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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
148
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
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 could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
Rainer Kummerfeldt - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable security solution for data center protection
We have the requirements for cybersecurity. Spectrum Protect or other products do not have the technology. They need external products to meet this requirement. We utilize various storage solutions across different data centers, including tape and disk storage. It is immutable, preventing external changes. External tools may be required to verify backup integrity. Additionally, there's another product called IBM Spectrum Protect Defender, which aids in backup verification. However, other products can integrate with various tools depending on specific backup needs and at a lower cost. The service cost for IBM is very high. In the event of problems, we open a support call and discuss issues with the lab, which is crucial given the critical nature of some situations. Spectrum Protect's development trajectory differed from Veeam's as it initially didn't prioritize virtualization, resulting in later integration efforts. The first version of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus had shortcomings, though subsequent iterations like Plus may have improved. However, I need more direct experience with Plus to offer a comparison. Veeam holds a stronger market presence, particularly concerning cloud and virtualization, as it was developed with these trends in mind. The evolving landscape, including cloud services like Microsoft Office 365, demands versatile backup solutions with various storage and connectivity options, whether Amazon, Google, or others. This necessitates interfaces tailored to different cloud environments and storage types. Previously, our focus primarily revolved around IBM Protect, which centered on systems storage and tape libraries alongside platforms like AIX. However, the current landscape predominantly features Linux and Windows environments. Despite these shifts, AIX remains notably stable. Overall, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"Once setup, you do not need to touch it again. You just need to do a formal check on possibly batch updates."
"Some of the people in our group, like our DBAs and non-technical people, can restore some stuff themselves via Spectrum Protect. That is how simple it is."
"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."
"We can scale. Today, we have an average backup volume of 100TB a day."
"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is a scalable solution."
"The best part of this solution is that it just works."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"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."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"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."
"The stability could be improved."
"This solution does not have good support for virtualization and a hyper-converged environment."
"Replication of data could be more user friendly."
"Technical support could be improved."
"The software is complex; setup is complex."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
"Customers need to pay for licensing in order to use IBM Spectrum Protect. The customers that have been using it for a long time are okay and happy with it. From a cost point of view, it's better for them to renew their licenses than to go through the difficult process of changing a backup product in their environment, and migrate from one product to another."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."
"The solution is not cheap."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?
For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable, but most people don't know that. People only see one major price for the tool, which runs into millions, so they would always say that it is a...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
The technical team's service depends on where the support service is located. Some products are not included in IBM itself, but external companies are developing some solutions for IBM. I think the...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.