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Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Sarangdhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Works excellently for on-prem backup but not the best for Azure backups
Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice. There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.
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

"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
"Dell EMC Avamar is very good with endpoint backups."
"We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment."
"Client deduplication."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware."
"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."
"It is more efficient than most traditional backup solutions."
"You can protect your data and keep it for long durations, without it spending too much time on the local disk."
"Incremental forever: This feature helps us reduce backup time and backup storage space."
"It is also a product that has been maturing for a long time. This is good because customers need reliability in their enterprise initiatives."
"It has a lot more capabilities and functions than a lot of other products. Even though it is more complex, the reason is because it gives you a lot more features. This is what I prefer, especially for a long retention."
"It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."
 

Cons

"A benefit would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier."
"It would be helpful if there was cloud support."
"The technical support from Dell is very poor, especially in terms of response time."
"Setting up Avamar wasn't so easy, and we had a partner doing the installation for us. Though it was hard at first, it's getting better. The main difficulty was finding plugins for Oracle Database. It took some time to open a ticket with Dell, but everything was fine after that."
"Reporting in Dell Avamar needs improvement. The current reporting tool is very basic, and you have to dig deep into each function to get the information you need. For example, getting the status of failed and succeeded backups is very difficult in Avamar compared to Veeam. As for additional functionality, I would suggest improving WAN optimization. It's very important for getting offline or off-site backups. It should also include a tool to check for ransomware which would be beneficial. If a backup is vulnerable to ransomware, there should be a way to detect it, like using ARR rules to ensure your backup is ransomware-free. I haven't had any experience integrating Dell Avamar with AI solutions. It’s also a good point that Avamar doesn't offer such integrations, which is an area where Dell could improve."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"When it comes to virtualization in IBM it's not perfect."
"They are behind on many things, especially security. They are catching up a little bit now, but the competitors are doing better security-wise. There should be malware detection and prevention and higher security."
"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."
"If IBM could provide a partial module, that would be great."
"It needs some software upgrades to fix some of its current bugs."
"It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"The reporting could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell's pricing structure is not overly expensive."
"On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it."
"It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity."
"Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution."
"It's an expensive tool"
"It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years."
"Licensing fees are paid annually."
"Dell Avamar is expensive."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"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."
"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."
"The product is not cheap."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
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 with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dash...
 

Also Known As

Avamar
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
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 Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.