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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect vs Rubrik comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rubrik is 7.7%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.
CarlosCastells - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to do backup, easy to deploy and scalable
I have experience with different solutions like Oracle, Veeam, andCommvault Cloud. Right now, we are testing a solution for Kubernetes. We are trying to replace it, so we just don't know yet. I don't really know if Rubrik is a good solution for this. We are testing Velero (Open Source) or Kasten K10, and I don't know Rubrik's view for this type of technology.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
"Once setup, you do not need to touch it again. You just need to do a formal check on possibly batch updates."
"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."
"It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection."
"SPIR is Instant Recovery for Spectrum Protect. It sends snapshots using space efficiently and blocking backups to the Spectrum Protect server. It provisions the snapshot from the backup server to the same or new server near instantly."
"The ability to do dedupe in the product is nice to have."
"They have recently added support tickets specifically engineered around performance. This has been very useful for us when we run into issues where customers are looking to try to squeeze a lot more horsepower out of older system."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"Rubrik is an easy and automatic solution that needs no manual intervention."
"Disk mount that lets a restore happen immediately, no need to re-hydrate."
"The most valuable feature of Rubrik for me is its user-friendliness and efficiency."
"This is a centralized tool where we are able to schedule backups and perform monitoring."
"Instant recovery is a good feature."
"Drives the back-end through a powerful, well-documented API."
"The live mounting and compatibility of different operating systems is great."
"I value the options it has for storage tiering (i.e. whether it should be a flash, SSD, or pushed to the cloud) depending on the data provided."
 

Cons

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority."
"We are having a balance issue between the reclamation and the backup function. It has to take the space back from the tapes before it can record to those tapes, but sometimes those two processes are overlapping."
"Most customers still struggle with the reporting piece, especially generating reports. I think it needs some improvements in this area."
"The installation process could be simplified."
"Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly."
"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."
"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."
"They can include more cloud-enriching features. I would like IBM Spectrum Protect to have the functionality for backing up a VM directly in Azure. I would like to be able to back up a VM directly in Azure without spinning up a Hyper-V cluster and backing up the virtual server."
"There are some features to improve on in Rubrik. For instance, they should have a tool where we can integrate with our SAP HANA. Directly from the HANA studio, we should be able to do a backup. That's what I'm looking forward to in the future."
"I would like to see more openness for partners to access and assist in system management. Currently, access is limited, often handled by Rubrik personnel, likely due to security concerns."
"There could be better reporting and better filtering."
"We would like to be able to do granular restores directly from Exchange. Also, more granular management of VM backups would help."
"The reporting in the dashboard and reporting for extractions both need improvement. I would suggest making them easier to understand and use, not just out-of-the-box. We should also be able to customize them."
"Looking at how the data is broken down, we can see the total story, but sometimes it's difficult to see how big a particular snapshot is. Across 90 days of snapshots, which one is a particularly large one? Looking at the data holistically could be a lot easier."
"The reporting, in particular the customization of reports, needs to be improved."
"They have what's called an organization which means different groups of access to Rubrik, but the alerting only goes to the admins. My suggestion to Rubrik is to make sure that the separate organizations or groups of users get the appropriate alerting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."
"It is expensive."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The solution is expensive."
"The product is not cheap."
"Some people say it is expensive, but you get what you pay for. If you want a Maserati, you have to pay for it. If you want to buy a Porsche, you have to pay for it."
"Rubrik was probably the most expensive solution but in the long run, it's justified by the value of the data that it protects."
"Rubrik is quite expensive for small businesses."
"Rubrik is not cheap. Hopefully, you can archive your data on cheap storage to keep the investment minimal."
"Originally, we bought the units on perpetual licenses. Now, we have switched to Rubrik Go. I think the Rubrik Go subscription is a better model, where it is based on your onsite environment and you consume what you use."
"The setup cost is a bit high, but the solution is an all-in-one solution."
"As a technical person, I don't have the details, but from what I have heard, it can be expensive."
"Its price tends to go up with time. Its pricing definitely has room for improvement. If you negotiate right with them, you might get a good price. Support is a part of the package, and every three years, when we renew our contract, we get new hardware."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam sof...
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encr...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible w...
Which would you choose - Rubrik or Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam Backup & Replication provides an easy-to-set-up solution to the issue of data storage and recovery. Setting...
What do you like most about Rubrik?
It's easy to manage and has an innovated solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rubrik?
Rubrik is considered expensive, with a price rating of three out of ten. Improvements in pricing and licensing would ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Driscoll's, Red Hawk Casino, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Wabash National, Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Galliker Transport & Logistics
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: April 2025.
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