IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

Our current primary use case for this solution is for file backup. I'm head of cloud systems and we are customers of IBM.

I believe the user interface is a good feature. The personnel who work with the product on a daily basis seem to be satisfied with what's possible.

This is quite an expensive solution so I'd like to see the cost reduced. Technical support could be improved. 

We've been using this solution for 20 years. 

The product is stable. We have one person involved with maintenance. 

This is a scalable solution. We have 25 users in the company. 

The technical support really needs to be improved. 

The initial setup was quite complex. It required experienced and skilled people with a lot of know-how. We used a consultant for the deployment. 

I'm not sure what the licensing fees are but I believe they are substantial. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

Spectrum Protect provided a steady state in my backup operations and confidence in restores procedures with 99% assurance.

It is the only backup software which gives retro-compatibility, resilience, and enterprise agents.

This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers.

It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state.

Scalability in not an issue for this product. It is a real enterprise class backup software.

Customer service is a plus, always giving an answer with skillful personnel.

There is really good technical support.

I had different backup products. Each one is really good with similar backup needs, but with Spectrum Protect, I could get a holistic product for heterogeneity environments.

In the beginning, the product was sometimes difficult to deploy. Then, there were improvements by IBM, giving more confidence to customers.

Now, setup is really straight forward.

Implementation was made in-house for many clients, which provided me with quite good expertise and autonomy for the future deployments.

Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable. Also, the different license models can give good benefits to the end customer.

Licenses have to be studied regarding a client's need. However, with Entry License, Front End Capacity or Back End Capacity, there are many choices.

I tried other products, but some of them were not suitable for enterprise class.

The product is always getting better, and it is still the most reliable backup product in the market.

I have been working for more than 14 years in service companies dedicated to implementing and consulting in the area of backup and storage. This has allowed me to work with a multitude of backup environments. I have worked in Unix, Linux, Windows, and VMware environments, with all kinds of databases, applications; environment backup contingency solutions (DR) - formerly through "double copy" and tape management offsite; replicating storage pools via disk systems, and the databases of the backup server itself. Lately, I have been using node replication in on-premise environments and replicating against the server located in the IBM cloud (Softlayer).

Yields are a key feature. There are also very few incidents related to restores that cannot be performed. The level of product support is very high.

Integration with Windows environments needs improvement. It should be more "assisted", both at the application and database level. It remains a product that fits better in Unix/Linux environments than in Windows environments, given its configuration procedures. It needs BMR (bare machine recovery) solutions for both Windows and Linux systems.

The deduplication functionality has caused some issues as has the upload of deduplicated/encrypted data to the cloud. These errors have been solved, thanks to the power of its DB2 engine. It enables detection and correction of these problems. To date, I have not found any error that could not be resolved.

Scalability is one of the best features of this product. An IBM Spectrum Protect environment (a DB2 instance) can manage up to 4PB. Sometimes it is more practical to define several instances of DB2 (several DB2 databases, several TSM servers) on the same physical server, which drastically reduces the size of the DB2 databases.

The problem in Spain is that level-1 and 2 support, which were very good, has been moved. Now, almost all level-2 incidents are handled in France or the US. In the US there is very good support but its work schedule does not match ours.

For medium/large environments (Unix, Linux, Windows, VMware) we also propose the Commvault solution. For fully virtual environments, such as VMware and Hyper-V, we always use Veeam Backup & Replication. For a small environment with Windows and VMware/Hyper-V, we usually implement Veritas Backup Exec.

Setup/implementation requires a high level of knowledge/skill. For those with experience, the setup can be very fast, although it is true that it requires a pre-planning and sizing process.

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.

If the customer has more IBM products, as well as IBM storage, we can resort to global licensing, which can be very economical.

In principle, and whenever I can implement this product, if a customer is reluctant or has many Windows servers I choose products that are configured/installed almost entirely via a graphic interface, such as Commvault.

It is a very powerful product that offers great performance and integrates very well in Unix/Linux environments and with powerful databases (Oracle, DB2, SAP, etc.). However, it requires a middle to high-end knowledge of, and skill with, the product.

Spectrum Protect is performing well, and the primary use case is just for backups to provide recovery. It is not the first point of recovery for the customer. However, it definitely prevents our customers from going out of business, because they need to have a backup.

On the backup side, we use ProtecTIER Virtual Tape recoveries. On the customer side, the front-end side of it, they recently moved to all-flash storage, not IBM storage. They have got a mix of old servers, which are physical. There are a mix of Sun, AIX, VMware, and Hyper-V, so there is pretty much everything across the board at the customers.

