IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

We are currently looking at doing a refresh for the PowerNAS for Spectrum Protect and getting Spectrum Protect Plus in-house for our VE as well as backing up our databases, such as Oracle, DB2, or SQL.

We use all-flash for all the storage that we use for Spectrum Protect.

We do not have anything going to the cloud now. The goal is to have anything which requires a long-term retention backed up to either Amazon or Azure.

We currently use Tivoli Data Protection to back up our databases. Spectrum Protect is actually the application which backs up the file system data, then anytime you want to back up the databases you use an agent with Tivoli Data Protection (TDP) to be able to back up your Oracle databases or your SQL databases. 

Right now, we are getting  good results when we back up Oracle with TDP, but we back it up directly to the VTO. So, the goal is to get rid of the VTO and utilize the native features within Spectrum Protect to be able to do deduplication and no replication as we would do it on the VTO, because all that functionality is on the VTO. However, Spectrum Protect does not know about the VTO. So, it would be nice to be able to move that within the functionality Spectrum Protect. However, in order to do, we have to make sure we are sizing the servers correctly. This is why we are also considering using the PowerNAS, and maybe putting Spectrum Scale ESS behind it as well. 

We currently are working with our sales rep and some of the IBM techs to see how this solution would play out if we wanted to bring it in-house.

From a tech perspective:

• Utilizing deduplication
• No replication
• Getting the virtual environment backed up using Spectrum Protect Plus on all of the databases.

I would love to see something which allows us to do an auto restart of backup jobs. Right now, we have it where we have health checks, and if anything that missed or failed, we monitor those. However, we have to manually go onto the servers to execute a manual backup. It would be nice if there was something that ran behind the scenes on the Spectrum Protect server saying, "If our file spaces have not been backed up in eight hours or 12 hours (depending on the attribute status set by the customer), then an auto backup restart occurs automatically." This would be instead of having to do it manually. 

This would help us out, and also the operational teams as it would allow them to focus more on maintaining the Spectrum Protect server versus restarting backup jobs.

Performance has not been an issue. If we do move all of our Oracle and SQL databases off of the VTO on to Spectrum Protect, performance will be a huge factor because we will now a LAN-free backup to a LAN backup. This means we will be going over the network. Therefore, we need to be able to know that Spectrum Protect and our internal network will be able to handle the workload.

We do have a test environment. Currently we just upgraded our test environment to 8.1.5. We are currently testing some of the issues that we have had related to the GS Kits that were resolved in 8.1.5, as well as some issues where the nodes were not communicating back to the Spectrum Protect server providing you information on the last time it established communication with Spectrum Protect.

These issues were resolved by reading. We did a lot of googling and found some information which was on the IBM website. It gave us information in regards to the issues that we found. However, when we upgraded our production servers to 8.1.3, we actually ran into the GS Kit issues, and we had a lot of clients who still run 7.x. Therefore, we had a lot of issues from the first time it started to authenticate to the Spectrum Protect servers and the servers stopped backing up. 

One of the things we did was open up a ticket with IBM and say, 'This is what is going on." The IBM technician helped us out and ensured that we had everything in place. He made sure that we did not have that issue again when we were using it. When the Clients started communicating back with the Spectrum Protect servers, it was back on level. So the issue was resolved.

We have been impressed with the scalability.

Our environment is huge. We have a large AIX Windows environment, and it is growing every day.

If we build our servers correctly when we refresh our environment using a PowerNAS, Spectrum Protect will definitely be able to handle our growth.

We came from version 7.1.3. Based on some of the features which were offered in version 8, this was the focal point for us to say, "We need to upgrade if we want to take advantage of using container pools, start using deduplication, and no replication." 

We wanted to go ahead and start upgrading the Spectrum Protect servers to the latest code, as well as the Client, so we could take advantage of these new features.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was not complex; it was pretty much straightforward. Besides the security issues, we experiences no other issues.

We started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there.

We looked at Veeam and Rubrik, but right now, we have the two best products. We have Commvault and Spectrum Protect. Each one of them are the best at different things and each have their weaknesses. During the last two years, IBM has put out a lot of different features which have impressed us. We may be able to reevaluate some product comparisons now. As long as IBM continues to roll out new features and adjusts a lot of other customer issues out there in the industry, they will continue to stay one of the top products.

