IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

It builds confidence to recover from a variety of disasters. It really keeps our data safe and lets us manage what is important to us and our customers.

Flexibility and Scalability. Sturdy software for potentially large environments. Because of the flexible parameters, everything can be fine-tuned to the customers’ needs in their environment.

If customers have problems or requests and they file a PMR/ESF (Problem Management Record/Electronic Service Request) to IBM, they can present a weblist of when this problem/feature will be solved/released depending on the amount of other customers having the same request. (People can vote on how useful/problematic new features/items listed by other customers are and thus create a higher priority.)

A recent failure with the Spectrum Protect v8.1 client on windows 2016:
2017-05-25 23:28:30 ANS6718E: The path contains too many nested subdirectories. The maximum number of nested directories is 1400.
(This was never a problem on other windows versions and seems to be introduced in the client version on Win2k16) Will be fixed in the next client version v8.1.2.) (Will be released in a few weeks.)
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1IT18901

There were stability issues only in the brand new features which were recently released.

There were scalability issues only in the brand new features which were recently released.

I would rate technical support as follows based on these categories:

• Help in own language (Dutch): 7/10.
• Speed: 8/10
• Customer friendliness: 9/10
• Ability to solve problems: 9/10
• In-depth knowledge (Level-1 and Level-2): 10/10

Arcserve and Microsoft Backup.

The installation was straightforward, although having specific knowledge about the product can be helpful.

That depends on the environment per customer. Since there are different licensing models, it's helpful to check which best fits the customers' needs.

We evaluated Arcserve and CommVault.

Follow a basic course before you start using the product. As it is so flexible, it's helpful to cover the basics and know what needs to be done to get the most out of this environment.

IBM Spectrum Protect is a very good product. However, we need to understand its structure better. In Poland, customers are happy with IBM's solution, making it a wonderful protection tool.

IBM is a valuable security component for our customers. Given the increasing threat of cyber attacks and ransomware, IBM provides excellent support to combat these kinds of attacks.

The components of IBM Spectrum Protect explain how the data is protected. The administration is very easy, and the vertical migration is intuitive.

The stability could be improved.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for ten years.

The solution is very stable.

We have one customer whose data becomes corrupt very quickly. IBM Spectrum Protect has configurations and administrative tools that are extremely useful for scaling up and managing the system with best practices to address these issues. All our other customers' systems are very stable. The environment was well-sized from the start, ensuring that the solution was set up with optimal access, and it has always worked exceptionally well.

Customer support is very good.

Positive

The technical people are comfortable with the interface and setup. The setup is quite easy, and we haven't encountered any issues. It is straightforward and problem-free.

Three months ago, one of the customers experienced a network outage. However, with the solution from IBM Spectrum Protect, they could return to production quickly. They highly value this solution. Additionally, they have not encountered any pricing issues, as they prioritize finding the right solution for their needs.

I rate the solution's ROI an eight out of ten.

Customers don't check the price because they buy the solution's value. 

IBM offers the right price. My customers choose it because they know it is a very good solution from IBM. Some previously used HP, but they switched to IBM after seeing the superior performance of IBM Spectrum Protect in the field.

We have two technical people to maintain the solution. 

Support is key if people need secure access to their data in the event of a disaster recovery or to restore data to a previous point in time. Sometimes, when people look for something on the web, finding the information is difficult. So, they help each other, work together, and resolve issues or find the necessary information.

Sometimes, we only use it to manage the number of activities related to the hardware. In our company, we go to the center, download, apply, and test the updates.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution can back up every kind of workload in the environment. It is a very old and robust solution. The product evolves with technology. I have been working on it since it was just a physical server. If we are using tapes, we can ship them offsite. We can build our new server and recover the data. If we use the online application, we can start recovering from the disaster location.

The VM backups are very useful. Most companies use VMs. The solution also provides agents for databases like Oracle, SQL, and SAP HANA. It is also a useful feature. The deduplication and compression feature eliminates almost 80% of the data. We have been using the tool until now. It's working fine. We do not have any complaints. The technology is always evolving. I rate the product’s performance an eight out of ten.