Generally, the happiest users are Oracle users. What they like about the platform is that they have received organic benefits in performance from the backup system and also as their platforms have upgraded over the time. Therefore, every time customers make a change or we have made a change, then they use the product to do a cloning and refreshing. They are happy that they get good performance something changes.

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, e.g., L Tier 5 from L Tier 6 and/or L Tier 7. They have been able to do this within the product.

More support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL. I would also like support for snapshots of non-IBM hardware. I have read some future statements, and it seems that this is coming, though.

Sometimes, there is a perception that it is a legacy product, and some customers are less keen to take on the more innovative features. Therefore, we have some customers who are running on the current version of Spectrum Protect and use all of the current features, and some customers who consider it a legacy product. However, they are a bit stuck in the way that they use the product, only using the old style features.

I have worked with it for 15 years. I have found it to be very scalable. Where I work now as a business partner, our customers use it. I have some small customers and some large customers, and it works well. Where I used to work before, we ran backup as a service, and we had about 21 instances of Spectrum Protect running. It was just reliable. That is my experience.

The customers who are doing workloads in the cloud are choosing to have cloud-based backup strategies. It is an area in the product where our competitors may have better offerings right now, but the people who are moving to the cloud, if they are doing it well, are choosing not to have their data in the cloud be static. They are using the cloud to spin up a workload and spin it down. Thus, the workloads are being provisioned as opposed to needing to have static data in them. Therefore, the real value is the code which generates the machine running in the cloud, and we backup that.

I have used technical support a lot over a long time. There are two sides to it. I find quite often with the Level 1 and Level 2 support that I struggle with time zones. Sometimes depending on where the support is coming from, there can be barriers in understanding the problem. 

Usually when I get up to Level 2 or Level 3 support the technical capabilities are really good, and I also find that if I need a point solution to a point problem, they will find code and build code for my problem. This has been very good. They won't just say, "We are looking at fixing that, you may need to wait a year." They will come out and help you fix a problem. However, the first day of interaction at Level 1 is not really very good.

I have been involved in the initial setup a few times. I have also migrated from one hardware platform to a different one, Solaris to AIX along with TSM (before it was Spectrum Protect). I have found it more complex then some of its competitor products, but because I have worked on the product for a while, I find it fairly simple. Now, I understand how to install it well, but it would still be complex for a novice. 

I am quite keen on getting more experience with Spectrum Protect Plus, because it seems like it is a lot easier, and that is where we will go in the future.

I have used a couple of different backup products. As a business partner, our customers do choose other backup products. Generally, I find I have less trouble with Spectrum Protect than I have had with the other backup products.

Mainly, the competition is Commvault, if they are looking at the functionality that Spectrum Protect is offering. There are some customers who go with Veeam. The reason that they go with Veem is because they have a desire to go there. When they already want to go that way, it is difficult to position Spectrum Protect as an alternative. I am really keen to see how Spectrum Protect Plus might compete with Veem in the marketplace.

As a business partner, the customer is choosing the product, and we are recommending Spectrum Protect. Certainly our bigger customers have a lot of legacy data, so they already had Spectrum Protect. Therefore, it is a fairly simple decision to maintain it. However, some of our customers go through reviews and look at options. 

We have, in our long history, lost some customers to competitors, but the reasons why did not have to do with the product. I do not think we have lost anyone because the product was not delivering.

We do have primary storage, which is a mix between IBM, EMC and Infinidat. We also use VMware and IBM Power servers. That is our infrastructure setup. We do not have a cloud strategy.

We have five instances of the Spectrum Protect.

We use it for our backups. That is our main use for it. So far, it has been quick to restore, and we have never had any issues. Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there.

• It is very robust. 
• It has been in the market for many years. 
• We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data. 
• It supports tape, which is something that we like as a hospital.

We would like to see capabilities of long-term archiving and more support for hardware platforms.

It is very stable. We have had it for over 15 years and never really had an issue.

We are now looking at the new product. Before, it did not have a lot of options for Exchange, SharePoint, etc. With the new Spectrum Protect Plus, it seems like there will be more options and they are catching up with the market, and that is a good thing.

The technical support seems good. Sometimes you get people who are not knowledgeable, but overall, it is good. You get the issues resolved.

