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 installation of the solution is easy."
"The most valuable feature is the virtual backup."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"We've found the product to be stable."
"Its deduplication technologies are the best in the market, currently."
"The solution scales well."
"The backup and recovery speed is very fast."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"Support of the IBM X platform and the backup data replication to DR are the most valuable features."
"The solution offers very good flexibility."
"The platform has valuable stability."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
"Because of the flexible parameters, everything can be fine-tuned to the customers’ needs in their environment."
"I've had no problems with the stability of this solution."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"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."
"The recovery is a bit slow."
"Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better."
"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."
"The licensing model is not very flexible. Every time we upgrade our storage size, we need to upgrade the Avamar license."
"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."
"It was challenging to back up our Exchange database, which is one of the reasons we did not continue using this solution."
"Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."
"We'd like to see something that could also work with Unix servers and physical servers to have a unified solution that works with everything."
"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."
"Anytime you are not very current and call in with an issue, it is hard to get it resolved. It will depend on how far back you go though."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."
"I would like to see the operations center be a lot more functional. It was nowhere near as functional as the admin center, and I'm doing a lot of command line with it."
"We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."
"Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment."
"A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email."
"Easier configuration of some of the products, e.g., VE comes to mind."
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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