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IBM Storage 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 Storage Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (12th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Storage Protect and VxRail aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Storage Protect is designed for Backup and Recovery and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.3% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 14.9% mindshare, down 20.6% since last year.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Storage Protect2.0%
Veeam Data Platform10.0%
Commvault Cloud5.5%
Other82.5%
Backup and Recovery
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VxRail14.9%
VMware vSAN13.0%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.6%
Other62.5%
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

"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."
"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."
"The ability to migrate between media over a long period of time. My customers are long-time users, and they have benefited from being able to move between tiers. They have been able to do this within the product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups."
"Performance and recoveries are better. Our clients and customers are happier with the performance of it."
"The most valuable features are compression and de-duplication."
"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."
"The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."
"This is a good solution if you want to deploy an ACI Environment but don't have all the necessary resources."
"What I like the most in terms of features is the fact that the VxRail update can be done in one week. It takes much less time to do a whole server upgrade and an infrastructure update as well."
"Low-maintenance solution with hyperscale feature so it has the ability to utilize the resources for the VMware cluster setup on which Citrix VDA runs."
"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 initial setup was not complex."
"The solution has simplified our operations."
 

Cons

"This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers."
"I want to see better compression than what it currently does."
"There have been scalability issues. The core product does not support scale out. We needed to create a new system and manage resources separate from the existing one."
"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."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"I find the Level 1 and Level 2 support spend 80% of the time communicating the same information that I have already provided."
"The reporting could be better."
"They should have better compatibility with other processors, such as AMD processors."
"It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad. They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"The solution should offer more integration with other virtual software. VxRail runs just with VMware, however, maybe it should integrate with Hyper-V or with KVM as well."
"I can't speak to any missing features or weak aspects of the system just yet. We haven't had a chance to really dig in."
"Deployment was not initially straightforward for us. We had an incompatibility issue that was very difficult for Dell Professional Service to solve."
"There is an area for improvement with VxRail, specifically the upgrade process. Upgrading the is quite complex and almost exclusively requires Dell support. You can't do it alone, so you need to have support contracts running, which could be streamlined to improve the solution."
"When we have a vulnerability or we need to upgrade VxRail, it takes a long time. It takes eight hours each time we upgrade."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."
"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."
"We have been at our size for a few years. We are not really looking to battle the licensing costs, as this is our primary system."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"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."
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"VxRail is not cheap, but it's not expensive either."
"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."
"VxRail does raise the price, but overall, it's well-priced. It's not more expensive than other similar solutions. If you were to create an in-house, tailor-made solution, you could potentially do it at a lower cost. However, I think a fully integrated solution like VxRail should be priced appropriately."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The cost was cheaper compared to other virtualization solutions."
"Price is a bit of a challenge, particularly if you want extra features or higher performance."
"More cost-effective than Nutanix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
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 Business42
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise56
 

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...
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 Spectrum Discover
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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