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IBM Storage Protect vs Rubrik comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

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 Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rubrik
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rubrik is 5.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Rubrik5.9%
IBM Storage Protect2.1%
Other92.0%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

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.
AmarpreetSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimal data security and management achieved with smooth deployment and strong support
I plan to expand the number of users for Rubrik in the future. Currently, I have approximately 10 to 12 customers on Rubrik, as we are partners to Rubrik and a service provider, SIS. I am working with large to medium organizations, not small ones. Regarding Artificial Intelligence, Rubrik is in the initial phase, and I am expecting more from them. I can give them seven out of ten for their improvements in that area. I would recommend Rubrik to other organizations because it is easy to install, easy to manage, and very compact in terms of a solution, with good support from Rubrik. These features allow it to match from small scale to large scale customers very easily. The number of people who usually take part in maintenance from my side depends on the customer size. For large customers, we involve four to five people, but for small customers, one person is enough. I rate Rubrik eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can protect your data and keep it for long durations, without it spending too much time on the local disk."
"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."
"We do not lose data. That is why we are using this product and have a backup in place."
"It is more efficient than most traditional backup solutions."
"The solution offers very good flexibility."
"The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses."
"We work very closely together with IBM using their Support Center, but we have a strong contact in their development teams, and we have dedicated people from IBM working with us."
"Scalability, performance, mass platform coverage. It's one of the few backup products on the market right now which an organization can bring in and it will serve all of their backup needs. It's a completely centralized solution."
"The most valuable feature of Rubrik is its concept of a 'backup airbag', which provides a robust defense against attacks."
"Rubrik provides excellent customer service and technical support."
"In the event of any issues or questions, the support is top-notch. We rarely need to use support, but when they are needed, they are always quick to respond and very knowledgeable."
"I value the options it has for storage tiering (i.e. whether it should be a flash, SSD, or pushed to the cloud) depending on the data provided."
"The management and ease of installation are the most valuable features."
"The system is able to determine when it is the best time to do backups. This is SLA-driven, and if it is not possible to maintain this SLA, the system will tell you too."
"What I like about Rubrik is its strong focus on security, particularly in combating ransomware threats."
"Also, the web interface is really great. The design, from a user-experience standpoint, is really straightforward and easy to use... they nailed it. Usually, from the very first panel, the dashboard that you land on after login, you've got most of your functionality right around where you need it to be. You've got your new items on the left, you've got your support on the top right. Nothing really seems out of place or just stuck in someplace."
 

Cons

"I would love to see something which allows us to do an auto restart of backup jobs."
"Anytime you are not very current and call in with an issue, it is hard to get it resolved. It will depend on how far back you go though."
"It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum."
"We need everything cloud. Strong support for cloud services. S3 connectivity, which is mandatory for us in the future along with this integration of Spectrum Copy Data Management or Spectrum Protect services together with these Spectrum Protect Plus functionalities, e.g., hardware, snapshots, and Copy Data Management. They should come together in one solution."
"The user interface (UI) for the admin is still not good. It is way too complicated to manage the product, as we still need to use command line. IBM launched the Operations Center (OC), but there are still functions lacking, especially since we cannot manage all our scheduled tasks by using the GUI."
"It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved."
"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."
"The software is very complicated. You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore."
"Rubrik could improve in customization options for dashboards."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I need to create reports to know whether something is available or not, how much frontend data is being protected, etc. Rubrik gives a lot of things in the report, which can be confusing. It isn't very easy to get reports. It shows all the backup, index, replication, and everything else in one report. So, I have to export, filter, and then do the calculations."
"The dashboard and user interface could be improved to make them more user-friendly."
"Price-wise, Rubrik needs improvement as it is considered expensive compared to similar competitors."
"The price of Rubrik is too high, especially when you are considering a change in the total backup solution."
"The product’s user interface needs improvement."
"Rubrik can only leverage cloud storage for archiving and has no cloud failover."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The different license models can give good benefits to the end customer."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."
"I rate the pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."
"Rubrik's support is definitely on the expensive side, but I consider it to be top of the line. We incur no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I don't remember the cost, but I know that for Veeam, we were spending almost $250,000 a year for 205 licenses. It was an enterprise version. When we purchased Rubrik, it was just a little bit more. It was not a terribly huge amount, and if I recall, that was for three years of support as well. So, Veeam priced itself out of the market at a certain point in time."
"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."
"We do perpetual licensing... It was all based on the amount of storage we needed to use. We did a cost analysis compared to Tivoli and it was in line with other solutions."
"Rubrik is priced high, but it was the solution that was providing us encryption and was secure. The solution price is high, but you get what you pay for."
"You pay a premium for Rubrik, but you're getting a premium service that comes with immutable backups, instant recovery, and world-class support."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise94
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage 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...
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.
 

Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CEMEX
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 Storage Protect vs. Rubrik and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.