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IBM Spectrum Protect vs VxRail 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

IBM Spectrum Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (17th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
131
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Spectrum Protect and VxRail aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Spectrum Protect is designed for Backup and Recovery and holds a mindshare of 2.2%, down 2.4% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 19.0% mindshare, down 21.2% since last year.
Backup and Recovery
HCI
 

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.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."
"Everyone wants a full backup. It gives them safety and peace of mind, like an insurance policy for that rainy day when they may need to restore a system."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"It scales well. We have grown here in the last year or two, and it has been relatively easy."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good."
"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager."
"The compute is good and we have not had any issues with the vSAN."
"The recent technologies and management features that have been implemented."
"The feature that I have found most valuable with VxRail is its upgrade. Because if you talk about the normal ESX process you have to upgrade the firmware, the bios, and you have to manage the compatibility. You have to do a lot of things. But in the case of VxRail, it's a single upgrade, end to end. You simply upload the bundle, click next, it will do some pre-checks, if those pre-checks pass, it will update everything one by one. It will put one ESX in the maintenance and move other VM's to another mode. There is no downtime to the VM's."
"The solution is easy to use. When turning on a server or a machine that is required for, deployment or quality assurance, the dynamic deployment of resources is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation and integration points with other automation tools."
"The solution is perfect for the lifecycle management of hardware."
"It helps our servers and it is very efficient."
 

Cons

"I need to have more than two instances working together. I need a worldwide grid able to have replication between three, four, or five instances."
"They need to reduce the complexity and make the learning curve easier."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"The solution should have better integration with VMware and with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Needs more support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL."
"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."
"Stability is very good now. It used to be rocky years ago."
"It should not be deployed on one hypervisor. There should be multiple hypervisors supported like Hyper-V or KVM."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"My main issue so far is that the installation created a default datacenter name of "Marvin" and it cannot be changed."
"The scalability is limited to a single cluster with 64 nodes."
"Its price could be better."
"They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless."
"We have issues at times with the one-click upgrade, which is bugging us. At times, the one-click upgrade does not work or does not work well."
"My customers want more storage for university databases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."
"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD. The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten. My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees."
"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee."
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
"The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated."
"The licensing aspect is the most painful for some of our customers. Customers go for a VMware license that's standard and then they find they have to go with the enterprise solution and adjust the license. If you have a limited budget, that's difficult."
"The solution is competitively priced but it is expensive. However, this is expected as we are a corporate enterprise and we need this environment."
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
"Though somewhat expensive. But in terms of performance and stability, it's worth it."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"The solution is on the higher end of the price range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
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 dash...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
VCE VxRail
 

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
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
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