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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veeam Backup & Replication comparison

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IBM Spectrum Protect
Read 146 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews
7,122 views|5,037 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
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Veeam Backup & Replication
Read 329 Veeam Backup & Replication reviews
48,865 views|41,655 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
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Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication
May 2024
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 7, 2022

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Protect and Veeam Backup & Replication based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: IBM Spectrum Protect users mostly feel that its setup is moderately complex to very complex. Veeam Backup & Replication users mostly feel its setup is straightforward and easy.
  • Features: Users of both products are generally happy with their stability and scalability, with a few mentioning that Veeam could be more scalable.

    IBM Spectrum Protect users note being particularly satisfied with its retention set feature, which provides a reduction in storage costs. Some note that they could improve their GUI to be more user friendly and offer better migration from other technologies.

    Veeam users say they’re impressed with the solution's robust backup, replication, and adaptability features. Some users mention that the product could work faster.
  • Pricing: IBM Spectrum Protect users mostly feel the solution is expensive. Some say that the price is reasonable when compared to other solutions in the market. Veeam users mostly say that, while pricey, it is a cost-effective solution.
  • ROI: Users of both solutions mention significant ROI.
  • Service and Support: IBM Spectrum Protect users report below average to good support, many noting that support is slow in response. Veeam users mostly report responsive, very good support.

Comparison Results: Veeam Backup & Replication has the winning edge in this comparison because it received higher marks in the ease of deployment, pricing, and service and support categories.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication Report (Updated: May 2024).
Download the complete report
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Alexandre Tchikalov
Researched Veeam Backup & Replication but chose IBM Spectrum Protect: Beneficial centralized backup, highly scalable, and stable
Anonymous User
Researched IBM Spectrum Protect but chose Veeam Backup & Replication: It has provided us with much needed high availability for our retail sites, although it's not exactly ready for very large scale and complex environments with more than 1000 VMs.
First of all, it has provided us with much needed HA for our retail sites. Until Veeam, the servers from stores were backed up, and in case of... Read more →
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The ability to do dedupe in the product is nice to have.""Scalability: Our customers are able to grow the product without having to buy additional hardware, so it is very scalable.""The most valuable features are compression and de-duplication.""The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication.""Reliability: It has never had a problem with backups or restores. If you store something, it is there.""The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware.""The ability to use S3 Data Store as a repository.""I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."

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"They introduced a new feature called the Immutable Repository feature, which helps protect environments from malware attacks that target backup file extensions.""Veeam Cloud Connect has helped us to reduce the cost of cloud storage for an offsite solution using their archive storage feature.""The backup and replication features of this solution are most valuable.""Veeam Backup Replication is easy to use and has high performance. The backups are very fast. It's a complete solution that fulfills our current needs.""The solution is a user-friendly interface.""The most important part is that you actually know you have a backup of the whole virtual server.""It is a good solution for backups and reporting.""It's a pretty complete product."

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Cons
"The solution should have better integration with VMware and with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.""This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers.""The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface.""The software is very complicated. You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore.""We would like to see bare-metal restorers.""I should be able to backup Linux. I would like SUSE for Linux on POWER. Right now, we have to use Storex, which is a pain to use.""A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email.""We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."

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"It needs to offer an automatic check for backups.""The cloud part of it can be improved. There should be an option for Veeam in your own cloud, as compared to the Veeam cloud offering that's currently there. The rest of it is easy.""It would be ideal if users could know that their data is backed up and have some security functionality where you can actually use the backup to spin up a new cluster and take it from there.""Lacks online training.""I would like to see better features for exporting to cloud-based repositories.""Veeam Backup & Replication could improve by making it more user-friendly.""Although the solution offers documentation, it has it only in English, which doesn't help us much in Belarus.""I think Veeam needs to improve the file installation process, as well as more technical things like snapping feature issues. Sometimes during backup, when it's taking the scan snaps on the ESXi, it started and didn't remove the snapshot from there, which consumed storage on the EXSi. It could be improved with more technical depth. The response time for Veeam's technical support could also be improved."

More Veeam Backup & Replication Cons →

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 →

  • "If you have Exchange, Oracle, SQL, or a supported SAN, then I suggest getting at least an Enterprise edition. It’ll pay for itself in no time."
  • "The pricing and licensing is better than the competitors, but it could be better."
  • "Room for improvement is actually more in the way of licensing. The really good and useful features are in the Enterprise plus edition, and that one is really expensive."
  • "Since pricing is per socket, it is not expensive to add capacity as you go along."
  • "The licensing is based on the number of cores you have in your ESX or Hyper-V environment."
  • "The price is a bit high. Licensing type is VMware friendly, so it is easy."
  • "I think the price is good when you choose the Essentials Suite, but when you buy a full featured version (for instance the Enterprise Plus) the price is a little bit expensive."
  • "Setup cost and licensing of Veeam are nothing to complain about when compared to similar products for enterprise backup recovery solutions."

