just need to do a formal check on possibly batch updates."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
"It is a very mature product."
"The live mounting and compatibility of different operating systems is great."
"Also, the web interface is really great. The design, from a user-experience standpoint, is really straightforward and easy to use... they nailed it. Usually, from the very first panel, the dashboard that you land on after login, you've got most of your functionality right around where you need it to be. You've got your new items on the left, you've got your support on the top right. Nothing really seems out of place or just stuck in someplace."
"Rubrik has made the process to manage backup and recovery painless. This frees up more time to work on other projects."
"Rubrik is highly scalable and is easy to do."
"Cut backup remediation to nearly nothing."
"Rubrik is cheap, and you get good performance."
"Instant recovery is a good feature."
"Not having to specify a time to run a backup with a fixed schedule is something that's really beneficial. In the past we had to schedule and try to manually stagger things over the window, to back up everything. Because Rubrik is SLA-based, you say, "Well, I need it to fit in this window here," and it just backs it up when it's most convenient for the Brik and for the third-party system. It looks at the CPU usage and says, "Okay, it's not as busy now. I know I've got time to take the backup." That's a real advantage."
"They should introduce more features for virtualization platforms and backing up IBMs. Backup speeds should also be improved."
"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."
"The features should be a little bit closer together."
"I would like to advance reporting and analytics for the platform to see how much data is coming into the platform. how much data is expiring everyday, and what tape savings we are getting through reclamation."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I am looking forward to new features in the next release. One of the main features is the cloud storage integration, which was one of my main required features. I've had more difficult experiences with other platforms than with this one."
"We did not see any drawbacks to IBM Spectrum Protect before assisting a customer using Windows that wanted to migrate to using UNIX. IBM Spectrum Protect does not offer an option to migrate from other operating systems."
"The only thing that I would like to have a little more of is insight in reporting. I find that Spectrum Protect needs a lot of monitoring, and I have to actually log into the servers."
"We would like to be able to do granular restores directly from Exchange. Also, more granular management of VM backups would help."
"It needs to keep innovating to stay relevant in the data management field."
"The Polaris piece could use improvement. When you get a report and you have events that are suspicious, you cannot drill down and find out why it's suspicious. You only know it's suspicious, but you don't know the root cause. Other than that, everything works well."
"Troubleshooting failed backups is difficult, and deciphering the logs without the help of support is usually almost impossible."
"The solution needs to be more secure and needs to better protect against ransomware."
"They should give more access to the backend capabilities. From a customer point of view, you do not have access to all the features on the system. You have to engage their support to perform some of the tasks. It would be helpful for an experienced engineer to be able to go and do some of those tasks prior to contacting the support."
"They have what's called an organization which means different groups of access to Rubrik, but the alerting only goes to the admins. My suggestion to Rubrik is to make sure that the separate organizations or groups of users get the appropriate alerting."
"I have a personal want which might not necessarily make sense with Rubrik as a company or Rubrik as a software, but it'd be really nice if they could also handle things like item-level backups and restores of Active Directory objects and DNS and DCP objects."
IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews while Rubrik is ranked 4th in Backup and Recovery with 82 reviews. IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0, while Rubrik is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Rubrik writes "Easy to use with minimal training required, innovative, good support". IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Cohesity DataProtect and Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), whereas Rubrik is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Cohesity DataProtect, Commvault Cloud, Zerto and Dell NetWorker. See our IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Rubrik report.
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