There are new products in the market that might be more useful for various cyber threats like ransomware. IBM is not doing its best for such threats. The solution must protect against ransomware attacks better. It must let us know if something has gone wrong with the server. Cyber Recovery must be improved.

I have been using the solution for 17 years.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. Almost everything in my organization is getting backed up by IBM Spectrum Protect. We have thousands of users. We need ten administrators for maintenance.

The technical support is not the best. The support team must improve its response time and competence. It must jump on the issues and resolve them.

Neutral

The implementation is difficult. It is not intuitive. It needs special skills. People must do their research before implementing the solution.

The product is not cheap. Other backup solutions like Commvault are in the same price range. There are no additional costs associated with the tool.

There are a lot of other tools that are better than IBM Spectrum Protect. These tools offer ease of use. Spectrum Protect is not easy to administer. Other solutions are UI-based.

We are using other IBM products. The solution is integrated with SAP. IBM Spectrum Protect is a good tool. However, it has to include Cyber Recovery features. It will be more useful if the features are integrated with the product. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company was using IBM Spectrum Protect to back up the environment. It helped my company implement a backup policy. My company needed different versioning and types of backup, but in the last two years, the license cost for the solution got out of hand.

What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines.

Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well, but I heard that the issue had been resolved on IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, though I didn't get a chance to test that feature.

The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect.

Another con in the solution is the Microsoft Office 365 backup, which needed to be handled better by IBM Spectrum Protect, and could have some improvements.

My company switched from IBM Spectrum Protect to Veeam, but I had hands-on experience with IBM Spectrum Protect within the last twelve months.

My company has been using IBM Spectrum Protect for the last ten years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is a very stable solution, so I'm rating it eight out of ten in terms of stability.

Scalability-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect is a seven out of ten for me.

I'm rating the technical support for IBM Spectrum Protect a nine out of ten.

Positive

We stepped away from IBM Spectrum Protect and have started using Veeam, primarily because of the higher license cost of IBM Spectrum Protect.

Before using IBM Spectrum Protect, we used Omniback from HP, and we switched to IBM Spectrum Protect because Omniback didn't keep up with the trend, was still working with OTA backup, and didn't support our backup needs, for example, versioning.

Regarding the initial setup for IBM Spectrum Protect, it's a four out of ten for me. It's complex.

Complete deployment of IBM Spectrum Protect took two weeks.

Initially, the team had some problems with the setup because there was an error in the assessment, and my company ran out of capacity within two months of implementing IBM Spectrum Protect. It was garbage in, garbage out. The evaluation by the administrators was not done correctly, so that IBM couldn't supply an adequate solution.

We hired a consultant from IBM to deploy IBM Spectrum Protect ten years ago. The consultant assessed the environment and implemented the solution.

I don't have the metrics on ROI from IBM Spectrum Protect, but mostly, my company switched over to the product because Omniback was no longer adequate.

Using IBM Spectrum Protect meant using fewer tapes versus Omniback because IBM Spectrum Protect could handle bigger tape sizes, while Omniback held three or five-millimeter tape sizes. IBM Spectrum Protect required less storage, so it was mostly good enough to support my company's new backup policy through versioning, encryption, and security.

ROI-wise, I'm scoring IBM Spectrum Protect as seven out of ten.

IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD.

My company was on a PPU license for IBM Spectrum Protect, which was okay initially. After two or three years, IBM called to switch the license to terabyte licensing, and it seemed OK to change at the time, but in the last three or four years, it became expensive.

The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten.

My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees.

I evaluated a solution from Quantum, though I can't recall its name.

I have experience with IBM Spectrum Protect, formerly Tivoli Storage Manager.

My company was an IBM customer but has stepped away and moved to Veeam.

The company had three different sites where the solution had on-premise deployments.

Regarding the implementation, there was an IBM consultant on site and two backup administrations learning the IBM Spectrum Protect installation process along the way. My company also had a team of five or six system and network administrators who helped with client-related concerns because my company had more than one hundred fifty clients for separate sites. The two backup administrators handled the maintenance for IBM Spectrum Protect.