Look at all the products in the industry, then base your decision on the size of your environment. A lot of times products say that have cool things, but at the end of the day, scalability and performance are what you should be looking at. Spectrum Protect has been able to meet these particular needs for us. 

Do not let companies use you as their guinea pig.

We use it to back up all of our midrange enterprise systems. It performs exactly the way we need it. We don't need anything more, don't need anything less. It has always done the job.

Our infrastructure is on-premise. We have a bunch of Microsoft servers and VMs, but mostly what Spectrum Protect covers is our Power systems. We have roughly 30 servers that we protect at this point. We do backup a few Linux servers as well, because our group actually covers that area.

It provides upper management peace of mind that we can recover, if needed. We have never had a problem (knock on wood) of recovering anything via Spectrum Protect. Whatever we backup has always been there. It is a good product.

I like the new GUI. It makes things really nice. The previous GUI that they had was slow, and it did not have enough information on it. Therefore, they have truly improved in what they are offering. It is moving into the main stream, like all the other backup solutions are. 

I also like what I am seeing with some of the new features which are coming out.

Stability is very good.

We have approximately 30 servers right now. It will always be our solution for our midrange Power boxes. As we grow with Power servers, we are going to stay with Spectrum Protect as it is growing with us. We are going to upgrade a bit more aggressively than we previously have, because we are excited about the newer stuff coming out.

For technical support, you just call the 1-800 number, tell them your customer number, and voila, they are there. They have been pretty responsive.

While I was not involved in the initial setup, new releases and implementation have gone smoothly. I have never had problems.

We had another product brought in to take care of the other side of the Microsoft servers and VMs. They thought about dragging us into that as well and getting rid of Spectrum Protect. I said, "We don't need something that complicated. Spectrum Protect is a perfect fit for what we need."

NetBackup was previously running, but they have moved to Commvault, and I said, "There is no way that I am going to CommVault. It is too expensive and complicated. Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use." 

Even some of the people in our group, like our DBAs and non-technical people, can restore some stuff themselves via Spectrum Protect. They don't always need me. That is how simple it is. That is what I like about it.

I would recommend Spectrum Protect, especially for use with Power servers.

It serves as a backup solution, and although its user interface may not be perceived as unique, its administration process is reported to be smooth. The community project aspect ensures reliable backup communication, especially when dealing with lost backup features. It simplifies tasks such as fixing the entire system and storing data on platforms like Gmail or Hyper-V.

It has expanded its capabilities and is now part of the Storage Defender suite. This suite is designed to enhance cybersecurity, particularly in safeguarding against ransomware attacks. In addition to disaster recovery, the Storage Defender suite aims to protect against cyber threats by providing measures to recover data in the event of encryption by malicious actors.

The most valuable is its versatility, allowing users to efficiently manage IBM V and Hyper-V in diverse environments. The flexibility extends to cloud transitions, enabling easy movement from one vendor to another. The tool proves invaluable in scenarios where systems need recovery, such as restoring damaged data. Users can leverage it to migrate data between different environments, making tasks like moving from on-premise to the cloud straightforward.

The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system. Dealing with administrative tasks from my perspective has not been straightforward. The user interface for administration lacks the ease that is found in other tools, especially when dealing with storage.

I have been using it for four years.

It is a very mature tool and it has been reliable and stable throughout our experience. I would rate it ten out of ten.

I didn't have any issues with scalability, it has been good.

My experience with customer service and support has been satisfactory. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

The deployment process takes one week.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

The solution's use cases would mostly involve its use in finance and insurance companies.

The two features in the solution that I have found valuable are its functionalities related to UFS and KMS.

The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement.

In the next release of the solution, I would like to see the solution being able to integrate with EFS storage.

I have experience with IBM Spectrum Protect and have been working with the solution for thirteen years. Also, I am a reseller of the solution from the sales department. I have worked with versions ranging from IBM Spectrum Protect Version 9.x to IBM Spectrum Protect Version 11. The latest one I am working on is IBM Spectrum Protect Version 2.1.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a four or five out of ten. More precisely, I rate the solution's scalability a five out of ten. The low rating is due to its inability to integrate with the cloud providers today. So, if the integration is within an IBM cloud, it is good, and if it is outside IBM cloud, it is really bad. Also, most of our clients are enterprise-sized ones.

