IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

The primary use case for the solution is mainly backing up Oracle databases and critical workload AIX servers, and so on.

The Oracle database backup is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The solution is scalable.

We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good.

Technical support has been helpful overall.

Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly. They have another solution, Spectrum Protect Plus, however, for me, that is a new product. They invented a new product for virtual environments as they didn't succeed in integrating it into the former solution. For me, Spectrum Protect Plus, and Spectrum Protect are not the same product. It's not a new feature for Spectrum Protect, it is just a new thing. Therefore, we assessed IBM was not able to provide a good solution for virtual environments. Therefore, we decided to use Veeam for that.

The initial setup is quite complex.

I've been using the solution for at least these last 12 months.

The stability of the solution is perfect. It's reliable and offers good performance. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's good.

The solution can scale well. If a company needs to expand things, it can do so with ease.

We just count the servers in terms of usage. In terms of the servers, I would assume we have more or less, about 400 servers with 1.5 petabytes of storage.

In terms of scaling, we'll remain the same more or less, however, as the databases grow, we tend to increase the amount. We don't have new features and functions that we want to integrate, however, we have new services. We are growing and likely expanding.

We've contacted technical support several times. They are always helpful and responsive. We're satisfied with their level of support.

We're using Veeam for virtualization, as that aspect is not covered under IBM Spectrum Protect.

At the moment, we're happy with the features available. I can't recall feeling that there was something lacking. There aren't any new features we desperately need.

What we would like is integration between this solution and Spectrum Protect Plus. They should be one product and not two different solutions. 

The initial setup is not straightforward. It is quite complex. It's important to have the right people in place. You need good experts to manage upgrades, et cetera.

For the initial deployment, for running the system, for implementing new servers or new clients, et cetera, that is not a problem, however, the problem is really handling upgrades. That is kind of tricky.

It's a good idea to hire a consultant or integrator to assist your company in the process. It's not easy to do if you don't have the right knowledge base. 

We're just a customer and end-user.

We're using an older version, called Spectrum Protect. We are not using Spectrum Protect Plus.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've largely been happy with it. I'd give it a higher rating if Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus could either be the same product or integrated together.

Our clients use it for consolidated backup and mostly for guests on the VM.

The solution significantly improves a client's restoration times. They also do complete backups now. Some of the things clients used before couldn't really provide complete backups. In that sense, it's been great for organizations.

The solution actually does a lot. It's really powerful. The value of Spectrum Protect is it does everything. It does tape and it does disk. It's easy to migrate. You don't need any other software. It's basically an all-in-one solution, which is its most valuable aspect.

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

The solution has a Spectrum Protect Plus product, which is more for Windows-only VM. However, it doesn't really do tape. It requires IBM to do things to the Cloud, which adds costs. They're starting to integrate the products together. That said, right now, it's like two implementations, it's not one product.

We've tried to sell Protect Plus from time to time, however, then you need Protect if you want to do tape. It's kind of clunky. Once they integrate the products, it will be pretty powerful.

Spectrum Protect is still an industry-leading product across multiple operating systems. It still runs best on an AIX server and does remember Windows or Linux. The install base is more AIX as far as hosts because the AIX server is more powerful.

They should be able to integrate the products so that you don't have to do two system installs.

The solution should have a better way to deal with the system state files in Windows. They should do that better where it doesn't try to walk the file system and you have to use in image mode.

The experienced people still use the CLI. You shouldn't have to use a CLI to use this product.

They took some of the funding off of it for a while. Therefore, instead of being a market leader, they took their position for granted. Then some competitors developed new bells and whistles that they advertise, and due to that lag a few years ago, there are not the resources to explain the differences.

They're outsold. IBM is outsold because people do not understand the product and it had a reputation of being complex.  That said, with the new GUIs and other improvements, it's really pretty easy. The problem is they've got to deal with their old reputation of being difficult and complex. Still the GUI could still be more robust.

I've been using the solution for 20 years now. It's been two decades.

The solution is extremely stable. There are no issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or fail. It's reliable.

We work with all sizes of businesses from Fortune 100 insurance companies to small colleges and universities. We have all sorts of customers.

The scaling potential of the solution is huge. This is an enterprise solution compared to some of the smaller options. It also scales down when you do less than 100 terabytes. It has very favorable pricing. It's competitive with other products.

Technical support is not as good as it could be. It's not as good as some of the competitors. IBM has put more resources into it recently. However, they had a stage about two years ago where they kind-of stopped spending as much money on Protect due to the fact that they had so many other IBM products. 

