IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

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

I've been using Spectrum Protect for twenty years.

Spectrum Protect's stability is good. We have experience with big companies that have a huge number of objects, and it works fine with sixty to seventy terabytes per day.

Spectrum Protect is scalable, you just have to be careful when migrating data and so on.

IBM's support hasn't been so good in the last few years.

The initial setup is complex,and requires planning.

Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option.

I advise anybody considering implementing Spectrum Protect to make very good plans before starting, know your backup requirements, and test the restore. You need to plan a backup solution for a good and fast restore. I would give Spectrum Protect a rating of eight out of ten.

We have customers and retailers who have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for many, many years, so all our sales over the last five years have been renewable sales. I'm a reseller and partner, so I provide this solution. This solution is deployed on-premises. 

In the past, one of the most valuable features, and the biggest advantage, was the incremental forever feature. Not many other backup vendors provided that. In the pre-virtualization environment, it was very robust and simple technology, especially writing to tape. 

IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. 

IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. 

The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time. 

I have been working with IBM Spectrum Protect for over 20 years. 

This solution is stable. 

This solution is scalable. 

IBM support has always been reasonably good. They've got a worldwide network and they've been doing it for many, many years, so I can't fault them from a support point of view. Whenever there had been a problem, we had various people working on resolving it. 

IBM Spectrum Protect is very complex to install—it's not a simple installation at all, which is why there's always professional services attached to a Spectrum Protect sale. 

The amount of technical people you will need depends on the size of the environment, but in an environment with about 800 VMs and a couple of Unix machines, you need at least two administrators. 

We implement this solution for customers. 

Customers need to pay for licensing in order to use IBM Spectrum Protect. The customers that have been using it for a long time are okay and happy with it. From a cost point of view, it's better for them to renew their licenses than to go through the difficult process of changing a backup product in their environment, and migrate from one product to another. 

Currently, we have moved away from Spectrum Protect, and towards Rubrik. Rubrik has been my product of choice over the last two years, at least. Even with the recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, I still don't believe IBM Spectrum Protect is up to par with the likes of Rubrik. Of the customers who still use IBM Spectrum Protect, we only have three left—there used to be a lot more. 

I currently rate IBM Spectrum Protect a six out of ten. 

The advice I would give to anyone considering starting to use IBM Spectrum Protect is to use Rubrik instead. I've always been a very big proponent of Spectrum Protect—years back, I used to be a trainer for IBM as well, so I really like the product—but at the moment, I just think there are other solutions that work better. 

It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself.

In terms of features, they've got it all covered. The features they have are quite good. The only downside to it is that it is for an enterprise or big organization. In my opinion, it is not for a small business. 

I have been using this solution for more than 15 years.

If you want to get the maximum benefit out of it, you should be a big organization. In my opinion, it is not for a small organization. 

It depends on the experience that you have. Instead of Windows, we've mostly implemented it on a UNIX-based platform, such as AIX, or Linux. So, you need someone who has the skills to manage these platforms. Apart from that, Spectrum Protect itself is a great product.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. 

I am using it for standard data protection, backup recovery, and disaster recovery.

I am using its most recent version.

The customization and the ability to backup across all platforms are the most valuable features.

Their support is not as strong as most of the products.

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

I have been using this solution for a little bit over a year.

It is quite stable. It is pretty much set-and-forget.

It is scalable.

It can be fairly complex depending on what is being set up.

That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect a seven out of 10.

I primarily use the backup and recovery features.

It works well with AIX. 

Sometimes we experience trouble with the backup transfer of the control files. 

The product is very stable.

The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, Symantec costs less than this solution.

• 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.

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. 

• Enterprise solution
• Scripting-automation possibilities
• Easy commands
• Very good monitoring tool 
• Operations center
• Good compression
• Deduplication

We've used it for a very long time and this is impossible to describe. 

• Enterprise solution
• Easy to build and add new instances: physical and virtual 
• Easy deployment in the cloud
• Scripting-automation possibilities necessary to have in a big environment above 5 PB a month
• Very good monitoring tool 
• "Operations center" very useful in order to check how instances feel and backup results.
• We also use it to create tickets in SNOW in order to address issues and assign to the right team.  

• A new adjustment to Azure cloud
• Possibility to split big file spaces CIFS and NFS into smaller parts (together with storage split) in order to avoid retaking backup from scratch.
• Possibility to move file-spaces between nodes: These are very needed in very big environments.