IBM Spectrum Protect vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.2, while NetApp is ranked #51 with an average rating of 7.7. IBM holds a 2.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

4,073 Views
3,133 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

NetApp SnapCenter

Read 27 NetApp SnapCenter reviews

1,230 Views
801 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

NetApp SnapCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and NetApp SnapCenter are two prominent data protection and management solutions. IBM Spectrum Protect shines in pricing and support, while NetApp SnapCenter is noted for its feature set, which users feel justifies its higher cost.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect offers comprehensive backup and recovery capabilities, effective scalability, and flexible deployment options. NetApp SnapCenter integrates with various environments, provides high speed, and has intuitive management features.

Room for Improvement: Users of IBM Spectrum Protect point out the need for more straightforward configuration, better documentation, and enhanced user interface. NetApp SnapCenter users seek enhancements in stability, broader platform support, and optimization of resource utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect is praised for its flexible deployment options and responsive customer service. NetApp SnapCenter is also recognized for its deployment process and effective customer support, though some users report additional time spent during setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect offers competitive setup costs and a strong ROI, benefiting from lower ongoing expenses. NetApp SnapCenter is seen as pricier upfront, but users find the investment worthwhile due to advanced features and integration capabilities that enhance long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

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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 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

NetApp SnapCenter

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

51st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

Read full review

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command

It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SPIR is Instant Recovery for Spectrum Protect. It sends snapshots using space efficiently and blocking backups to the Spectrum Protect server. It provisions the snapshot from the backup server to the same or new server near instantly."

"The tool proves invaluable in scenarios where systems need recovery, such as restoring damaged data."

"The solution offers very good flexibility."

"With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups."

"Reliability: It has never had a problem with backups or restores. If you store something, it is there."

"What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines."

"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."

"Support of the IBM X platform and the backup data replication to DR are the most valuable features."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"The backup features are the most valuable because they allow the DBAs to replace SnapManager for Oracle (SMO), which is going away, and to do cloning as well. We can also clone to different servers and have the actual backup clone mounted on different servers. And we can split easily too."

"The most valuable feature is the RBAC, the Role-Based Access Control. In our managed service, we can have different layers of security."

"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."

"It helps with strategic planning because it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery."

"You can quickly deploy new virtual environments. It provides efficient and easy-to-use data protection. If a file goes missing or corruption occurs, you can restore it swiftly using the snap restore feature, allowing you to return to work almost immediately."

"The simplicity of backup and restore directly with VMware is an advantage and the time to backup and restore is reduced."

"It's all together managing both storage and backup, which makes it easier for troubleshooting issues and the automation part of it"

"A feature that stands out is cloning databases. If you have a SQL database and it's huge, like one terabyte, the classical SQL way would be to do a backup-restore to create a clone of your database for test purposes. With SnapCenter now, we can clone a database but through the Snapshot technology, which means if you right-click and you click Clone, the one terabyte database is there instantly."

More NetApp SnapCenter pros

Cons

"It could use single store. The ability to mark an archive from my backup for long-term retention."

"The reporting could be better."

"The solution is evolving, so it has to be evolved to fit all new types of software requirements too."

"It needs better connectivity with other non-IBM application hardware and non-IBM platforms."

"I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product."

"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."

"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."

"They should have a proper technical support team serving the customers and get issues resolved earlier."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"When you have role-based access, for example, it's a bit of a problem that the person who creates the backup job is the owner of it. We are struggling a bit with this, that everyone has the same view and the same permissions in there."

"I want to see a few more features add that will help our team in managing solution better."

"I feel a little bit that during the whole process of putting this software into production we were like a beta program. It was full of bugs... For example, we had a problem with truncating our Exchange log files... It has improved over time."

"We would like to see more granular repording and reporting in bigger sets available in SnapCenter."

"The UI, the User Interface, needs to be improved. It's not as clean or modern as it could be."

"SnapCenter could improve its integration with other backup solutions, such as Veeam."

"I have an issue with SnapCenter because sometimes a VM cannot be backed up... The way SnapCenter works is that it makes a backup of all the VMs and then it removes all the old backups. If one VM cannot be backed up for some reason, it has already created a new backup for all the VMs but it cannot remove the old backups. It ends up creating so many backups in VMware and it will cause a performance problem if the condition is not fixed."

"One thing that might be improved is the ease of management."

More NetApp SnapCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."

"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."

"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."

"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."

"It is expensive."

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."

"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."

"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."

"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."

"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."

"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."

"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."

"The product is inexpensive."

"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?

Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?

If you have a license, you don't need to buy anything extra. If you have multiple storage systems and want to manage them with a central tool, you are covered.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?

There is always a chance for improvement. One thing that might be improved is the ease of management. It might be made a little less complicated.

See all answers

Comparisons

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Synology DSM vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 27% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 18% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 16% of the time

Cohesity DataProtect vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 9% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 8% of the time

More NetApp SnapCenter Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp SnapCenter

March 2025

Download NetApp SnapCenter product report

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

SnapCenter

Overview

IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.

IBM

Unified, scalable platform for application-consistent data protection and clone management. This software simplifies backup, restore, and clone lifecycle management with application-integrated workflows.

NetApp

Sample Customers

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

All for One Steeb AG, Accenture

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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