We were not previously using a different solution. We were looking for a solution which was robust, and the company behind it was a good, big company. We had other IBM solutions at the time, so we wanted to make sure that we stuck with the same organization. I had used a Spectrum Protect, which used to be called TSM, in other places before, and it was stable and robust. That is how we decided to go with it.

The initial setup was not difficult at all; it was very straightforward. Even though Spectrum Protect is not the easiest to use, it was not a big deal to set it up.

We will probably use it in the future since we have already invested in it, even though we are looking at other options. Financially, it makes sense to go with Spectrum Protect rather than changing to another platform.

A long time ago, we also evaluated Legato NetWorker (now EMC NetWorker).

Right now, we are going to have to look at investing in a new solution because of the change that IBM is making to a Spectrum Protect Plus. Otherwise, we probably would not have looked at changing it from the legacy one.

Our primary use case is supporting DB2 environment. We have about a couple hundred servers that we support for our SAP environment. It is one of the most critical applications that we have.

IBM Spectrum Protect has improved my organization with its total support of IBM products.

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.

At the moment, it meets DB2's needs sufficiently.

Stability is very good. It used to be rocky years ago. It has been a very good solution, and very rarely do we have problems with it.

I have worked with it for 20 years now. It scales well for the amount of clients that we use with it. The clients have been very good about keeping up with the technology changes.

It should meet our future needs. We do not plan to grow it at this time as we just use it for SAP. 

Their technical support is very good. They are very good about getting back to you and trying to help you work through issues. I generally contact support online versus calling in, but that is just my preference.

It was easy to set up/rebuild.

This was before my time with the company.

We have a cloud strategy using Amazon. 

For leveraging cloud, we are in the beginning stages. Therefore, we are using Avamar.

Our non-cloud/on-premise infrastructure consists of servers.

• Incremental-forever backup: one-time full backup; then, incremental forever.
• Data replication: removes the need for tape off-siting by replicating data from one management server to another (off-site). No need for storage replication as the replication is application-based.
• Deduplication
• Disaster recovery management: can provide assistance in managing DR media (tapes); also provides a DR plan based on current configuration.
• Macros: can automate actions using scripts, native or via OS. Spectrum Protect can be configured/managed via the command line.
• Library management: works very well with tape libraries.
• Tape management: Tape management is excellent as well. It can create multiple copies in a single process (e.g., one primary tape, one copy tape at local site, one copy for vaulting). It can also recover damaged tapes.

• Less backup/archive media
• RPO/RTO

The GUI needs improvement; it is not the best in the market.

The default GUI, Operations Center, does not provide much information to a
Spectrum Protect Administrator.

Such as:

• Volume (tape) errors
• Volume content
• DR Media Status
• Volume operations - check-in, checkout, label

To name a few.

But all this information can be attained using SP's command line interface, query or select statements.

And hey, I didn't acquire this product to watch it all day. Configured properly, it can remove backup/archive operations from the admin's daily tasks. Not a big deal for me.

I have used it for 16 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

I previously used CA Arcserve and Veritas NetBackup.

It was easy to set up.

Compare between capacity and PVUs.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated CA Arcserve, Veritas NetBackup, and HP Data Protector.

Forget about traditional backup strategies; focus on recovery.

Incremental Forever backups, Enterprise management, Journal Based backups, policy based, copy storage pools, deduplication and node replication. Also the extreme flexibility and scalability the product offers – most of it done without interrupting production at all. The smallest entry level sized installation can easily grow to large enterprise usages and be migrated across platforms.The product is very client-oriented which supports a lot of different platforms and products, and only have to be upgraded approx. every five years to maintain support.

The incremental forever, TSM for Virtual Environments, deduplication and node replication, has opened up further advantages and solutions for users and customers.

There is always room for improvement. In the fast paced time we live in, unfortunately many products are released before they are complete and mature in every corner.

10 years.

Deployment is easy and simple when few rules are followed and respected. If there is difficulties, it is often caused by lack of resources like short of requirements, willingness or insight.

No, not really - as long as it is designed properly. TSM is very stable and is based on the DB2 database.

When there’s too many clients connecting at the same time, or the platform does not meet requirements.

It is easy to get support from IBM through phone or web-based support portal.

The technical support is great, and they know the product very well.

No, I did not. I have worked other places with other systems. They were all procedure oriented and still are, even though they might have improved since.

If you want a high performing flexible solution, you need some skills with the product. Name standards, design of database, policies and storage needs some decision making.

I guess I don’t qualify for this; we are consultants ourself and are experts. :)

No, none.

Consult experts, listen and follow their advices and meet the requirements.