    • More Veeam Backup & Replication Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
    Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to recovery sites, but many of the disaster recovery tools today still function at the storage layer. Legacy technologies like storage array snapshots, and LUN based replication restrict the configuration options of upstream technologies like VMware Storage DRS. If you wanted to replicate a virtual machine you had to replicate the entire LUN is resided on. You weren’t free to leverage Storage DRS for its automated performance balancing features because a VM could be migrated from one LUN mucking up your storage based replication. Fortunately over the past few years there’s been great advancement in hypervisor based replication technologies. There’s a wealth of competing products vying for customer attention. As always competition drives innovation and value for the consumer. This will be the first of a 4 part blog series that looks at various hypervisor based disaster recovery products. Note this isn’t a review of backup products which is a separate category, we are looking at products specifically designed to assist companies in a disaster scenario. Before talking about products; however, we should understand their underlying architectures, and how it relates to their… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?
    Top Answer:IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.
    Read all 70 answers   →
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Prot...
    Top Answer:The product is expensive.
    Read all 41 answers   →
    What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
    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 »
    Read all 71 answers   →
    Major Differences Between These 4 Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions?
    Top Answer:Comparing the features of the four is not the right approach. You need to develop a list of requirements for backup and DR that are specific to your organization and then compare each of the four… more »
    Read all 21 answers   →
    How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
    Top Answer:Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file system backups inside VMs., support for tape library & FC too But Veritas Netbackup is a… more »
    Read all 5 answers   →
    How does Nakivo compare with Veeam Backup & Replication?
    Top Answer:Nakivo is my favorite backup software. Below are the main benefits of Nakivo compared to Veeam 1. Low cost. 2. Backup storage with global deduplication (this is the main requirement of a backup… more »
    Read all 5 answers   →
    Ranking
    17th
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,122
    Comparisons
    5,037
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    601
    Rating
    7.3
    1st
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    48,865
    Comparisons
    41,655
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    529
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
    Veeam Backup and Replication, Veeam Availability Suite
    Learn More
    IBM
    Veeam Software
    Overview
    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.

    Veeam Backup & Replication is a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution designed primarily for virtual environments. Veeam Backup & Replication offers a blend of simplicity and efficiency, making it a go-to solution for businesses seeking to protect their data. It supports a wide range of virtual platforms, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. According to the reviews, what sets Veeam apart is its ability to provide high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance, verified recoverability, leveraged data, and complete visibility. 

    Veeam Backup & Replication delivers availability for cloud, virtual, Kubernetes and physical workloads. Through a simple-by-design management console, users are offered what is presented as fast, flexible, reliable backup, archival, recovery and replication functionality.

    Backup capabilities

    • Continuous Data Protection
    • Fast, reliable application-aware, image-based backups
    • Unlimited capacity and cost savings for long-term data retention on object storage with new Veeam Cloud Tier
    • Enterprise application support for Veeam Plug-ins for SAP HANA and Oracle RMAN

    Replication capabilities

    • Instant recovery for NAS, Microsoft SQL and Oracle
    • Recover individual files easily with Instant VM and File-level Recovery
    • Easy portability and recovery to AWS, Azure and Azure Stack with NEW Veeam Cloud Mobility

    Recovery capabilities

    • Recover individual files with Instant VM and File-level Recovery
    • Portability and recovery to AWS, Azure and Azure Stack with NEW Veeam Cloud Mobility
    • Fast, item-level and application recovery for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, and SQL Server and Oracle

    Reviews from Real Users

    Veeam Backup & Replication is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are its ease of set up, the fact that it is agentless, and that it has an intuitive dashboard. 

    A Network Operations Manager at an educational organization says, "Integration with VMware is excellent with very granular recovery."

    An Inside Solutions Architect at a tech services company mentions, “I like that it's agent-less, easy to set up, and hardware-agnostic.”

    An Account Manager at a tech services company states, “The dashboard is very, very easy to understand. We do demonstrations all the time with customers just to show them. If they've lost particular files because of a server going down, we can retrieve those files for them and quickly bring those files back up.”

    Kerem C., Director of Professional Services/Senior Solution Architect/Trainer at a tech services company, explains, “It's good for backup performance management and backup window management.”

    Sample Customers
    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
    Vodafone, American Standard Brands, Welch’s, University of Florida, Tata Global Beverages Limited, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Hirslanden Private Hospital Group, MacLean-Fogg Company
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government7%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise53%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication
    May 2024
    Free Report: IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews while Veeam Backup & Replication is ranked 1st in Backup and Recovery with 329 reviews. IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0, while Veeam Backup & Replication is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Veeam Backup & Replication writes "Beneficial pricing model, user friendly interface, and many free features". IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Commvault Cloud, Rubrik, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and Cohesity DataProtect, whereas Veeam Backup & Replication is most compared with Acronis Cyber Protect, Azure Backup, Rubrik, Zerto and Veritas NetBackup. See our IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veeam Backup & Replication report.

    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.