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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 PowerProtect DD (Data ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (1st), Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and IBM Spectrum Protect aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is designed for Deduplication Software and holds a mindshare of 28.2%, down 29.8% compared to last year.
IBM Spectrum Protect, on the other hand, focuses on Backup and Recovery, holds 2.2% mindshare, up 2.2% since last year.
Deduplication Software
Backup and Recovery
 

Q&A Highlights

AaaAaa5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 05, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Faisal_Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient data management with robust features and reliable performance
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) can be improved in terms of price. While Dell is providing a proper device, other solutions, such as Symantec, can replicate their data through any NAS storage. Although their deduplication and compression might not be as effective, they can still accomplish the task. Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
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

"Most cases are related to databases, such as Oracle and MySQL."
"The compatibility within the Dell PowerProtect DD portfolio makes data management more seamless. This integrated solution improves efficiency in our data center and simplifies operations by relying on a single company for servers and storage."
"The most valuable features of PowerProtect DD are the immutable storage and the AI scanning."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and compression and the Data Domain Boost."
"It is secure, reliable, and has officer support."
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerProtect DD are ease of use and deduplication."
"The deduplication feature is the most valuable part of the solution."
"We optimize our costs of media and storage use, thanks to the Incremental Forever backup. The TDP software provides us many ways to protect our data, so we don't need to use monstrous scripts for doing backups now."
"The ability to use S3 Data Store as a repository."
"It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."
"The customization and the ability to backup across all platforms are the most valuable features."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."
"Good user interface."
"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."
 

Cons

"The price of the product is high."
"We are not able to deal directly with the OEM we have to go to their partners in Nigeria."
"We encountered data loss during the configuration process."
"They should reduce the CPC cost to customers. The product is becoming very expensive."
"There is an inconsistency in support quality for Dell PowerProtect DD"
"I would like to see some kind of integration with the ransomware in the next release."
"The licensing is not cost-effective, and the pricing could be better."
"When you use Data Domain, you have to have at least 20% free space so it can work properly. Sometimes we struggle with that, because we wanted to use all the free space, but then Data Domain becomes really slow. I understand that 20% is needed to process all the data, and doing the duplication and compression and all that, but it would be a big improvement if they did not require that 20%, because it is just too much to have available."
"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."
"The version that we had when I first started made it look really bad. We are talking about commands that should have run in two seconds, but instead took four to eight hours. Other components were sluggish."
"Replication services would be nice. If these could be enhanced to be always on so multiple storage backup services could be added as a cluster pool. This would provide a better availability service."
"They took some of the funding off of it for a while. Therefore, instead of being a market leader, they took their position for granted. Then some competitors developed new bells and whistles that they advertise, and due to that lag a few years ago, there are not the resources to explain the differences."
"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."
"It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect. To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts."
"I want to see better compression than what it currently does."
"Its management part can be better and simplified. It is kind of a beast as compared to Commvault or Veeam, but they are more user-friendly. They are also easier to learn, whereas Spectrum Protect definitely takes time. They should simplify it. Our teams are pretty comfortable with it because we have been using it for a long time, but from the perspective of a new user who is evaluating or using this solution, it is definitely more complex in terms of manageability. Its monitoring could be improved so that it can even monitor the jobs that are scheduled by external schedulers. There are situations where a database team might decide to use their own schedulers, but currently, Spectrum Protect is not able to catch those jobs in the Operation Manager console."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If we do not move to the cloud solution and stay with our on-premise version we will miss some new features."
"It is expensive, but the performance and deduplication cover for the cost."
"The pricing is cost-effective for the solution"
"Its price is reasonable."
"Pricing is related to size. A lower range solution might be about $33,000. My customers use higher range versions with a price of around $100,000. That's the price for both the hardware and software."
"We usually buy products at the end year, and the license is included."
"The price of the backup appliance is slightly expensive. Compared to other vendors, the pricing will be slightly higher."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."
"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."
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Answers from the Community

AaaAaa5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020
The biggest difference is that Data Domain is an appliance storage system (SW + HW storage) but Spectrum is a software (licenses) solution only.
2 out of 10 answers
it_user1115376 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
The biggest difference is that Data Domain is an appliance storage system (SW + HW storage) but Spectrum is a software (licenses) solution only.
CR
Jan 20, 2020
I would look at the way they dedup. DataDomain uses variable-length deduplication so they are very effective. I do not know anything about the IBM product, but we have dealt with IBM and in my opinion, the difference that is going to make the biggest impact is the way they sell TCO. EMC almost negatively impacts themselves by giving a more realistic and often more expensive quote, where IBM gives a seemingly cheaper solution, but later on, it works out more.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The typical use case for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is for backup purposes; it is disk-based backup, which provides fast backup capabilities. Additionally, data can be replicated from site ...
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
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 Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in Deduplication Software. Updated: July 2025.
863,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.