Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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

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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 can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite.""Bacula is pretty stable.""It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure.""It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light.""The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization.""The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community.""It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."

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"Replication processes with container storage pools allow reduction of storage space and network bandwidth, using deduplication and compression.""The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good.""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.""IBM Spectrum Protect offers stable software and products.""With the new features that we have added, it has made a difference as far as faster recovery and speed.""One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product.""High availability (HA): It is one of the best features.""It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."

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Cons
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company.""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.""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.""The initial setup could be a bit easier.""We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist.""A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."

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"The software is complex; setup is complex.""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.""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.""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.""The features should be a little bit closer together.""The solution should improve the ability to monitor backup failure.""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.""I think Spectrum Protect's interface is not so user-friendly, but the interface is not so friendly. Some of the functions are too complicated. I prefer a simpler solution."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This is an open-source solution."
  • "We have a perpetual license."
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  • "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: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: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
    26th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    1,558
    Comparisons
    1,123
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    550
    Rating
    9.3
    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
    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 Firm14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business56%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise54%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Backup and Recovery
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Bacula Enterprise is ranked 26th 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 Dell Avamar, whereas IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Cohesity DataProtect and Rubrik.

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    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.