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BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BDRSuite Backup & Replication
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), MSP Backup (1st)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Redha Benlaksira - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it lets customers choose to restore their data to an hour or a day ago
BDRSuite is better than competing solutions because it can protect, back up, and recover data. A feature called live migration allows you to recover the same data in different environments. For example, I can back up the data from a VMware machine and restore it to a Hyper-V. You can also create repositories and back up environments to a cloud platform like GCP and AWS S3 buckets. BDRSuite allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on an EC3 instance or Microsoft 365 mailboxes, SharePoint, etc. The solution allows us to recover data instantly. We can recover all our data in under 15 minutes. In a virtual environment, we can recover a virtual machine and all its data in under 15 minutes. It's the same for a NAS, SAN, or DAS disk. The ability to boot instantly enables customers to maintain their business operations without interruption. BDRSuite's ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it gives customers the option to restore their data to an hour or a day ago. They can choose a full, incremental, or synthetic backup. Incremental backup makes sense if you are backing up the same data daily and you want to save space and network resources. It only backs up the differences or updates in every block. I've worked with lots of backup solutions, and BDRSuite is the easiest to use. It's simple to install and create backup jobs. It doesn't require many tasks to install the solution. You can easily back up and restore from one console
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am able to run Vembu on Windows NAS, which is beneficial. It does install on a Windows-based NAS. You can have the server running from the location where you are storing backups. You don't need a separate server for it in this case."
"We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer."
"The compression, encryption and deduplication features are fabulous and great stuff."
"It's easy to restore."
"I can choose a point in time and issue the command to back up and I don't need to go in and restore the last full backup and then apply iteratively, sequentially, all the incrementals... I can pick a point in time and tell it I want to go to that state and it's transparent to me. It happens in the background for me."
"When you're looking at your dashboard, you can see all your active jobs. You can see exactly if they're successful or failed and you can actually drill down and see what caused the problem. The fact you can see that right away is nice."
"The most valuable features for me are that I can back up the entire virtual machine, but when restoring I can restore at the file level."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to copy quickly. We have about 12 terabytes, and trying to copy that volume size through the file structure would take a week. BDRSuite has a different approach to copying and is much faster."
"Every time customers make a change or we have made a change, then they use the product to do a cloning and refreshing. They are happy that they get good performance something changes."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups."
"We apply the new dedupe and compression technology, using maintenance and time to give more time for the backup window and less time for the overhead related to the daily housekeeping."
"The solution is really scalable."
"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."
"One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product."
 

Cons

"The solution's UI and integrations could be better."
"They said they can support Red Hat Virtualization and we assumed that they support any compatible system but we found we need to do a network backup or a network image, which is not what it said on their website. I have had many discussions with them about where this component is. Initially, I was searching for a component which would back up Red Hat Virtualization. They said they support this in the same way they support Hyper-V and VMware. I haven't found the feature in their portal or in any of their software. They haven't made a special agent for it, in the way they did for Hyper-V."
"The only place where I would really want to see improvement, out the gate, is more granular scheduling... If I want to do an offset or to only do two backups on Friday and Saturday - versus whole hourly incrementals during the week - I don't have that granularity right now."
"The response time of the support could be improved a little bit. Sometimes, I need to wait for two or three hours to get support. With VMware, we can get urgent support in an hour. Other than that, I'm pretty good with BDRSuite."
"I saw that it's not possible to have the last full backup duplicated on our site. Therefore, if I have a lot of information on the main site, I would not want to copy any information to those site servers. It would be nice to be able to make a copy of the last full backup."
"We had a lot of problems getting it configured in the first place. They also wanted us to allow them remote access to our machines without us watching what they're doing, which is a huge security risk for us. We said we couldn't do that, and they said they don't offer any phone support whatsoever."
"They had a good product and tried to change things by going to a different product. They should have tried to stay with a product that is a proven solution and successful."
"It would be a great improvement if they can give a console to control the systems. All other vendors let you simply log in to the cloud console and control everything from there, but for Vembu, whether you choose Vembu Cloud Backup or Vembu Disaster Recovery, you still need to install the Vembu software on your on-premise system and configure it from there. It would be great if I can get a cloud console to manage the systems."
"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."
"The solution's initial setup process wasn't easy...The solution is overly complicated in terms of architecture, especially compared to other tools in the market."
"The reporting could be better."
"It should have the ability to break down the data that's being backed up. It should have better reporting."
"We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."
"The product should be improved to save more space."
"I am not really impressed with the Level 1 support, but once I get past that and go to Level 2, then we will usually get some type of resolution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very cost efficient, effective. I’d say it's one-third the cost of Veritas when compared to the server backups. I even tried image backups on Acronis, but Acronis is very expensive. So these are some of the key reasons why I opted for it."
"It helps us deliver an enterprise-level data protection solution and reduce budgets at a price that - and we don't want to encourage them to change their pricing - is a great value."
"The pricing structure is in line with other solutions. However, the option to replicate offsite to a unit at another office or at home is a big cost benefit. Instead of paying monthly for cloud storage, you replicate offsite for free."
"I deployed Veeam and it worked very well, but the problem was that its price was very high. As a result, I searched for another solution and found Vembu. I deployed it and we have been happy with it. For us, the major difference was the pricing."
"The high availability is too expensive for our customers."
"The pricing is fair."
"For someone who doesn't want the Application-Aware feature to work, everything else is up to par. The licensing is straightforward. They license it per CPU."
"The product is affordable, and we focus on SMBs for our customer base."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
"For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable...I don't think most people know that when a company has large systems in place, the TCO is a lot lower."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."
"Its licensing is complex, and its price is not really reasonable. It is on the expensive side. IBM, in general, is slightly expensive, but with IBM Spectrum for the virtual environment, they are looking into the aspect of helping customers with the cost and providing a cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
87%
Retailer
3%
Educational Organization
2%
Financial Services Firm
1%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I had a small problem integrating VMware and Hyper-V when customers used a free VMware license to create VMs. This is a problem because many customers use the free version of VMware. There are also...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dash...
 

Also Known As

Vembu BDRSuite
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
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 BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,476 professionals have used our research since 2012.