IBM Spectrum Protect vs Zerto comparison

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IBM Spectrum Protect

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Zerto are leading data protection solutions. While IBM Spectrum Protect offers robust features for large-scale data environments, Zerto's superior data recovery capabilities make it a preferred choice for rapid failover solutions.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect provides scalability, comprehensive data management, and robust support for vast data environments. Zerto offers simplicity, seamless cloud platform integration, and effective disaster recovery. Both solutions have distinct strengths in their respective features.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest IBM Spectrum Protect could benefit from a more straightforward configuration process, a more intuitive design, and enhanced usability. Zerto users seek expanded data protection options, better reporting tools, and improvements in data protection breadth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect's deployment is complex and resource-intensive, though customer service is highly rated. Zerto is praised for quick and easy deployment, though customer service receives mixed reviews.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect involves significant initial setup costs but offers substantial ROI for large enterprises with extensive data protection needs. Zerto also requires a notable investment but is considered worth the cost due to effective disaster recovery, offering compelling ROI with timely recovery options.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Zerto Report (Updated: March 2025).

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Zerto

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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

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

149

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zerto

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

299

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

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Sachin Vinay

Assistant Manager-Networks at Amrita

Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features

Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."

"Spectrum Protect's best feature is that I can use it practically anywhere, on any platform, and for any servers or clients."

"It is an IBM product. With SAP, you are using IBM software to protect it. DB2 and AIX servers are both IBM. Therefore, it is a total IBM solution, which helps."

"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."

"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."

"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."

"It integrates well with Spectrum Scale."

"What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"The way we can use checkpoints from each VM to restore them is an excellent feature, and the replication is great."

"If we lost our data center and had to recover it, Zerto would save us a great deal of time. In our testing, we have found that recovering the entire data center would be completed within a day."

"The fact that we are able to test the failover of live systems during regular hours is invaluable to our organization."

"The solution's most valuable aspect is allowing a failover from our remote sites to our data center. Our remote sites have failed several times, and on each occasion, we were able to bring a plant back online within 30 minutes, even though the hardware repair took many days."

"It protect and provide DR."

"Using Zerto for the migration was incredibly valuable, enabling us to save tremendous amounts of time."

"The ability to have a RPO of seconds has enabled us to restore data to just before an incident has occurred, which certainly saves a lot of time and money."

"Journaling allows us to leverage Zerto's journal for sub-minute recoveries, instead of having to wait for the storage array to replicate."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"The only thing that I would like to have a little more of is insight in reporting. I find that Spectrum Protect needs a lot of monitoring, and I have to actually log into the servers."

"The stability could be improved."

"My customers are not always happy with the Level 1 support. Sometimes, it just takes too long for the response to come, which is probably something that needs to be addressed."

"They need to reduce the complexity and make the learning curve easier."

"A lot of my customers always ask for legal holds, especially on email."

"It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that."

"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."

"The GUI has long been a problem for TSM/Spectrum Protect."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"Zerto is too reliant on VMware's vCenter. It's tough to upgrade, move, or do anything related to virtual servers with vCenter."

"In general, the solution is pretty good, but because it is geared toward simplicity, sometimes, when things go wrong, the answer is not very detailed so that things can be solved quickly. If things do go wrong, it does require a little bit deeper troubleshooting to resolve the issues. That's the only area where improvement could occur. There should be a little bit more details about if things go wrong, how to remedy them."

"When we migrated to new virtual infrastructure, we had to set up Zerto all over again. And that took a long time. It would be nice if Zerto had some sort of migration tool where you could migrate all of your virtual machines to a new infrastructure without having to set up Zerto all over again."

"I would like to see different reporting options than what is currently available. I would like to be able to grab different data points that do not currently exist in the reporting system."

"The only negative I would give is that with the latest version of the appliance, setting up authentication was a bit of a challenge, but that is just a matter of using Keycloak and how things have changed."

"They could iron out the licensing aspect of it, so we might be a bit quicker when implementing and starting to use it."

"The documentation needs improvement in terms of the setup, getting enough detail, and getting that up to speed."

"One thing I would like to see in their roadmap is introducing long-term storage in the cloud such as Azure or AWS. They can make it more seamless."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

"Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."

"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."

"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."

"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"I am not very involved with the pricing, but from my understanding, it is fairly expensive for us. This is why we limit its use to our tier-one customers. We have other disaster recovery solutions for our other customers due to the cost."

"It's very reasonably priced. It's a little more than $3,000 annually. That works out to about $20 per server per month."

"It is cost-effective."

"To ensure proper data protection, we require a separate backup solution alongside Zerto for disaster recovery therefore the price for Zerto is high."

"In a world where others are catching up, e.g., VMware High Availability, there needs to be a less expensive option as well. When a customer has approximately 100 VMs, if you multiply by 40, we aren't charging a very high margin on it at all since the license is so expensive. We feel their pain. That is the most expensive part of it. The storage, CPU, and RAM are a lot less. It is the licensing that is really expensive. Whereas, with an option like VMware High Availability, it is a couple dollars per month. That is our spend that we are charged by VMware, then our margin is higher on those VMs. Giving us some ability to have higher margins, as an MSP, would be a good thing."

"It is expensive."

"The last time I looked at pricing, it was very good. It's much cheaper by far than VMware."

"The pricing is slightly above average, but the immediate and comprehensive support makes the price acceptable."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user159711

Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 9, 2014

VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto

Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?

Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...

What do you like most about Zerto?

Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?

Zerto is definitely more costly compared to its competitors, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager. It may not be suitable for small and medium-sized industries.

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparisons

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Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 6% of the time

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Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 13% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

IBM Spectrum Protect

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Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.

IBM

Zerto is used for disaster recovery, business continuity, data migration, and ransomware recovery, providing continuous data protection and near real-time replication. Valued for ease of use, efficient failover processes, and versatile integration, it enhances organizational efficiency, reduces errors, and boosts productivity.

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

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Zerto