Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas NetBackup 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 July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 3.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Ayodeji  Oyewole - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable with good backups but has occasional failures
I use Dell Avamar primarily for backup and recovery The most valuable feature for me is the backup functionality. It gives large enterprises the comfort of knowing their workloads are being backed up. There are instances where backups fail on certain applications, which is an area that could be…
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.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I found the most valuable features of Dell Avamar are the user-friendly interface and ease to use. Our clients have administrated this software and there is no additional training required."
"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."
"The backup and recovery speed is very fast."
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"So far, Avamar covers everything we want. We are replicating to other sites for disaster recovery, so it's working well for us."
"Client deduplication."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature for me in Dell Avamar is the automation, which is good for completion."
"It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state."
"We like IBM Spectrum's versioning capabilities. It lets us specify how many versions of a file we want to keep and for how long. Also, the archive component of the software helps us a lot."
"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."
"Spectrum Protect's best feature is that I can use it practically anywhere, on any platform, and for any servers or clients."
"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."
"The addition of the retention set feature provides a reduction in storage costs. It also reduces RTO and RPO so that you can respond quickly to your clients and services in case of data loss."
"The backup on real-time, especially for the virtual machine, archiving, and retrieving the reader from the backup repository and getting it online, getting it validated, then performing the data consistency check over the backup."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that IBM Spectrum Protect is highly integrated with IBM ESS. In addition, it allows us to back up our virtual servers directly to take VM snapshots. It runs on Linux as well."
"This is the best solution that I know of."
"The main thing I like about NetBackup is CloudPoint. You can take a snapshot of the endpoint and back it up with CloudPoint. The data backups are the most important."
"I have found the Media Server Deduplication tool, deployment policies, and agentless features to be the most valuable features."
"AIR and duplication, overall management and troubleshooting."
"The features are good."
"It's a good product, it does what we want it to do."
"The backup and restore functions are very valuable aspects of the product."
"Unauthorized people cannot log in and execute commands."
 

Cons

"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."
"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"The performance takes up a lot of resources, unfortunately."
"I think they could also move more towards cloud solutions. It already has some cloud tiering, but I think that could be more extensive. They should work with all cloud providers and I think in the future they will be on all cloud platforms."
"In my opinion, the user interface and the user friendliness could be improved. The specific thing I have in mind are the graphics, which are not quite user-friendly."
"It would be helpful if there was cloud support."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."
"I find the solution somewhat difficult to use with virtual environments or VMware."
"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."
"We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library)."
"I am not really impressed with the Level 1 support, but once I get past that and go to Level 2, then we will usually get some type of resolution."
"I would love to see something which allows us to do an auto restart of backup jobs."
"IBM Spectrum Protect does have a lot of the features that we need, but I think they need to improve their backup virtualization and backup for container."
"They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"Main area that could be improved is the pricing, to make it more competitive"
"The deployment time is longer than it is with other products."
"It would be helpful, in future releases, if the solution could add WORM (Write Once Read Many) support right within the product."
"Licensing costs are quite high."
"Veritas NetBackup has been in the backup and recovery market for quite a long time, but somehow, from my own observations and from feedback from end users, its user interface is lagging behind other comparable solutions such as Veeam."
"The only pain point we have with this solution is the cost. It's very expensive. In fact, it's so expensive we are looking for other platforms. We want to move away from it in order to save our organization costs."
"The restoration method and the compression ratio need improvement."
"The SQL Server backup features are not up to date."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell Avamar is free when we deploy the data protection. When we order data protection, this software is included in the hardware."
"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."
"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."
"Licensing fees are paid annually."
"It is expensive. The maintenance comes with it for five years. So, you buy the whole thing for five years, and your maintenance is included with it, but it's a big chunk of change upfront. We like capital expenses because we can CapEx them. We pay once every five years, so we spend a big chunk of change. You'd have to divide that out by the five years to come up with how much it costs. It's just about three-quarters of a million dollars for five years."
"The price of this product should be lower."
"Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution."
"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."
"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."
"It is expensive."
"The product is not cheap."
"Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Customers need to pay for licensing in order to use IBM Spectrum Protect. The customers that have been using it for a long time are okay and happy with it. From a cost point of view, it's better for them to renew their licenses than to go through the difficult process of changing a backup product in their environment, and migrate from one product to another."
"My licensing model is based on capacity so as we grow, the price we pay increases and it becomes too expensive."
"Pricing is good, under our budget, and flexible."
"Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same."
"Our license is capacity-based."
"The solution is expensive compared to other products."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
"The licensing model is cost-prohibitive as you scale out."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
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...
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
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....
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both tra...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the...
 

Also Known As

Avamar
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
No data available
 

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
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: June 2025.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.