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Dell Data Protection Advisor 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 Data Protection Advisor
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 Data Protection Advisor is 0.5%, down from 0.5% 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

ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactive support with predictive insights and seamless integration
As a system engineer, I am deploying Dell Data Protection Advisor solutions, especially in the areas of protection like Avamar, NetWorker, and Data Domain. Our team has deployed these solutions for three organizations in Africa and India Dell Data Protection Advisor provides proactive support by…
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 has a lot of stock reports. I believe over 300 canned reports, which for the most part meet a lot of generic needs."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the compression and the duplication."
"The reporting feature and the Dell's continuous improvement of the solution are the most valuable features. The solution not only supports Dell Power Products but also other products."
"The deduplication is probably the most valuable feature of that requirement."
"The solution is easy to use, flexible and has a lot of out-of-the-box functionality. You can configure the dashboards or you can use a script. However, to fully utilize its capabilities you will want to use a lot of scripts which you will need advanced training. The reports can be customized for many things, such as chargeback billing."
"I can increase the tool's licensing as per my requirement with no conditions applied."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour. You just need one person to handle the deployment process."
"It supports our chargeback process by identifying resource users, which helps ensure that departments are billed accurately for data protection services rather than receiving them for free."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
"With the new features that we have added, it has made a difference as far as faster recovery and speed."
"It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection."
"The solution is mostly stable."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
"They have recently added support tickets specifically engineered around performance. This has been very useful for us when we run into issues where customers are looking to try to squeeze a lot more horsepower out of older system."
"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."
 

Cons

"The functionality of the Data Protection Advisor is limited and is something that is lacking in this solution. Other solutions like CloudIQ and DDMC provide a much better outlook on how data protection should be done."
"The solution requires more integration with our other solutions. I know that they have full integration with VMware because it is also from EMC. However, we have to have better integration with Microsoft and Nutanix as well."
"It is difficult to manage the solution with the available tools. You need to know exactly what are you are doing."
"It's a bit difficult for first-time users."
"Customization of reports or creating new reports can be difficult. Users need to have a deep knowledge of SQL. 70-80% of customers can't seem to understand how to do it. They don't know how to address reporting. If Dell EMC could simplify it, it would benefit the end-user."
"Dell Data Protection Advisor's feature for data domain protection needs enhancement."
"They should empower their customers with the ability to upgrade this solution as long as it's in the same major release."
"The stability of the solution needs improvement for stand alone users."
"Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."
"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."
"In terms of features, they've got it all covered. The features they have are quite good. The only downside to it is that it is for an enterprise or big organization. In my opinion, it is not for a small business."
"I would like to advance reporting and analytics for the platform to see how much data is coming into the platform. how much data is expiring everyday, and what tape savings we are getting through reclamation."
"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)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not very expensive — I think the price is fair."
"You have to procure the license when you are ordering or quoting for Dell Data Protection Suite (DPS). DPS is bundled with the suite and comes with a license. However, if you purchase NetWorker separately then you will have to procure the license for DPS separately."
"For pricing, I would rate Dell 2 out of 5. It's affordable."
"If the customer has huge lineup of Dell Products then they receive discount on the pricing."
"The product is affordable."
"The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement."
"You need to make an upfront payment for three, five, or seven years and renew the licenses for support. We can do an annual maintenance contract with Dell. I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"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."
"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."
"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The platform's most valuable features are data protection and retention.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement.
What needs improvement with Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy. Additionally, enhancing bulk update capabilities for items like cost centers would be...
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

DPA
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Trek Bicycle, Cal-Israel Credit Cards
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 Data Protection Advisor vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.