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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

"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
"The solution is very stable. It is one of the most important features that we look for in a product before putting it into the market and when establishing a strategy with our customers."
"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."
"The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses."
"Disk-based implementation of a data protection solution for multiple sites is a better fit for my complex data protection needs."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."
"VxRail is a simple, efficient solution. It's easy to upgrade and scale the solution. If we increase our user base, we can easily scale it out. We have several thousand using it now."
"The most valuable feature for me in this latest release has been the ability to add a compute or storage node. In the previous release, if I wanted to add only the compute mode, I need to buy a full node, including both compute and storage. That is no longer the case; I can upgrade whatever I want one based on my demand."
"The most valuable features are ease of management and ease of applying updates."
"We have seen ROI using this solution. It has simplified the work of the staff that we have which allows us to do more work with the same number of people, without having to incrementally grow the staff. The reliability of the product has been exceptional."
"VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
"It's a simple product, fast, and reliable."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
 

Cons

"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."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."
"I would like a little more ease with the virtual platforms, because it is a huge thing that is coming up."
"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."
"I would like to see a way to have "always on" implemented."
"The Hyper-V and SQL Server backup could be improved. In the 2016 version there was a significant improvement, but I think IBM has a big challenge with these technologies."
"Integration with some applications in the healthcare field could be added, as that is a big part of our business."
"A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"Obtaining support was hindered by the frequent changes to the hotline numbers."
"I would like better integration with VCF from VMware, which is the Cloud Foundation tool set, so we can easily provision servers very quickly."
"You have to buy a new server if you want to scale up."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."
"Price is a bit of a challenge, particularly if you want extra features or higher performance."
"The cost was cheaper compared to other virtualization solutions."
"There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs."
"The pricing is very accurate, and we haven't had any problems with the licensing costs."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
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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...
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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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