Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Bacula Enterprise and IBM Spectrum Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery.
To learn more, read our detailed Backup and Recovery Report (Updated: April 2024).
767,319 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
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light.""The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community.""It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure.""It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers.""The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization.""Bacula is pretty stable.""It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."

More Bacula Enterprise Pros →

"We do not lose data. That is why we are using this product and have a backup in place.""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.""The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good.""Regarding stability, it's been rock solid.""We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data.""The most valuable feature of this solution is the centralized enterprise backup.""The most valuable feature for data recovery in IBM Spectrum Protect is its database protection capabilities.""Traditional storage works perfectly with it."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Pros →

Cons
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy.""It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company.""A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed.""The initial setup could be a bit easier.""We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI.""Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement.""We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."

More Bacula Enterprise Cons →

"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line.""We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center.""In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center.""Customers have migrated off of it because of its lack of virtual environment functions.""Ease of use.""We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack.""When it comes to virtualization in IBM it's not perfect.""Needs more support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This is an open-source solution."
  • "We have a perpetual license."
  • More Bacula Enterprise 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 →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
    767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light.
    Top Answer:It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It… more »
    Top Answer:We use the solution as a complete backup solution for virtual machines and databases in Prodap - Data Processing in Amapá. Its very lean and simple architecture, with its deduplications not covering… more »
    Top Answer:Customers need a clearer understanding of how to implement IBM Spectrum. However, issues revolve around financial constraints. If you lack the correct service contract, resolving problems can be… more »
    Ranking
    29th
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    1,431
    Comparisons
    1,054
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    420
    Rating
    9.0
    17th
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,375
    Comparisons
    5,217
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    601
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

    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
    NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
    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
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    University10%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business56%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Backup and Recovery
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: April 2024.
    767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Bacula Enterprise is ranked 29th in Backup and Recovery with 9 reviews while IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews. Bacula Enterprise is rated 8.6, while IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Bacula Enterprise writes "Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". Bacula Enterprise is most compared with Bareos, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), Veritas NetBackup and Acronis Cyber Protect, whereas IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Cohesity DataProtect and Rubrik.

    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.