One thousand two hundred people use the solution.

I would suggest to others looking into implementing IBM Spectrum Protect to research terabyte licensing and be clear on how much data your company has, including your expected data growth, so you can assess where you'll stand regarding license costs. If you're moving to big data or you'll be storing big data, PPU licensing could be a more suitable option.

My rating for IBM Spectrum Protect is seven out of ten because it's one of the two best backup software currently available. It also has excellent support if you have a maintenance contract, but I live in a small country, so this could be why IBM provided better support.

I'm an IBM Spectrum Protect customer.

The deduplication and compression are the most valuable features.

We can get lots of storage space. Storage is a big problem. Deduplication gives me a lot more flexibility so I can do more backup in the same storage space.

I would like to see:

• More flexibility
• More features
• More scalability. I would like it to work with different storage solutions.
• There's a limitation with the cloud container. That is a limitation in terms of what it can do with the cloud.
• I would like them to increase functionality in cloud containers.
• Easier to learn: It's too complex. It takes long time to learn.

I would like more feature on Inline dedupelication.

1. Move data from one container pool to another container pool
2. Move cloud storage container to another cloud storage container
3. Currently, Inline deduplication you can copy to tape but cannot restore any data. I know it is in road map to restore from tape
4. If the Inline deduplication has a issue, You need to restore whole container pool before repair command is issue.
5. If your container pool is very large means few 30 to 40 TB. It can days to restore container pool. If you like to restore to another location, You need lots of space. That can be issue.

Stability is 50/50. They come out with fixes, but then they break some other stuff. I am constantly fighting with them to fix some new stuff. As they put out the new patches, they break something else. It's very complicated product, so they can't cover every possible scenario.

The scalability is extremely good.

I use technical support all the time. I would evaluate them depending upon who is helping me and what kind of problem is being dealt with. Sometimes it's frustrating, because I want to go to Level-2 support. Sometimes they take too long to go to Level-2. It then took them too long before they called me back. They have to improve the process to call back right away.

We knew it was time for a new solution because we were using Backup Exec before and it was not meant to be an enterprise backup solution. We were looking for some kind of enterprise backup system, and we had too many backup solutions.

We had one for ERX, one for Linux, and one for NetWare. We used NetWare and Windows, so we had to consolidate all the backup solutions into one backup solution.

We found that TSM was the best, as we can back up any OS.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward.

NetBackup was on my shortlist. Back then, they were not running on Windows and they ran on Unix. I was not a Unix guy for too long, and I wanted to feel comfortable with the OS. I came from a mainframe background. It's more flexible, and it can back up a cross-platform backup to any platform. That's a good feature, and they have it. You don't need a different backup solution and a different OS for each platform.

It depends upon the company and what they're looking for. It's an expensive product, but it works really well. You can install it on any platform. It's not a perfect product. There's always bug and there's always something going on.

When selecting a vendor, we look for support, how long they have been in business, and how often they do product upgrades.

For me, the fact that we can do inline deduplication and compression with Spectrum Protect itself, where before we had to use other products.

It simplifies our backup environment to one product. Cost is also much, much cheaper because you not only save space, because you're deduplicating and then compressing on the storage end. You are also saving on the licensing, because the license is after deduplication and compression.

Right now, we are in it for container pools and such. The ability to have an active-active, where you no longer have to go in and do modifications if your primary site goes down and your offsite needs to do the primary backups.

It takes a lot of manual work to go in and update all the records and run a bunch of scripts. I would like to see that becoming more automated and with more intelligence in Spectrum, so it can then detect what is down.

When my client comes to you to back it up, he not only comes to you for restores, but it should be able to do a backup without having to modify the state of the node registration.

There are features that it came out with, such as the directory container pools, which brought it back up to where other products we were using are currently at. Namely we were using EMC Avamar in our remote sites, because they were much more RAM friendly. Now, in the past year and a half with the directory container pools, version 7.1.3, brought TSM up to that level. I'd like to see that performance increased.

I can't comment on stability. We are only now doing testing. It was stable, but now we're rolling it out into production. We are just starting to get our feet wet in production sites.