Regarding technical support, if one has the entire enterprise support, I would rate it a nine out of ten, but without enterprise support, I would rate it a five or six out of ten. So, to be more precise, without enterprise support, I would rate it a five out of ten owing to the timelines required for the technical support to resolve any issues.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is straightforward as long as the prerequisites are followed. So, I rate the solution's setup between seven to eight out of ten.

The time required for the deployment process is somewhere between two to three weeks.

Around 200 to 300 steps are involved in the deployment process of the solution. So unless specified, explaining all the steps involved in the deployment process can be difficult.

The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

To the ones planning to use the solution, I would like to say that as long as your use cases aren't transactional, you can use IBM Spectrum Protect for anything they want. For transaction storage, it is better not to use IBM Spectrum Protect. Since the solution can only be launched on IBM cloud and not on Google or Amazon cloud, I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for backing up all of our servers and data. We also use it for a lot of driving data.

I'm new to the company, so I don't know if I can answer how the solution has improved the organization.

The archiving feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution.

Although I am not a technical user, I would say the cloud integration features could be improved.

I'm fairly new to the company, however, I've been using the solution for probably just over five years now.

The solution is very stable. We haven't faced any bugs or glitches. There haven't been system crashes. It's reliable. An organization won't have to worry about stability.

The solution is highly scalable. An organization that needs to expand the services should be able to do so without any issues.

The solution doesn't have a high user count. Rather, it is used by our IT department to protect our organizations' data. No end users would have access to it. About 10-15 people from our storage and data protection team have access to it currently.

Technical support is great. they're very knowledgable and technical people. We've been satisfied with the level of support they've provided. It's been very good. We've had cases in the past where they've been able to help us overcome issues effectively.

I wasn't at the company at the time the solution was implemented, so I don't have knowledge as to if the solution is difficult or straightforward to set up.

I don't have any information about the pricing of the solution other than to say it's a little bit higher than we would like.

We are always looking at different solutions. For example, we are looking at Cloud Work, Cohesity, and Rubrik. We're very early in the process of evaluating them, so we don't have clear differentiators yet. It's too early to discuss a comparison of features.

We're not partners with IBM. We're just customers. We have a good relationship with the company, however, we are not reseller partners.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a great solution, and we've been very happy with it, but it does lack cloud integration features. If it offered that, I'd rate it higher.

The whole product is for doing backups, and it's a reliable tool. Everything stored can be retrieved. We have databases and virtual data storing systems we are covering, but the vast majority is what the backup guys call unstructured data. So we do direct backups from various flavors of file service.

The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses.

There's no single feature. It's the overall product, the reliability, and the ability to work at the scale we are working at. It's that incremental forever approach, which we definitely need for the amount of data we are handling. It's more a philosophy of product, but a certain feature.

The software is complex.

I've been using the solution for about 20 years.

It is definitely stable.

It's very scalable from the data and the client's perspective. The scalability on the process integration side is not equally advanced.

Once you overcome the first level of IBM tech support, they are great.

ISP by now is our "previous" solution. We successfully switched to Commvault Backup.

It's a complex software, so it's a complex task, especially at the large scale and the software is accordingly complex. You won't set up this software or any competitor within a few clicks. So it is complex, but it's adequately complex. And on the client side, it depends on the documentation given by the central IT on the server side.

It was not a software deployment, but it went along with a strategic shift here. When we introduced Spectrum Protect, we introduced centralized backup service. So it was very little a matter of software deployment, but very much a matter of mentality and processes.

We used our own team to deploy, and have two staff to maintain the solution.

My advice would be to start with a use case analysis and what you want to achieve to determine if Spectrum Protect is the best solution. There's no absolute ranking without looking at the use case scenarios.

We recently reviewed our use case analysis, and as a result, we switched to Commvault Backup.

We use the solution for backup since we have some AIX machines and a few Windows machines.

To be honest, there aren't many features in the solution. However, it is a very robust solution.

The solution is overly complicated in terms of architecture, especially compared to other tools in the market. So, IBM Spectrum Protect should try to declutter. Also, there are even some conflicts in the functionalities between IBM Spectrum and Spectrum Protect. That's my take on it compared to the competitors like Veeam.

