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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas NetBackup 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 Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
N'GUESSAN E R - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data recovery and replication features
There is a big change in Veritas. In the past, we could easily change servers or appliances and continue working by restoring the catalog. We could change servers from Linux to Linux or Linux to Solaris and perform catalog restores to continue working. But with the new version, we are forced to engage Veritas' professional services, which is too expensive. Sometimes, we've received quotes exceeding $100,000 for a catalog migration. This expense was unnecessary in the past. For instance, we used to install a new release of Linux and simply restore the catalog, and the system would function well. But with the latest version, it's no longer feasible. For instance, if we want to migrate from appliance 5030 to 5060 or even just 5050, we are compelled to engage Veritas consultants due to the intricate data manipulation involved. This additional expense is quite expensive. In the past, these devices didn't even exist, and we could easily restore the catalog, resulting in a fully functional system. However, the new version demands expensive expertise for such tasks, which I find unacceptable for our clients.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."
"It is also a product that has been maturing for a long time. This is good because customers need reliability in their enterprise initiatives."
"Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it."
"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."
"The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."
"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."
"It was especially useful with the appliances we use on a daily basis."
"It has a very good user interface."
"We have an issue with the last version on the latest backup of the solution as it is not compatible with Sybase 16.5."
"Could be used for both of Physical and Virtual Environments."
"It's durable — we achieve what we expect from it."
"The client side deduplication reduces the backup window."
"The solution offers a lot of really great features that organizations can utilize and take advantage of."
"The deduplication feature is useful. Deduplication and compression features are what I like about NetBackup."
 

Cons

"We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Perhaps some better documentation, which I believe was better in the past."
"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."
"We recently had a situation where we quickly got code, and the number of tapes exceeded the library capacity so we were waiting a while to change. We got a fix for this right away."
"The software is complex; setup is complex."
"There could be various client systems and process integration included in the product."
"We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."
"It's a little bit complex to manage."
"Licensing costs are quite high."
"The solution is not that stable because it has to be monitored and administered every day. The stability could be improved."
"The solution's technical support process should be improved."
"The HTML interface is a web application that does not offer all the features."
"I would advise not to use this tool. I think between the licensing issues and the older solution mentality it is not a great solution."
"We are facing a challenge regarding the support for Docker and Kubernetes features. We hope for the possibility of directly backing up Kubernetes and Docker images without the necessity of taking full virtual machine backups."
"It would be extremely helpful if the solution offered near-zero recovery time for SQL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"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."
"Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
"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."
"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."
"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."
"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
"Annual licensing fee."
"The licensing fees are expensive."
"Acceptable if you need to implement it for larger environments, e.g. over 1000 clients. For smaller setups it might be too expensive."
"Most people have felt this solution was somewhat expensive."
"NetBackup is expensive. They need to work on the pricing side. I find it comparatively on the higher side when I compare the terabyte backup costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?
For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable, but most people don't know that. People only see one major price for the tool, which runs into millions, so they would always say that it is a...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
The technical team's service depends on where the support service is located. Some products are not included in IBM itself, but external companies are developing some solutions for IBM. I think the...
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

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
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.