Overall, I'd rate their technical services at seven out of ten. It's not too bad, however, it could be better. They are quite responsive. Now that IBM is more focused on improving the product it may improve as well.

I have some experience with Veeam as well. I really like it compared to Veeam. You don't have to have media servers. It's nice compared to Veeam that ­clients don't have to do a media server.

We've had customers who have used other solutions, however, they've been weak and not as scalable as IBM.

The initial setup is not complex. It's straightforward. It's easy.

The pricing is quite good and very competitive in the market.

I'm a reseller and a system architect. I'm not really a user. I'm a project manager and architect. However, we have people on our team that use and install it.

We're using the current version of the solution.

I'd advise other companies to not forget tape. With ransomware and everything else, it's hard. People forget tape is cheap. Tape gives you an air-gap, and, if you properly use it, you get a good hybrid solution.

Many people think it's disk only, and that's just for yesterday's restore, however, for a long-term solution, tape is so much more cost-effective.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a full-feature product. It's hard to be perfect with full-featured products. There are compromises due to the fact that they do so much.

Our primary use case is for little backups, such as our exchange databases.

It helps insomuch as that it is a run solution. The issues that I've had with IBM are few and far between. Every time it restores, even though it may use tapes, there are no issues.

We really like that it just works and haven't had any problem with it, whatsoever.

It is very flexible in terms of schedules for different types of retentions. We have different policies for images, for audio files, and for user files. We have policies set up for something lasts for 15 years, or five years, or some for only two years. It can put up many, many schedules for different types of retentions. It's awesome.

The user interface needs to be improved. It is mostly a command line and you're stuck in a terminal most of the time. They have been moving over to a graphical interface, in part, but it still has a way to go in terms of ease-of-use. The commands are awesome but you can't really remember all of them. If the whole thing goes graphical then you don't have to remember obscure commands to run stuff, or set stuff up.

The configuration section needs some work done, especially with the day-to-day usage of setting up schedules and policy domains, etc.

The licensing needs to be simplified, changing it from "per core" to "per socket". This would make it much better.

This product is robust, and stability is the best part. It doesn't really fall over unless you want it to, which is the main thing.

As we are currently migrating to Veeam, I can tell you that I had less sleepless nights with the IBM solution. Veeam is very dependent on the health of the cluster, and if it isn't running well them Veeam doesn't perform too well.

In terms of scalability, it doesn't matter how much you throw at it, it just handles it. The product doesn't require that much in terms of resources. There is no overhead CPU consumption unless you're doing deduplication and stuff like that. It is not heavy, resource-wise.

I am the main backup administrator and the only one who is using this product. I run it for the company. Currently, we are backing up between forty and fifty virtual machines on Tivoli. If I want to leave and let the schedules run then I have a second IT person to monitor it.

The usage will not increase because the solution is being phased out, and all of the backups are moving over to the new product. Before the end of the year, it will not be used anymore.

I haven't really needed any technical support because I haven't had any major issues with the product itself.

I did speak with them about tape issues but that's more hardware than software. The experience was easy and prompt, as they came out the next day and fixed it. It was awesome.

We did not use a solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a basic setup and you just need to know what has to be done. Your pools and everything, it just has to point to that directory and it's done.

Our deployment took about a day. We last upgraded in 2015 to V7, and it handles backups of all our file systems, our images, our recordings, etc. The deployment included setting up these policies.

I took care of the implementation and deployment myself.

The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD). The additional costs depend on your backup technology. For example, if you are using tape technology then it depends on the type of tape and how many you purchase every month. It could cost about R10,000 (approximately $650 USD), or so. The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution.

Currently, pricing with IBM is based on sockets and the cost depends on the machine or server. Even if you don't have anything hectic running on the host, you are still paying for the whole host. This is something that should be improved.

If it wasn't for the price we would most likely still be using it.

This solution was in place when I arrived. However, we are currently in the process of migrating to Veeam but this is a cost consideration rather than one of functionality or performance.

The best part of this solution is that it just works.

I would rate this product eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is data protection. With the new version, Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 that we are running on, we have had quite a number of issues. IBM has responded well, and after about six weeks of going through a performance tuning with them, we are back on top of our backups and things are running well.

Our old system, which is running Tivoli 7.1.7, uses VTL with tape library behind it. We are actually migrating off of it and going to the new environment, which is Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 on Power s822 AIX server. This is back-ended by a V5030 disk array. We have 12 flash modules for the OS and for a portion of the TSM installation. However, the main bulk of the directory container pool is on two 92F expansion frames off of that V5030 array.

