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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
7th
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
16th
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 May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% 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

"What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain."
"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."
"The product is good for backups."
"The most valuable feature of Avamar would have to be the way it works over needing very little bandwidth to move data across a WAN or LAN."
"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 tool's most valuable features are backup management and speed."
"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."
"It's simple to configure."
"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."
"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups."
"The deduplication and compression features are the most valuable features."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"It is very stable. A plus is to use POWERAge for the SNR copy of the Spectrum Protect, then it is more reliable."
"It is an IBM product. With SAP, you are using IBM software to protect it. DB2 and AIX servers are both IBM. Therefore, it is a total IBM solution, which helps."
"The file-restoring feature is the most valuable."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."
"The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."
"I want to see a more user-friendly and administrator-friendly Dell Avamar. The solution also needs a better UI and dashboard."
"It's very slow to backup and store information. It has two consoles and an application which are more difficult to use than a solution like Veeam."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."
"We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center."
"They do not have a unified GUI, they only work on CLI and operations center, which is really complicated for the installation and configuration."
"Scalability is poor. As you get to bigger environments, this is where our gaps have been introduced. As we have grown over the past couple of years, the gaps have become more apparent."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"If IBM could provide a partial module, that would be great."
"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is fair."
"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
"The solution is not expensive for the value one gets."
"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."
"The solution is costly."
"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."
"This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
"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 solution is not cheap."
"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."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee."
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"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."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
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'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 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: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.