Cohesity DataProtect vs Dell NetWorker vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Cohesity and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Cohesity is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3, while Dell Technologies is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.8. Cohesity holds a 3.3% mindshare in BRS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Cohesity DataProtect

Read 74 Cohesity DataProtect reviews

6,845 Views
4,445 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Dell NetWorker

Read 84 Dell NetWorker reviews

4,382 Views
3,488 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,421 Views
2,509 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Cohesity DataProtect

Dell NetWorker

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cohesity DataProtect, Dell NetWorker, and IBM Spectrum Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery.

To learn more, read our detailed Backup and Recovery Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

June 2025

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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 July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 2.9%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

Read full review

ErmiasGirma

System and Cloud Deployment Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Offers seamless integration and cost-saving benefits with enhanced recovery capabilities

Currently, in my organization, I am using Dell NetWorker for open-source solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and some large VM environments. It also supports the Dell library and is used for the library archiving system Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting…

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboard is very easy to use."

"I love the ability to clone a virtual server in only minutes."

"I found value in the instant recovery with DataMove. I found value in the protection group model for applying policies to VMs. And in the overall UI navigation and the way that the application is laid out in the web browser."

"The support is awesome. They are very fast, competent and friendly."

"Converged system. It makes much more sense to have the backup server running on the same hardware as the storage for backup and recovery."

"The solution's SQL cloning is great, and its Instant Mount restoration of virtual machines is brilliant."

"I like that Cohesity offers the chance to have data on-premises and on the cloud. All the data is automatically sent to the cloud."

"Cohesity DataProtect is easy to deploy and operate."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"This solution is very stable."

"The software’s best feature is data backup for any system."

"The compression ratio is very flexible for designing all the required policies for backup."

"The response time of the tech support is swift. The support is fantastic."

"Good scalability and virtual environment protection."

"The extensive information provided on tool properties has been very useful, specifically the information on databases"

"The backup capabilities and the automatization of the backup - along with the potential to make the back up on a virtual machine - are the solution's most valuable aspects."

"The possibility of recovering up-to-the-moment data is very useful."

More Dell NetWorker pros

"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."

"The product is very stable."

"It is a very mature product."

"The solution is mostly stable."

"You can protect your data and keep it for long durations, without it spending too much time on the local disk."

"Our performance is better."

"It is pretty easy to use and maintain."

"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"A little more documentation on standard faults would help, as new features are being released quite often."

"In terms of the product itself, there have been a handful of patches that have had to be applied outside of the GUI via the command line. It's very straightforward and easy and in the same redundant fashion, but not quite as simple as one or two clicks. I'm hoping that will decrease going forward."

"Better support for legacy platforms would be nice, but we should be moving off those anyway."

"Add the ability to delete View Boxes and External Targets in the GUI."

"I think Cohesity could add more platform support. For example, they could improve integration with DB2 or make the integration S3 object storage a little tighter. Some of that stuff could use some work, but overall, it's a relatively comprehensive platform."

"What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?"

"Cohesity DataProtect can improve in the area of databases. We have had some challenges with both Cohesity and Rubrik being able to effectively back up in a timely manner the SQL Oracle workloads."

"Reporting is one area that isn't as robust as it could be."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"The product should provide integration with AWS."

"In the next release, I would like to see better pricing and more integration with the other products in Dell EMC."

"Since the product is not on the front banner of Dell, the support may not be the best."

"The implementation process could be improved."

"Lacks a restore feature."

"Reporting and support for this product need to be improved. There are multiple bugs that need to be fixed."

"Its console UI should be better. It should also have more out-of-the-box reporting functionalities. It should also have easier cloud integration. They have got cloud boost and things like that, but if you want to directly back up to the cloud, I'm not too sure whether you can do it. For example, you can easily send data from Commvault to AWS, Azure, or a container, but it seems to be not so easy in NetWorker."

"Dell NetWorker could improve the GUI to include rack recovery."

More Dell NetWorker cons

"I would like to see more technical training online. Sometimes, it is a little bit difficult to find, or that I do not really know what I am looking for as somebody who is starting off finding their learning curve."

"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."

"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."

"They should have a proper technical support team serving the customers and get issues resolved earlier."

"When it comes to virtualization in IBM it's not perfect."

"Getting technical support all the necessary diagnostic information is still very painful."

"I would like a little more ease with the virtual platforms, because it is a huge thing that is coming up."

"The solution's initial setup process wasn't easy...The solution is overly complicated in terms of architecture, especially compared to other tools in the market."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik."

"If SQL is in heavy use at your location, I would highly recommend narrowing your PoC testing to Cohesity and Rubrik. They will be competitive on pricing with each other, so really put them through the paces."

"I expect the system to probably pay off within the first two years."

"Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate."

"The tool's pricing is average."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Cohesity came in at the best price."

"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"It is excellent from the pricing point of view. It is free with Data Protection Suite. Similarly, when you purchase Avamar, Dell EMC NetWorker is free with one terabyte license capacity. Its price is very competitive."

"It is a relatively inexpensive product compared to one of its competitors."

"Licensing is based on the number of terabytes, so you need to purchase packages."

"Low cost is key."

"The price of the license could be cheaper and it would be a benefit if they came up with a new pricing model. The competitors here in Oman sell universal licensing where a number of virtual machines are hosted at the customer place which can be licensed, or you can license the CPU sockets in those servers. However, NetWorker offers only CPU sockets or overall storage capacity to backup, but there is no universal licensing where you can provide a number of VMs. They should offer more options to stay competitive with other solutions, such as Veeam."

"Dell EMC NetWorker is very expensive."

"It's approximate, but I believe we pay around $20-30,000 a month in licensing."

"They are not cheap."

More Dell NetWorker pricing and cost advice

"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."

"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."

"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."

"The solution is not cheap."

"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 price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."

"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."

"Its licensing is complex, and its price is not really reasonable. It is on the expensive side. IBM, in general, is slightly expensive, but with IBM Spectrum for the virtual environment, they are looking into the aspect of helping customers with the cost and providing a cost-effective solution."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protecte...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

See all answers

What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?

From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell NetWorker?

The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell NetWorker?

The licensing cost is somewhat expensive. While we use a traditional license, there is a capacity-based license avail...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past....

See all answers

Comparisons

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 25% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Zerto Software vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 2% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 31% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Avamar vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 10% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell NetWorker Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Backup vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect

July 2025

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell NetWorker

July 2025

Download Dell NetWorker product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

NetWorker

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

Cohesity

Built on a reputation of efficiency and reliability, thousands of customers trust Dell NetWorker to protect their data and applications across multiple environments, from core to edge to cloud.

Inherently flexible, NetWorker helps you deploy and leverage the data protection that fits your needs. NetWorker protects both physical and virtual environments, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as cloud workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

NetWorker is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. NetWorker is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.

IBM

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: June 2025.

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