Right now, we have four separate instances that we are monitoring today.

With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups.

The most valuable features of the new version are directory container pools with inline data deduplication and compression.

It seems like they are a little behind on the integration to Azure Cloud as well as Amazon. Some products are there, but not everything is there, and these seems to be with all products. Even Azure themselves as we are looking to migrate, they do not have the functionality we need. Then all of a sudden, it is there with the next order.

It is very stable for us. So far, the only time it has been down is when we actually had to take it down.

This remains to be seen because we are actually going through a cloud migration process. We are looking at options which will allow us to tier out the cost as well as put another Spectrum Protect in the cloud for data protection backup out there.

With our transition and initiative to go to Azure Cloud, Spectrum Protect's functionality is not there yet for native Azure Cloud integration. We have found out that it is definitely in the road map for native integration to Azure. It is just whether or not it will be there on time for us.

We have used technical support. We had a few performance issues coming up with the new version. IBM jumped on the issues very quickly, got people on the team, and we have been able to work through them.

Everything from the OS installed to provisioning the disk to installing the Spectrum Protect software was neither straightforward nor complex. There were a few bugs and hiccups along the way, but nothing that a seasoned admin could not overcome.

We also evaluated Commvault.

I would have to see what their actual long-term strategic direction is first. If they want to remain on-premise, I would probably recommend Spectrum Protect. If they wanted to go on cloud and a more immediate time frame, it may comedown to Commvault, who already have native books set up as a service within Azure and Amazon Cloud.

Main criteria for selecting Spectrum Protect: We have had IBM Spectrum Protect for a number of years, so vendor stability is one thing that we look for being a government organization. Then obviously, the next one is cost.

The primary use case is to provide backup and archive our data, onsite and offsite. It is performing very well. 

Our infrastructure is on-premise; nothing is in the cloud. We are utilizing things like spinning disks, flash storage, tape, snapshots, etc. We are still sending tapes outside. 

It has a lot more capabilities and functions than a lot of other products. Even though it is more complex, the reason is because it gives you a lot more features. This is what I  prefer, especially for a long retention.

I have not implemented the most important feature yet: node replication. I can have a hot Spectrum Protect server under the DR site instead of having to build one up like I would have had to before.

I would like to see the operations center be a lot more functional. It was nowhere near as functional as the admin center, and I'm doing a lot of command line with it. I grew up doing command line, so it is fine for me. For people that are younger, they want to do everything on their smart phone, and running hundreds of commands is not the answer. Therefore, more functionality for things like creating tape drives and tape libraries, as the functionality is not at the operations center yet. If the operations center had been fully functional, I would have probably given it a rating of a 10.

So far, so good. I am looking to find out, in the future, what the stability is going to be and the best way to architect what we are designing to do.

Everything so far has been really good. It is very scalable.

I am managing two instances of Spectrum Protect.

The technical support has been really good for both Spectrum Protect and IBM Storage. The support team has very responsive. I want to be talking to somebody who can help me and knows more than me, which is the case with IBM technical support. So, their support has been very good.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward because it was really old school. Now, with the whole new design of where we are going, I am involved from ground floor up.

The product is more complex and can be pricey, but you are paying for one copy of the data as opposed to other vendors. For example, if I have five copies of the data, I will be spending a lot more money. Switching to one vendor, it will cost over a million dollars to give us less functionality, which is why we did not do it.

Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful.

We evaluated Commvault, NetBackup, and Axiom (until they were purchased by a competitor). We also looked at Rubrik. We prefer Spectrum Protect, and even though we have looked at its competitors, we have never switched.

I would recommend going with Spectrum Protect. That is what I would tell them now, and I have, I have former coworkers using other products that ask me about designing a hot site, because their product does not do it.

Main criteria when selecting a vendor: Something that would allow us to be able to have it onsite. For the other vendors who we looked at, you would still have to build up a new server or new environment, and hopefully have a backup of your database. In this case, I can switch from a primary to a secondary, back and forth, instead of spending weeks, maybe months, producing a tape library. Now, I do not have to do that.

Client scheduling, deduplication, parallel processing of restores, disaster recovery manager.

Very reliable backup and recovery system. If you have SAN on the back-end housing TSM’s storage pools, you can achieve blazing fast restore times.

DB2 at the back-end database has some bugs in version 6; however, I have not yet worked with version 7 of TSM, so perhaps IBM has improved this, but don’t know for sure.

Since 2005.

