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BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BDRSuite Backup & Replication
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), MSP Backup (1st)
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Redha Benlaksira - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it lets customers choose to restore their data to an hour or a day ago
BDRSuite is better than competing solutions because it can protect, back up, and recover data. A feature called live migration allows you to recover the same data in different environments. For example, I can back up the data from a VMware machine and restore it to a Hyper-V. You can also create repositories and back up environments to a cloud platform like GCP and AWS S3 buckets. BDRSuite allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on an EC3 instance or Microsoft 365 mailboxes, SharePoint, etc. The solution allows us to recover data instantly. We can recover all our data in under 15 minutes. In a virtual environment, we can recover a virtual machine and all its data in under 15 minutes. It's the same for a NAS, SAN, or DAS disk. The ability to boot instantly enables customers to maintain their business operations without interruption. BDRSuite's ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it gives customers the option to restore their data to an hour or a day ago. They can choose a full, incremental, or synthetic backup. Incremental backup makes sense if you are backing up the same data daily and you want to save space and network resources. It only backs up the differences or updates in every block. I've worked with lots of backup solutions, and BDRSuite is the easiest to use. It's simple to install and create backup jobs. It doesn't require many tasks to install the solution. You can easily back up and restore from one console
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most useful feature is that you can back up the virtual machines in different ways. You can back up from a vhost, and you can also back up from a Windows server. It doesn't matter what type of infrastructure or hypervisor is there. It's very flexible, which is its most useful feature for us."
"Its ease of use and price are most valuable. It is simple and straightforward. Someone who has never used any backup software will easily understand it from the first installation. It is that simple. Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts."
"I get my backups done."
"If we do a backup of a machine at some point and the server crashes, then we can restore this machine to a different server with the same settings and setup. We will just have to tweak one or two things, like the IP. Then, it is ready to go."
"BDRSuite can help organizations save time and money by automating backup and recovery processes and reducing the need for manual intervention."
"The smooth implementation is the most valuable aspect of BDRSuite."
"We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer."
"It makes it possible for us to back up our Unix machines without installing a host, client, or any client software. It gives us some peace of mind in regards to those servers getting backed up."
"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."
"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."
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"The solution is mostly stable."
"I love the TDP for VMware because of the web interface and the possibilities provided by this tool. It's amazing."
"Instead of taking three different backups of your systems, you're taking only one. You're able to crack that open and get what you need. The incident recovery, where it creates the VM and then you're running it, technically you're running it on Spectrum Protect. But then in the background, it's doing the storage motion and moving it off the Spectrum Protect back to your VMware environment. The users don't know the difference."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has excellent integration capability."
"The feature we have found most valuable is when you want to integrate it with a Tape Library and then do the DRM life cycle. That is when it works the best."
 

Cons

"The process is a bit cumbersome when you remove an agent, delete that job, and add the agent to the same server. Even though the agent is already installed in that server, the system does not recognize it. We have to uninstall the current agent, restart the server, install the push agent - a new agent - and then restart the server. I think they should try to avoid that."
"One thing that I reported with the backups: When there are accentuated characters in a path, then we can't restore documents into a folder. There is a bug with the restoration and restoring files with accentuated characters in the path. Hopefully, they have repaired this because otherwise we will restore files and find out that they are not there."
"It would be good to have a volume licensing discount. We're a managed IT service provider, so we're backing up not just our own systems but all our clients'. In that regard, as we grow, we're putting business through Vembu. There is not any specific partner incentive at all. So that would be nice to see."
"I have seen that the BDRSuite user interface can be less intuitive and more challenging to navigate compared to other similar products."
"What I would love to see on the dashboard are graphs, per backup job. I want to see the month and the days in it... If a job has failed, when did it actually fail and what percentage of it failed? Did it fail completely, 75 percent or 100 percent or did it only fail partially?"
"We do a lot of internal automation, so the Vembu API definitely has some gaps. The Vembu API could definitely use some improvement. We do rely a lot on automation outside of just the regular interface. We've noticed that the Vembu GUI is good, but we do leverage the APIs for a lot of stuff, and there's definitely some room for improvement there."
"I have not been impressed by the data compression of the backup images. They seem to take up nearly as much space on the backup drive as they do on the server."
"Vembu software runs on a Windows Server. The Windows Server has to be connected to the internet so it can connect with Vembu’s servers. It has to connect with Vembu. For some reason, if it doesn't connect, it stops working, and I don't know why on earth they do that. They require it to connect to the internet and connect with Vembu for it to continue to function. If the internet is down or if the server can't reach the internet, it stops working after a few days. That's not great because there are some people who want to do backups but they don't want to have their server accessible on the internet."
"They should introduce more features for virtualization platforms and backing up IBMs. Backup speeds should also be improved."
"Perhaps some better documentation, which I believe was better in the past."
"We would like to see capabilities of long-term archiving and more support for hardware platforms."
"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."
"The GUI has long been a problem for TSM/Spectrum Protect."
"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."
"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."
"I should be able to backup Linux. I would like SUSE for Linux on POWER. Right now, we have to use Storex, which is a pain to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We chose this solution because it was cheaper and easier to use than Veeam and other solutions of this type."
"The pricing could have been cheaper."
"The pricing is good. The tough part is estimating storage needs."
"Take a look at the pricing and licensing closely. When we installed the BDR disaster recovery server, which is the duplication of the backup data on one server onto a second one where the backup data resides, it was not clear that this DR server needed two other licenses. These licenses were to back up the copy of the first backup server that had two licenses for the two physical host that it was backing up in the first place. Moving files around to a second DR server, why would I need an extra two licenses? I don't know if it's to make money, but it was not very obvious and I had to abort the project from there because I didn't plan to pay for extra licenses to copy data of the first two physical servers. I also didn't understand why it was needed. Hopefully, they will improve the explanation in the documentation for this."
"The only thing with room for improvement, as everybody says, since I'm in a home lab, would be the price for the CPU; the cost... As far as competitors' prices go, Vembu was definitely better than all the competitors I found."
"For our needs, the price of the backup system is not too much... We checked out Veeam and Acronis but both were very expensive compared to Vembu."
"The price point of this software is good, and I can do everything I need. In terms of the affordability of the solution for businesses with a tight budget, we're on a small business enterprise package, which is half the price of the regular enterprise package. It's super affordable. The features you get for it are enterprise-level. I'm very happy with the pricing."
"I deployed Veeam and it worked very well, but the problem was that its price was very high. As a result, I searched for another solution and found Vembu. I deployed it and we have been happy with it. For us, the major difference was the pricing."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."
"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."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
87%
Educational Organization
3%
Retailer
2%
Performing Arts
1%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I had a small problem integrating VMware and Hyper-V when customers used a free VMware license to create VMs. This is a problem because many customers use the free version of VMware. There are also...
What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

Vembu BDRSuite
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.