IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

Overall the solution is fairly complete.

The installation process could be simplified. However, the tool is comprehensive and if the installation is too easy, then the tool itself will be too simple as well. I do not see any pain points. The only issue I see is the pricing, it is expensive.

We have been using the solution with the last 12 months.

It is a really capable tool. It is the best solutions on the market regarding recovering and the way it functions.

The scalability is really good. It is very capable, it has high availability, multiple backup servers, many posts, and workloads.

The installation is complex. It is a comprehensive solution as IBM has evolved from the TSM and Tivoli Storage Manager. It has multiple integrators, allowing it to communicate with most of the kinds of workloads. It is not easy to deploy.

We usually had three people doing the deployment. The solution uses multiple integrators, for example, they integrated with Oracle, SAP HANA, Microsoft, and Bare Metal. You will normally need one senior deployer, and a senior analyst to deploy it. If the individual that is going to do the deployment is a high-level senior person, he can do it by himself depending on experience. If there is not a senior person, you are going to need more than one to assist.

The solution is expensive.

The solution is capable of connecting to the cloud, public or private, but we are currently using it on-premises on this particular project.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect a nine out of ten.

We use it for physical and virtual servers, especially when we are talking about IBM Power architecture.

• Deduplication
• Compression

But really, today, all features are available from all vendors. We can ensure incremental backups, full backups, differential backups. These are not specific to IBM. All other products contain the same features. But when I'm backing up a Power server, I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor.

The solution is not complex, it's very easy to configure agents or VM backup and restore. Upgrades from one version to another are very fast and the product is very stable.

I really haven't noticed that something is missing. There is a central console for all backups and restores. 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.

I'm very comfortable with it. I see that the product is very stable. It's a good product.

It's very scalable. We can start the product with 10 machines and we can manage more than 1000 machines. There are no limitations with respect to adding agents. The only thing we need is the addition of some resources for the backup server. For example, we can start with a backup server with 16 gigabits of memory and when we add many jobs and many agents to the backup, we have to add some resource tools to the backup server.

Technical support is very good. When we submit a ticket, it will be resolved in a short timeframe. I believe the technical support is managed today by Watson, although I'm not sure. Watson for IBM Support Center is a machine but today it's the best support of all vendors we interact with. It's better than other vendors because we communicate with the machine and, from the database, it resolves all tickets in a short time.

In this case, we received recommendations, a short-list. IBM was on that list. We went with IBM because we have many IBM Power servers. There are some work loads for PowerVM and IBM knows the architecture of PowerVM better.

Initial setup is very easy. If there are updates, there are recommended actions.

There may be an advantage to going with IBM in terms of pricing. They have a pay-as-you-grow policy, so there is no need to take one license for the entire datacenter. You can start with small licenses and then grow, and pay, as you use more.

EMC and one other.

I rate it a nine out of 10. It's a good product, simple to use, simple to configure, and we get very good technical support.

Our primary use cases are for data protection and data backup.

The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings.

Their marketing needs improvement. I don't think it's market correct.

This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short. 

There are massive choices when it comes to data backup, in terms of products. VMware is known on the market, for example. But VMware only can market that. IBM on the other hand has 20,000 products and the Spectrum Protect does not get the same presence in the market, because of the vastness of the organization. But a competitor, VMware, only has to market that product offering that they have because that's all they have. IBM has to market their solution better.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for five years. 

It's very stable. 

It's highly scalable. 

Their support is excellent. 

The initial setup was complex.

The capability of the product now has been remarketed in IBM. So IBM Spectrum Protect is part of the Spectrum Suite. If you've got time, look at that. There are about 17 software-defined products that all interlink with each other. You'll get maximum usage out of the Spectrum Suite. I would recommend it.

The Spectrum that we know now was the old IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. Check up on Utility Storage Manager. IBM repackaged it as part of their fully software-defined offering. And one of the Spectrum Suite products is Spectrum Protect.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect an eight out of ten. 

The archiving ability of Spectrum Protect is second to none. Our company archives millions of files and Spectrum Protect has been the only product we found that can handle the workload, let alone handle it in the time frame that we require.

Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time. Spectrum Protect has proven to be the most effective solution given our requirements.

The GUI has long been a problem for TSM/Spectrum Protect. IBM has improved it a great deal, but until you can do any administrative task necessary, it will always be its weakest point.

Stability is one of its strongest advantages. It’s not the easiest product to configure, but once it is set up, it rarely has issues.

Scalability for Spectrum Protect has been another strong point for it. When I took over the team, we had just three instances in production. As we have expanded worldwide, we have grown to more 14 instances. Scalability has not been an issue as we have grown.

I think this has a lot to do with the level of support you purchase as well as the level of expertise of the administrator. If you are new to the product, their support is fair. If you are experienced and are experiencing a serious issue, their support can be very lacking and tends to be quite slow to respond.

We have used Backup Exec and Commvault in our environment in the past. Backup Exec did not scale well as the company grew. Commvault was not scaling as well and could not meet our archiving needs.

Installation of the product is much more simplified than in the past. Configuring the server itself is not something I would recommend for an inexperienced administrator to try and do on his own.

Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment. Capacity based licensing is pretty straightforward. IBM provides tools to help evaluate how much capacity you are using. PVU licensing is more complex and generally is going to be more expensive unless you have massive amounts of data coming from just a few locations.

I have evaluated NetBackup, Commvault, Backup Exec, Legato, Avamar, and Rubrik.

Have a good understanding of what data you need to back up, how long and under what conditions it need to be retained, and how you can best organize it. This will help greatly when it comes time to configure storage pools, domains, polices, and copy groups.

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.

I've been using IBM Spectrum Protect for about one and a half years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

IBM support is friendly, knowledgeable, and they always respond quickly. They've always been able to find the cause of my problem.

It's pretty hard to install IBM Spectrum Protect, and the whole procedure is not that simple. It takes maybe eight hours or a whole working day, and one person can handle the deployment. Right now, we have three or four users working with it, and there are one or two technical staff who take care of the maintenance.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect six out of 10. Maybe I would recommend it to others.

It is a very stable product. The cost is similar to that of other enterprise solutions.

The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line. I think the management console could be improved.

The initial setup is very complex.

I've been using this solution for more than twenty years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is very stable.

The technical support is at a medium level; not bad and not good.

The initial setup was very complex.

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.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect at eight on a scale from one to ten.

The diversity and flexibility of the application. No matter what the problem is, I can solve the problem any number of ways based on the customers’ requirements.

It scales.

In terms of room for improvement, I would like to see better interfaces.

I'm not allowed to talk about features I want to see in the future. I have an NDA with them. The things that I've asked for are already on record.

It's one of the most stable backup applications I've ever used.

They continue to make enhancements that allow it to scale even larger and higher. They also added additional capabilities to the software that allow it to grow within the industry.

We have used technical support and they are excellent.

We used NetWorker.

I was involved in the installation. I've set it up hundreds of times. It is a complex setup. You have to do your planning for your environment. Once you have the plan, the setup is easy. But the planning is the hardest piece.

We looked at NetBackup, Backup Exec, and there were a couple of other ones that we looked at.

My advice is to hire me and I’ll install it for you. We knew it was time to invest in a new solution because backups are crucial for our environment.

When looking for a vendor, we look for service, scalability, and stability.

The valuable features for me are Disaster Recovery Manager, Replication and and File Device Class for ease of recovery.

I’m a consultant. I provide installation and technical support and help to customers. TSM provides ease of use for customers to recover from any type of data disaster.

Once the product is installed and configured correctly, it’s easy to use. But for the average user, the product is extremely difficult when compared to other products.

15+ years

I’ve been doing this for 15 years. Deployment and installation for me is fairly easy.

Unless run on Windows or an undersized machine, the product is fairly stable.

This scales quite large.

Depends on the type of support the customer purchases. But overall IBM’s first line of support is pretty bad. Not very knowledgeable and take forever to return a call and ask for the same information over and over.

Poor at the first level.

No other products used.

The set up is complex unless you know the product.

It usually takes a week of consulting to implement. That can cost 10-15k plus the cost of the product.

No other options have been considered.

Hire an expert to install and configure it and get some training to make it run.