Yes, with deduplication turned on, you need to be careful about how you scale server ratio to clients. Dedup takes more DB space and processing time. We overloaded our first v. 6 server when we moved from 5.3 and this was a major headache.

For some reason on 6.2, when DB2 does a reorg, dsmserv will hang. Have not been able to troubleshoot deep enough due to lack of time.

No. You just need to have the servers and backend SAN storage with which to scale. $$$

IBM has been pretty good so far and you get people who know the product with great expertise.

5/5.

No, I have used TSM since I started managing backup/recovery.

I would say its fairly complex and would be best done with a consultant. It is a product designed to scale to immense proportions and takes a team to put it together right.

Implemented through a vendor team. The consultant we had was an expert.

Not sure. But it has saved us from data loss many times.

Not sure.

No.

Definitely recommend it.

I use IBM Spectrum Protect in my company as an enterprise tool that serves as a backup solution. My company operates as a system integrator.

The most valuable feature of the solution is application-aware backups.

IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool. IBM Spectrum Protect should be made a user-friendly tool. Though I feel that there are attempts from IBM Spectrum Protect to improve, it's still a very tricky or complex tool.

Three or four years ago, IBM introduced IBM Spectrum Protect for VM-level backup, which was just like how Veeam functions.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for more than ten or twelve years. My company has a partnership with IBM.

IBM Spectrum Protect is a very stable solution.

Scalability-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect is basically for large enterprises.

The solution's technical support response is quick. Due to some software criticality or complexities in the solution, the technical team takes time. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

My company operates as a system integrator and deals with other products like Veeam, Commvault, and NetBackup.

My company has experience dealing with legacy systems, owing to which the setup phase of IBM Spectrum Protect was not too difficult for us. IBM Spectrum Protect might be difficult to configure and handle for a new user, a layman, or a simple administrator.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in an hour and a half.

The biggest benefit of IBM Spectrum Protect is the migration of legacy workloads to the new version of the product, allowing a user to take ten catalogs to the new version, but in products similar to IBM Spectrum Protect, you don't get such options. With other products apart from IBM Spectrum Protect, you have to get a new installation of the new version done and migrate the data from the previous versions. The beauty of IBM Spectrum Protect is that it gives version-to-version upgrades and allows you to take the complete database of your backup to the new version.

IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product.

IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool, like Veeam or other backup software products, but it's a very comprehensive solution as an enterprise-level backup for application-aware backups or as a direct DB backup.

IBM Spectrum Protect serves as a good option for a lot of large organizations that need application-aware backups, access to multiple copies of data, and security. Organizations with a small footprint or those that don't have very well-educated administrators go for the backup provided by Veeam backups or any other GUI-based backup solution.

I recommend others to use IBM Spectrum Protect, but they have to build their own skill to run the software.

If you talk about a complete, full-fledged solution that offers good handling capabilities, IBM Spectrum Protect is a nice choice. If you want an easy-to-use solution, then there are many other options on the market apart from IBM Spectrum Protect.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

Its primary use case is backup and recall for enterprises. 

We were looking for an enterprise solution, and we found Spectrum Protect. It is more enterprise backup and that is what you want.

I am managing two Spectrum Protect system plus one tests.

We are not using cloud storage currently, nor are we planning to in the future.

I am working to implement Spectrum Protect Plus

• It saves you a lot of storage.
• Our performance is better. 
• Our product is running better than it was previously, which is huge.

My organization loves it, because they say it is one of the best product they have ever used.

• Deduplication
• Data compression
• There are a lot more features that we can use versus the previous product.

I want to see better compression than what it currently does. I heard that 8.1.5 has better compression. 

There are more features, but I want test earlier, therefore we can do more bugging for the compression feature.

Stability is good. 

However, depending upon what feature you turn on, you might run into more problems, then it is not stable. For example, when we started with deduplication, it was not working correctly. I spent so many hours with IBM support and development. They were not able to figure out what was going on and why. It was really a nightmare. We spent more hours working this product issue than I spent with my family.

Scalability is good. The product is so scalable and vast. 

They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux.

We plan to add on more Spectrum Protects in the future.

The technical support is good. I prefer talking to the Level 2 support, because I feel that the Level 1 support sometimes wastes too much of my time.

We needed a better enterprise backup because we were backing up OS-specific backup products with OS only. Thus, we had too many backup products for each OS separately. This was a nightmare to backup. Therefore, we decided to get an all-in-one backup.

The initial setup was easy, but I did struggle with it with no training as I was new to the product. I did do a good job, though.

We also evaluated NetBackup.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• OS compatibility
• Scalability
• Pricing, etc.