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

"Performance and recoveries are better. Our clients and customers are happier with the performance of it."

"Their GUI has improved quite a bit. It's made the solution a lot simpler and less complex."

"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."

"We are able to run it in an enterprise quite easily with one or two resources."

"The solution can back up every kind of workload in the environment."

"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."

"The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment. They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution."

"I have found that the most valuable feature is useful documentation and troubleshooting."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"Its automation and the ability to replicate and keep an RTO of just seconds is valuable. It is all automatic. Everything is pretty transparent on the backend. It is just point-and-go."

"It's easy to install."

"Zerto is scalable."

"Zerto is essential for protecting critical workloads. We don't protect all of our VMs, but some need to be recovered in a timely manner. The recovery time is almost immediate."

"We relocated all our virtual machines from Belgium to Budapest, Hungary. I am not sure how we would have done it without Zerto, because we were able to keep the data in sync. We would have needed to have a lot more expensive storage products online at the time that could have kept that replication. From what I have seen from other methods, that would have required a much higher amount of bandwidth as well, then the cost would have been extreme. The mechanisms available to us with a storage space replication would have been more labor-intensive and prone to error. It was much easier and more successful with Zerto than other ways at our disposal."

"Continuous protection is Zerto's most valuable aspect."

"The recovery speed is much faster and less complicated."

"I've used backup solutions like Veeam in the past, but Zerto seemed like a better, faster solution. We adopted Zerto because of the speed, and because we wanted to do everything in-house."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"We are having a balance issue between the reclamation and the backup function. It has to take the space back from the tapes before it can record to those tapes, but sometimes those two processes are overlapping."

"Perhaps some better documentation, which I believe was better in the past."

"It should have the ability to break down the data that's being backed up. It should have better reporting."

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

"We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."

"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."

"I think Spectrum Protect's interface is not so user-friendly, but the interface is not so friendly. Some of the functions are too complicated. I prefer a simpler solution."

"We should be talking about the capacity of the tape drives. That's the only problem."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"Now, everything is moving to the cloud and many modern app solutions are based on virtualization and cloud, however, for situations where Unix platforms are used, we'd like them to be able to support that."

"It took me a little bit of time to get used to Zerto's terminology and to relate it back to how you do a backup traditionally. It was a little different. It took a little while to understand what a VPG is and what it does. That's an area that they could probably improve on a little, making the documentation easier to understand."

"I would like for Zerto to improve reporting, provide more data on individual VMs and their performance, and maybe expand into backup with the ability to scan for malware or offline scanning."

"The recovery processes of large datasets in the Cloud have room for improvement."

"They have moved to appliances, and the configuration of appliances is a bit complicated."

"The performance was generally good, but occasional lag disrupted the flow, leaving room for improvement."

"The time between releases is too long. Zerto doesn't seem to really keep up with the products with which they need to be compatible. For instance, the 9.5 updates 3 took about 90 days to come out after the latest version of vCenter 7.0 update 3 was released."

"There are still some pieces in testing that aren't automated. There are still some built-in scripts or workflows I wish Zerto would do out-of-the-box, versus having to PowerShell or have a vendor create it, or create it myself."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"The different license models can give good benefits to the end customer."

"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."

"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."

"Its licensing is complex, and its price is not really reasonable. It is on the expensive side. IBM, in general, is slightly expensive, but with IBM Spectrum for the virtual environment, they are looking into the aspect of helping customers with the cost and providing a cost-effective solution."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"Its price can be better, but it is not bad. Most small-scale organizations can afford it, but they can come up with more customer-friendly packages."

"Compared to other options like SRM, Zerto is a more expensive solution, making it primarily suitable for larger organizations."

"I do not have anything to compare it to. It is expensive, but I am not going to squabble about the price when I bring the system up in a disaster. It is what it is."

"It works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds."

"Currently, it is good, but the license we are using is based on VM count. We are only protecting mission-critical servers, so we are using a very low number, about 300. However, we have 3,000 or more servers. If we consider using Zerto for data protection, it would cost us more than what we have for data protection now."

"I would suggest getting a dedicated, well-informed rep."

"From a pricing standpoint, there is value in it without question. However, it can become quite expensive when you start looking at the number of workloads you have in the environment and what you would like to do."

"Zerto is affordable."

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

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

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