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.
"It's a good solution."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"The setup is very easy."
"We sell Avamar with Data Domain. Data Domain and Avamar work really well together and their compression ratios are very high compared to Veeam, Commvault, and all the other backup software on the market."
"We are talking about a complete end-to-end solution which comes with its own hardware storage to back up the data on tape-less."
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"Dell EMC Avamar has many valuable features. It's very stable and it's easy to manage."
"Client deduplication."
"The tool proves invaluable in scenarios where systems need recovery, such as restoring damaged data."
"Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it."
"It is very stable. A plus is to use POWERAge for the SNR copy of the Spectrum Protect, then it is more reliable."
"The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests."
"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."
"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."
"Once it is completed properly, it is low maintenance. Most of the functions do not require much deliberation. It is all the blueprints and technologies laid out, and it is straight forward."
"The best part of this solution is that it just works."
"Technical support should be more knowledgeable."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"We don't trust the product 100 percent. Kaspersky has many features Dell Avamar doesn't support, such as granular backup and history."
"It's very slow to backup and store information. It has two consoles and an application which are more difficult to use than a solution like Veeam."
"Avamar needs a greater emphasis on storage targets. If it's going to keep pace with the times, it needs more ability to leverage cloud storage."
"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."
"If you need to pull data out of it to offload to tapes, that's messy. You have a mechanism for it, but it is painful."
"The solution could be a bit easier to use in the sense that they need to make it simpler to backup products and restore items."
"A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email."
"This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers."
"High availability (HA) is a scalability challenge."
"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."
"The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement."
"They need to reduce the complexity and make the learning curve easier."
"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."
"The usability of IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved, specifically additional features to the product in the operations center. Additional reporting facilities and stronger reporting tools such as build dashboards would be beneficial."
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 Veeam Backup & Replication, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Commvault Cloud, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and IBM Storage Protect. See our Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.
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