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Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
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 Dell Avamar is 3.6%, down from 4.0% 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

Sebastien Chene - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh
What would make Dell Avamar better is if it can do faster backups because right now, PowerProtect Data Manager is better in this area with its new UI and a new way to implement backups. Customers nowadays also expect more up-to-date solutions, and this is another area for improvement in Dell Avamar. It's not as up-to-date, so I'm counting on PowerProtect Data Manager, but customers who have Dell Avamar don't want to switch because you don't have as many backup problems in Dell Avamar compared to other solutions. What I'd like to see in the next release of Dell Avamar is an updated UI and a different way to manage backups because currently, backup management is a bit heavy for customers using Dell Avamar.
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

"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."
"The tool's most valuable features are backup management and speed."
"It works quickly and is very stable."
"The most valuable feature for me in Dell Avamar is the automation, which is good for completion."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"The tool proves invaluable in scenarios where systems need recovery, such as restoring damaged data."
"I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."
"Scalability, performance, mass platform coverage. It's one of the few backup products on the market right now which an organization can bring in and it will serve all of their backup needs. It's a completely centralized solution."
"The deduplication and compression features are the most valuable features."
"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."
"We can scale. Today, we have an average backup volume of 100TB a day."
"With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site."
 

Cons

"The interface could be more helpful for people."
"There also needs to be single sign-on support."
"It lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"The recovery is a bit slow."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"EMC has discontinued their Avamar hardware version. They only advertise the Avamar virtual edition."
"I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product."
"Most customers still struggle with the reporting piece, especially generating reports. I think it needs some improvements in this area."
"My customers are not always happy with the Level 1 support. Sometimes, it just takes too long for the response to come, which is probably something that needs to be addressed."
"It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved."
"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."
"IBM Spectrum Protect does have a lot of the features that we need, but I think they need to improve their backup virtualization and backup for container."
"We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library)."
"Easier configuration of some of the products, e.g., VE comes to mind."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool."
"There are licensing costs for Dell EMC Avamar and it is paid annually."
"The solution is not expensive for the value one gets."
"Its price should be reduced. It would be good if you could pay as per usage, and there is a subscription model like VMware. There should be some flexibility because sometimes, the customer only uses the backup for one month or three months. Currently, I have to pay whether I use it or not. Its licensing should be flexible and based on consumption."
"Dell Avamar is expensive."
"Licensing was generally on a per VM or terabyte basis. They changed their licensing model a couple of times and turned it into socket-based licensing, which is an improvement in their licensing model."
"It is expensive. The maintenance comes with it for five years. So, you buy the whole thing for five years, and your maintenance is included with it, but it's a big chunk of change upfront. We like capital expenses because we can CapEx them. We pay once every five years, so we spend a big chunk of change. You'd have to divide that out by the five years to come up with how much it costs. It's just about three-quarters of a million dollars for five years."
"The cost of the solution is very expensive."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."
"IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD. The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten. My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees."
"It is expensive."
"We have been at our size for a few years. We are not really looking to battle the licensing costs, as this is our primary system."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
"Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."
"The solution is not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
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's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?
From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
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

Avamar
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
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 Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.