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CA Allocate DASD Space and Placement vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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

CA Allocate DASD Space and ...
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Storage Management (13th)
IBM Storage Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

CA Allocate DASD Space and Placement and IBM Storage Protect aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. CA Allocate DASD Space and Placement is designed for Storage Management and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, up 3.1% compared to last year.
IBM Storage Protect, on the other hand, focuses on Backup and Recovery, holds 1.6% mindshare, down 2.3% since last year.
Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CA Allocate DASD Space and Placement3.4%
NetApp OnCommand Insight8.4%
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor7.2%
Other81.0%
Storage Management
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Storage Protect1.6%
Veeam Data Platform5.6%
Commvault Cloud3.3%
Other89.5%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

it_user354057 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mainframe Storage Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's a space recovery product that helps us fix problems before they happen so we work on them after running a job, but I don't want to have to touch a file to make changes or updates.
One of the biggest benefits of CA Allocate is in the cost. We initially went with BMC MainView, which is a great product and a little more user friendly than CA Allocate. But because of our good relationship with CA, we were able to mimic everything we had with BMC. Any issues we had doing that, CA collected them right away to help us. As a space recovery product, CA Allocate helps us fix problems before they happen and then we work on them after we run a job. If somebody does not put the right space parameter, we let the job run and then we fix it after. If somebody does not optimize a data set, we run our reports after talking to these people without ever having an event waste CPU cycles.
reviewer2787573 - PeerSpot reviewer
Interim Head of Infrastructure at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Backup coverage has supported immutable protection and now needs a more modern, intuitive interface
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy to use and more relatable to younger engineers because its interface design is more similar to Office 365 and the newer controls and labels that we are accustomed to. The difficulty that we now have with IBM Storage Protect is that for this day and age, compared to other products that are out there, it seems complex. If we look back 15 years ago, all enterprise class backup software was complex, so IBM was not any different. However, many of these older systems, such as Commvault, still have the same complaint that they are very complex because they have tried to keep that same interface and the same way it works. This suits them, but it probably needed a complete overhaul to bring it into the ease of use that we have with modern software. However, that upgrade has not been done. IBM Storage Protect has not been upgraded into a modern platform. It still looks a legacy platform.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As a space recovery product, CA Allocate helps us fix problems before they happen and then we work on them after we run a job."
"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"It is good in terms of functionality, and my clients are very satisfied with this solution."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."
"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."
"The most valuable feature for data recovery in IBM Spectrum Protect is its database protection capabilities."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"It is easy to implement and restores very quickly."
 

Cons

"Allocate is a good product, but it's not there yet in terms of that."
"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."
"Scalability needs some work in some areas. The number of volumes needs to be increased drastically."
"The pricing is a bit high. It would be ideal if it was more affordable."
"We need everything cloud. Strong support for cloud services. S3 connectivity, which is mandatory for us in the future along with this integration of Spectrum Copy Data Management or Spectrum Protect services together with these Spectrum Protect Plus functionalities, e.g., hardware, snapshots, and Copy Data Management. They should come together in one solution."
"If they have migrated off of it, they migrated off of it because of its lack of virtual environment functions."
"This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround."
"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."
"Although I am not a technical user, I would say the cloud integration features could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."
"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"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."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise95
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
I do not know the current licensing cost for IBM Storage Protect and how we get our support because our licensing model is not quite standard. We do not buy IBM Storage Protect direct from IBM. We ...
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is my primary tool for backup and recovery. We also use it for immutable backups to protect against ransomware. We use IBM Storage Protect for everything on-premises. The benefi...
 

Also Known As

BrightStor DASD Space and Placement
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tieto
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Dell Technologies, SolarWinds and others in Storage Management. Updated: August 2026.
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