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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 (14th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
132
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%, up 2.2% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 17.4% mindshare, down 21.0% 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

"Some of the people in our group, like our DBAs and non-technical people, can restore some stuff themselves via Spectrum Protect. That is how simple it is."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests."
"The solution can back up every kind of workload in the environment."
"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."
"One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"Updating the product has been very easy."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the storage is integrated with the VxRail so I don't have to go in between systems when I have to monitor my storage."
"The major advantage is the blueprint. You do not need to separately manage the sand or network part because it all gets virtualized."
"We were able to speed up our gaming software, which was a big plus."
"VxRail simplifies IT infrastructure management by providing a single management console for compute, storage, and network. The second advantage is that VxRail offers a continuously validated architecture from the OEM. This means that Dell thoroughly tests all firmware updates before being released or installed on the product, helping to prevent compatibility issues. The third benefit is its ten-year roadmap. Dell consistently announces a roadmap for the product spanning the next decade."
"VxRail can be used for application modernization."
"The manageability for controlling the console is the most valuable feature."
"The updating of the features was one aspect of the solution that made us decide to use it."
 

Cons

"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."
"It seems like they are a little behind on the integration to Azure Cloud as well as Amazon."
"It needs better connectivity with other non-IBM application hardware and non-IBM platforms."
"If you take Spectrum Protect into account, and you have it along with restrictions to Spectrum Archive by means of LTFS, this is also something which should be made better within the overall product's program."
"Although I am not a technical user, I would say the cloud integration features could be improved."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"RTO is a huge gap for us. If we had a disaster scenario and had to recover a bunch of stuff from tape, the RTO would be too long for us."
"Our new leadership has pushed us to go more toward the cloud, so we are definitely going to leverage anything we can in that direction."
"This solution needs to have the capability where even older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier."
"We would like to see integrating with Nutanix. Currently, we are working on integrating the two to see if there is any value in doing so."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."
"A more containerized approach in regards to the interface would be better."
"When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12 node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system."
"The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there."
"The scalability is limited to a single cluster with 64 nodes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"It is expensive."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
"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 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."
"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."
"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."
"The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The price point needs improvement, certainly for smaller SMBs. The cost of it is still quite painful. I think all vendors should do a product which is capped either by terabytes, IOPs, or VM instances. It should be an SMB solution that's going to make hyper-converged solutions easier for SMBs to get hold of. It's fine for those big guys that have billions of dollars of budget, but not for customers who have barely a 100,000 dollars or pounds in budget."
"It has a yearly subscription. It can be for one year, three years, or five years."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"A typical node that I would sell to a customer has a list price be between $80,000 and $100,000 per node. Organizations typically start with four nodes. That's the hardware, software, VMware licensing, everything. Customers typically pay about half of that - approximately $45,000 to $50,000 a node. On average, it costs about $200,000 to get your foot in the door."
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
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?
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What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
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What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
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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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