In future product releases, the solution should be less complicated regarding architecture.

Also, they have to stop being dependent on anything, which is CLI. I am saying this even though I like CLI. So, they have to change. The problem is that the solution originates from IBM TSM, especially because they have not even updated it in the terminology. So, when I see the terminology, it does not communicate what has happened in the solution, especially in terms of if everything has developed or if they have to update and try to find a way of transitioning from the old terminology to the new terminology.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for a year and a half. I am either using IBM Spectrum Protect Version 8.1.14 or IBM Spectrum Protect Version 8.1.15. My company has a partnership with IBM.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Four engineers in my company are using the solution. It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I am trying to categorize it as a workstation, backup software, or data center backup software because they are all different. If you categorize it as a workstation kind of backup software, then definitely it's not good in scalability terms. As we are trying to evaluate it as a data center, it becomes a different story and gets complicated.

I have contacted the solution's technical support. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I haven't previously used any other products. So, I didn't know that Veeam had AIX. A huge part of my problem is that my installation is based on AIX. It would be much easier if I had a Windows installation.

The solution's initial setup process wasn't easy. It's okay to have trouble installing the server. So you may have problems installing the clients. They have a lot of documentation, and I can tell that it requires an expert to install the client itself. Even for Windows applications, it was a hassle. There are complexities with the installation phase.

Regarding the time for deployment, it took me a long time just for you now because you have to start from the planning through deployment. The setup isn't simple or straightforward. They have one document, which makes sense compared to what's available in the market now. However, it is not easy to manage and can be a hassle. It took me weeks to deploy the solution.

The people required for the solution's maintenance depend if it is only on the basic operations, then one person is enough. A professional team ready to troubleshoot would make it a different story. Two qualified people would be more than enough.

It is an overpriced solution. I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective.

Once IBM Spectrum Protect restarted, we couldn't figure out why that happened. The solution's operation center made the solution's GUI, or graphical user interface, really nice. The way the operation center started making it more engaging and trying to make it good is something that made it nice.

I would recommend the solution to my foes and enemies. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

We are using it for backup and restoration. We also have agents for Oracle. Unfortunately, we are not using it for virtual restoration, like VMware. That part is controlled or set up inside the Veeam software.

We like IBM Spectrum's versioning capabilities. It lets us specify how many versions of a file we want to keep and for how long. Also, the archive component of the software helps us a lot. Let's say we have a department that needs 10 versions of one file that need to be kept for at least six months. So with IBM Spectrum, we can set rules that will respect what has been asked of us. For example, we can set it to save 15 versions, and if the file is deleted, we need to keep the last version for at least six months. 

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. If we could find a way to detect and alert us if specific data has been encrypted (except the ones we choose), that would be a good selling point.

We've been using IBM Spectrum for the past 20 years or so.

HAProxy is highly stable.

HAProxy is scalable. There's nothing that we cannot do with it. The entire IT department has access to it, so that's upwards of 100 users.

IBM support is great. 

Twenty years ago, we had the file server, and we were using tapes. It was a local software. At one point, we switched to the Unix machine — the AIX machine — which could not support the same software. We had an IBM system, and IBM had a solution called ADSM, so we used that on the AIX machine. And since the product was good, we deployed it on Windows Server.

We've been using IBM Spectrum Protect for a long time, so we've acquired the experience over time to deploy it. Installing it would be straightforward for us because we know the product. However, it might take a week for someone new to the platform to get it up and running. We have four people responsible for maintenance, and they're mostly system admins. 

Price and storage are an issue no matter which software you are using. It depends on what our customers ask for. If they want the sky, they will have to pay for it. It all depends on what they need. How much it does cost. The pricing depends on what products you intend to. For example, it's one price if you are using an agent for Oracle, but the price is different if you are only using basic backup and restore. It could be $15 to $25 for one license. It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect eight out of 10. The advice I would give to prospective users is to take stock of the value of your data. Spectrum is like insurance. Ask yourself how much it will cost you to restore the whole thing and get it back online. A backup solution isn't just a cut and paste of one file. It's a data recovery setup. I recommend doing your homework. When you decide what you want to do, search for the product that will deliver it.