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IBM ProtectTIER vs Rubrik 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

IBM ProtectTIER
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
65th
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (13th)
Rubrik
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM ProtectTIER is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rubrik is 3.4%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Rubrik3.4%
IBM ProtectTIER0.7%
Other95.9%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

AG
Technical Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Provides a short-term backup, archive, and cataloging for 20,000 people in our organization
The backup for a large amount of data is slow. When there's a large amount of data, sometimes the backup isn't completed in time. I have a 24 hour cycle, so it doesn't get completed in 24 hours with the large amount of data. With Veritas NetBackup, I can take 20 terabytes of backup in a day.
KB
Information Technology Specialist at LIGHTHOUSE DOCUMENT TECHNOLOGIES, INC
Technical support has improved my data management process but I encounter GUI and cost challenges
The solution is available in the Azure Marketplace, but approaching directly is more cost-effective. The Marketplace approach incurs additional platform and reporting costs. We initially built Rubrik at host level and DB level. We encountered latency issues when reverting back, with numerous snapshots available. This resulted in increased costs and occupied spaces. I performed manual deletion of snapshots and verified with the Rubrik team for confirmation. The GUI reporting functionality lacks flexibility. For instance, obtaining specific server reports considering drive space and backup quantities is not possible, as it only provides overall reporting.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Overall IBM ProtectTIER is a great solution."
"I will highly recommend this product for excellent and quick backup solution in small and large IBM I Series environment."
"The command-line interface is good."
"The most valuable feature is the incremental backup."
"Overall IBM ProtectTIER is a great solution. It is easy to use."
"In terms of stability, I've found it to be very stable."
"The cataloging is the best feature, as it takes millions of frames for the backup and, because it's incremental, it takes less time to complete."
"The most valuable features are the Self-Service, and the ability to search the data."
"Rubrik has absolutely reduced the time we spend on recovery testing by about 75 percent, reduced the time we spend on managing backups by the same amount, and the reduction in recovery time is even greater."
"Rubrik has brought all of our backups under a single pane of glass and made recovery extremely simple."
"The ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is a very simple system compared to just about any other back up technology. It is extremely easy to use and very versatile."
"There is a live-restore feature, their Live Mount, and the way it works we can instantly recover a VM, a past backup, to be directly attached to our VMware environment. Rubrik will act as a disk for it. It's like an instant restore. Within a few minutes our VM is up and running. And then, if we want to restore it, we can just migrate it to our actual storage."
"The main benefit is that we are secured in terms of workloads. We know that if we need to restore any VMs, or even any files inside a VM, that we will succeed 100 percent. This means that we don't need to spend much time administering the backup environment because we know it is self-healing and efficient. So, we are spending that time on something else, which is always a plus."
"Rubrik has improved our organization by minimizing downtime (in case of an incident was to occur)."
"The big thing, the big benefit, it gives us is that it just works."
"The most valuable feature is the archive to cloud location and the automation around the PowerShell script. There are also reports and dashboards."
 

Cons

"It is unmanageable. Support would be good."
"I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM."
"The configuration wizards are still complex and hard to navigate."
"The configuration wizards are still complex and hard to navigate. These should be easier to manage."
"My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to conduct a proof of concept first because everybody's needs are different, and this product is not suitable for every kind of backup."
"IBM ProtectTIER could improve by being more user-friendly."
"IBM ProtectTIER could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The backup for a large amount of data is slow."
"For Rubrik, though it does a great job, it needs to keep innovating to stay relevant in the data management field."
"The main pain points we experienced was the stability of the system. We received a lot of instability when we have upgraded from a certain version to a new version."
"Rubrik could improve in customization options for dashboards."
"The Office 365 protection could be improved."
"The integrated reporting is not really that nicely built. The reporting functionality could definitely be a little bit more customizable from an administration perspective, with an easier to understand interface."
"Price-wise, Rubrik needs improvement as it is considered expensive compared to similar competitors."
"I would like to have a built-in index searching ability of files/system files within the Rubrik interface to determine if a file or item exists, rather than just recovering it, and then doing a search for the file afterwards."
"It needs more storage array integration options and an easier restore for files that download using a browser."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is very expensive."
"IBM ProtectTIER is an expensive solution."
"We have a capacity-based license, which is managed centrally for all the sites of my company."
"The customer can decide how they want to purchase a license. However, the price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing has been quite good from our perspective, in terms of being able to negotiate with the Rubrik team to get the product that we want and be able to sell that out to our end customers."
"Due to this effective, faster backup and recovery solution, we are now able to focus on other creative tasks to meet our entire pipeline. So, we have seen ROI in terms of the improvement of productivity in our team. We save around one million dollars a year."
"It is an expensive product."
"We pay yearly and it's based on the number of bricks."
"There is just one cost, and it includes software and hardware. So, everything is included. It is better than other solutions in terms of cost. We also have Dell EMC Avamar in our environment, and we have to pay for the hardware and data domain. We also have to pay for the software license for the data protection suite. So, based on my calculations, I find Rubrik cheaper, and we are also getting good performance."
"I rate the pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."
"The pricing and licensing of Rubrik is better than products that we've had in the past. It was quite a bit cheaper than Commvault and NetBackup."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which would you choose - Rubrik or Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam Backup & Replication provides an easy-to-set-up solution to the issue of data storage and recovery. Setting it up is a relatively simple affair. For the most part it prompts you from scre...
What do you like most about Rubrik?
It's easy to manage and has an innovated solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rubrik?
Regarding pricing, Rubrik is a costly solution, and I would rate it an eight.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Durham Police Department, Re-Store LLC, CenterGrid, pixx.io GmbH, Australian Government Department of Defence, QD, Refresco Gerber
Driscoll's, Red Hawk Casino, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Wabash National, Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Galliker Transport & Logistics
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM ProtectTIER vs. Rubrik and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.