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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's a good solution."
"The stability is okay."
"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."
"So far, Avamar covers everything we want. We are replicating to other sites for disaster recovery, so it's working well for us."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
"We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment."
"The tool’s ability to restore files discretely is useful."
"Dell Avamar has a push upgrade feature that lets you simultaneously push updates to thousands of clients. I also found the self-service part of Dell Avamar helpful."
"The addition of the retention set feature provides a reduction in storage costs. It also reduces RTO and RPO so that you can respond quickly to your clients and services in case of data loss."
"The backup on real-time, especially for the virtual machine, archiving, and retrieving the reader from the backup repository and getting it online, getting it validated, then performing the data consistency check over the backup."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."
"One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product."
"Our performance is better."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"More integration would be helpful, as well as the addition of more applications."
"I want to see a more user-friendly and administrator-friendly Dell Avamar. The solution also needs a better UI and dashboard."
"A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier."
"The configuration and expansion aspects of the solution need improvement. They're complicated and don't really integrate well."
"It is very scalable, and that's its claim to fame, but that also makes it hard to make changes. Anytime there is a large piece of software, changing that piece of software is harder. You've got a larger install base, so you can't just rapidly change. We also use another product called Veeam, and it has this new feature called Continuous Data Protection, which basically lets you get very close to the way the system was in time. We have a system or two up there on which we have set 10 minutes Continuous Data Protection. So, we can roll it back to whatever it was 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, or 30 minutes ago. This feature doesn't exist in Avamar Data Domain. That's the one feature I'd like to see first."
"If there is a need to move the data from one backup solution to another, it might be difficult since there is no option for a straightforward migration."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"They do not have a unified GUI, they only work on CLI and operations center, which is really complicated for the installation and configuration."
"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."
"The solution should have better integration with VMware and with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus."
"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."
"They should introduce more features for virtualization platforms and backing up IBMs. Backup speeds should also be improved."
"Our new leadership has pushed us to go more toward the cloud, so we are definitely going to leverage anything we can in that direction."
"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."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license required for this solution."
"This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
"The current pricing is generally satisfactory."
"It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity."
"On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it."
"Dell's pricing structure is not overly expensive."
"I'm not sure, but perhaps the pricing could be done better at the moment."
"It's an expensive tool"
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."
"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."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"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%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software 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.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.