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Dell Avamar 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

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
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 Dell Avamar is 3.5%, down from 3.7% 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

Rahul Sarangdhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Works excellently for on-prem backup but not the best for Azure backups
Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice. There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.
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

"It is a very complete product."
"The solution is very stable."
"The stability of Dell EMC Avamar is very good."
"The product has a proven track record of good backups without much of a failure ratio. It also has a good backup in terms of the compression ratio."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates."
"What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain."
"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."
"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."
"Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it."
"With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups."
"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."
"We have better, faster backup times, and it has improved efficiency in the backups."
"We are able to run it in an enterprise quite easily with one or two resources."
"Good user interface."
 

Cons

"The solution used to freeze sometimes while taking a snapshot backup."
"The product could offer more integration capabilities."
"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"The licensing price must be reduced."
"It would be better if we could integrate easily with other platforms."
"If you need to pull data out of it to offload to tapes, that's messy. You have a mechanism for it, but it is painful."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
"Integration with some applications in the healthcare field could be added, as that is a big part of our business."
"Anytime you are not very current and call in with an issue, it is hard to get it resolved. It will depend on how far back you go though."
"Ease of use. That has got to be the one thing that I routinely hear from clients and customers, that it's a little bit more difficult than it should be. What I'm finding is that IBM has heard that and they're responding with updated interfaces and things like that."
"Needs more support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL."
"Most customers still struggle with the reporting piece, especially generating reports. I think it needs some improvements in this area."
"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."
"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."
"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid annually."
"It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity."
"Dell EMC needs to lower Avamar's price and add more features to stay competitive."
"The solution is expensive."
"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."
"When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
"Its licensing is weird. It is not just the licenses; we also purchase hardware. With most software products, such as Veeam, Commvault, and Data Protector, there is no hardware purchase at the same time. Because Avamar and Data Domain are tied together, they have an integrated pipe. You can separate them, but basically, they're designed to work as a couple. Because the Data Domain backend is designed to do dedupe and compression, we get 60:1. When you count it, you count it as a straight compression, but of course, that's with dedupe and some other stuff. You have to buy the hardware, the licensing, and the software at the same time. So, it's not just software."
"The price is the main thing I'd like to see them change. If they can come down in price, that would be a good thing. It's very cost competitive in the entry level range, because Veeam pricing is much cheaper than Avamar."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."
"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."
"You need to put it in a PoC and test it out if you can."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?
I don't currently have detailed knowledge about the pricing, however, it is geared towards enterprise businesses and might be on the higher side.
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
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

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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.