We have it in two to three sites right now, and we're deploying it in about 10 to 15 sites. We should actually be up to almost 30 sites by the end of this year.

We haven't had any need for support. We've been working directly with our technical sales rep for any problems.

The first criterion is the product. Second, customer service is one of the top of benefits to have, especially the technical support. They need to have knowledgeable people to talk to without having to always keep restating what your problem is. It gets kind of tedious and boring. Having that more streamlined and having more access to developers and the higher-level support when needed is my top requirement.

The initial setup was straightforward. Just follow the blueprints. They are very well written and that works pretty well.

We evaluated EMC Avamar, which we were using. We were using TSM (previously TSM, now Spectrum) in our data center, but not in our remote sites. We actually moved away from them five years ago, because Avamar was better. We evaluated Veeam, CommVault, NetBackup, and others.

Do your research. Don't just look at one product. We evaluated three or four different products.

I cannot tell what is the tool's most valuable feature. It is used in a different department of my company.

The technical team's service depends on where the support service is located. Some products are not included in IBM itself, but external companies are developing some solutions for IBM. I think the support within IBM is even better than that offered for IBM Cloud Management Console by Rocket Software, so I think the support is not as good as IBM itself.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for fifteen years. My company uses the tool for different departments. I am a customer of the solution.

It is a very stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

A maximum of five people use the tool.

The solution's technical support is pretty good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have not worked with any other tools apart from IBM Spectrum Protect.

A couple of years ago, I worked with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).

For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable, but most people don't know that. People only see one major price for the tool, which runs into millions, so they would always say that it is an expensive tool, but it isn't, and it is a normal price for me. I saw some of the comments on PeerSpot's website. I don't think most people know that when a company has large systems in place, the TCO is a lot lower.

Speaking about how IBM Spectrum Protect has handled our enterprise-level backup and recovery needs, I would say that we are using it right now for Linux and as an archive system. We also have an IBM storage system.

I have not used IBM Spectrum Protect for disaster recovery planning. Mostly, our service as a company is to maintain and administer IBM Spectrum Protect.

I am not only familiar with the tool's deduplication technology but also with its competitor's product from Dell.

I cannot say whether the duplication technology of IBM Spectrum Protect improved our storage efficiency because we do not have it in-house.

I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product. My company has an external third-party supplier that maintains and administers the tool for us.

The tool is complex. You can't spend a lot of time administering and maintaining the system.

We only use it for archiving and some backups in our company.

I rate the tool a six to seven out of ten,

The most valuable feature for data recovery in IBM Spectrum Protect is its database protection capabilities. It ensures the integrity and availability of databases through online communication and robust backup drivers.

There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups. IBM hasn't progressed much in enhancing its products, leaving users seeking alternative solutions for virtual backups, like Spectrum Protect Plus.

I have been working with IBM Spectrum Protect for 18 years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is very stable. We haven't had any stability issues so far.

IBM Spectrum Protect is highly scalable, ranging from small environments with just a few servers to large-scale deployments with up to 3,000 servers.

I would rate the technical support as an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of IBM Spectrum Protect is complex but flexible, suitable for various environments. Implementation typically takes around three to four months for a large environment with over 500 servers. It may require a team of one specialist and two analysts for deployment and one person for ongoing maintenance.

The incremental backup capability in IBM Spectrum Protect has streamlined daily operations by steadily backing up data over time. However, it is important to note that Spectrum Protect focuses on database and file/folder backups, not virtual environments. For virtual environment backups, Spectrum Protect Plus is required.

IBM Spectrum Protect primarily focuses on backing up databases, online databases, files, and folders, but it lacks native support for virtual machine backups. For virtual environment backups, you would need to use a specific tool called Spectrum Protect Plus.

The deduplication technology in IBM Spectrum Protect helps reduce storage needs but performs at a medium level of efficiency and performance.

I would recommend IBM Spectrum Protect based on your environment's backup strategy. If you primarily need to backup databases, it is a good choice. However, for large virtual environments, consider combining it with other technologies like Spectrum Protect Plus for comprehensive coverage.

Overall, I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect as a five out of ten.