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

Dell Avamar 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

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (5th)
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 Dell Avamar is 3.1%, down from 3.6% 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

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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The function I find most valuable in Dell Avamar is its ability to take differential backups for users. This feature is very effective for both backup and restore operations. We've had multiple cases where we needed to restore files directly from Avamar, and it worked perfectly. The Delta feature, which captures changes in user files, is particularly useful."
"The installation of the solution is easy."
"Dell EMC Avamar is very good with endpoint backups."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"Its deduplication technologies are the best in the market, currently."
"We've been using this solution to backup our servers. It is a simple backup and restore data application."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
"The most valuable features are compression and de-duplication."
"Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time."
"Scalability: Our customers are able to grow the product without having to buy additional hardware, so it is very scalable."
"It protects our data. That is what it is there for."
"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."
"It has increased our security, scalability, and high availability."
"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
 

Cons

"More integration would be helpful, as well as the addition of more applications."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"It was challenging to back up our Exchange database, which is one of the reasons we did not continue using this solution."
"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."
"The solution could be a bit easier to use in the sense that they need to make it simpler to backup products and restore items."
"Dell Avamar could improve by adding more backup features."
"The technical support from Dell is very poor, especially in terms of response time."
"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."
"The GUI has long been a problem for TSM/Spectrum Protect."
"Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution should improve the ability to monitor backup failure."
"Integration with Windows environments needs improvement. It should be more "assisted", both at the application and database level. It remains a product that fits better in Unix/Linux environments than in Windows environments, given its configuration procedures."
"In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center."
"They do not have a unified GUI, they only work on CLI and operations center, which is really complicated for the installation and configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity."
"This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
"This is a fairly expensive solution. It cost approximately 21,000 each year."
"Its price should be reduced. It would be good if you could pay as per usage, and there is a subscription model like VMware. There should be some flexibility because sometimes, the customer only uses the backup for one month or three months. Currently, I have to pay whether I use it or not. Its licensing should be flexible and based on consumption."
"The cost of the solution is very expensive."
"It's an expensive tool"
"Its licensing is weird. It is not just the licenses; we also purchase hardware. With most software products, such as Veeam, Commvault, and Data Protector, there is no hardware purchase at the same time. Because Avamar and Data Domain are tied together, they have an integrated pipe. You can separate them, but basically, they're designed to work as a couple. Because the Data Domain backend is designed to do dedupe and compression, we get 60:1. When you count it, you count it as a straight compression, but of course, that's with dedupe and some other stuff. You have to buy the hardware, the licensing, and the software at the same time. So, it's not just software."
"It was very expensive before, but after integrating it with Dell EMC Avamar Data Protection suite licensing, we are getting better discounts."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
"Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."
"The product is not cheap."
"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."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
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'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 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

Avamar
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

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
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.