Dell NetWorker vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 20, 2023

We compared Dell NetWorker and IBM Spectrum Protect based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.

  • Features: Dell NetWorker is recognized for its intuitive graphical user interface, integration with Data Domain, and impressive speed. IBM Spectrum Protect is highly regarded for its ability to integrate with tape libraries and its customization options. Users also praised Spectrum Protect for its compatibility with various products, scalability, and stability. Dell NetWorker needs improvements in reporting, integration, and documentation. IBM Spectrum Protect could improve its integration with cloud services and make its interface more user-friendly.

  • Service and Support: Dell NetWorker received mixed reviews, with some customers expressing frustration about delayed responses and unresolved problems. IBM’s customer service is described as high quality, friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive. At the same time, some said the support process can be lengthy.

  • Ease of Deployment: Some users consider Dell NetWorker's setup to be effortless, but some said it was somewhat complex. IBM Spectrum Protect's initial setup is challenging and demands skilled professionals to configure multiple parameters and features. This process can be time-consuming.

  • Pricing: Some reviewers consider Dell NetWorker to be expensive, while others find it to be reasonable and cheaper than other options with similar features. IBM Spectrum Protect is considered expensive. The pricing model is complex, taking into account factors like processor type and volume.

  • ROI: Users have provided no feedback about Dell NetWorker’s ROI so far. Users have realized benefits from IBM Spectrum Protect’s data protection and retrieval. They appreciate its ability to reduce storage requirements with larger tape sizes.

Comparison Results: Dell NetWorker is regarded as a reasonably priced, high-performing backup solution with a user-friendly GUI. At the same time, many users were dissatisfied with Dell’s support and asked for improvements in reporting and documentation. IBM Spectrum Protect is a reliable, customizable solution that allows smooth integration with tape libraries. At the same time, some say that the user interface could be more intuitive and Spectrum Protect could integrate better with the cloud.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"This solution is really the best in the market! After evaluating other solutions, we automatically decided to use this one.""The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.""The GUI is the best feature. It's very good and easy to use.""The software is quite complicated and useful for large corporations using different information systems.""The most valuable features for us at the moment are NFS, file system backup, and IP backup.""The backup feature for this product is good. It is easy to set up and easy to scale.""The solution is simple to understand.""The software’s best feature is data backup for any system."

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"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs.""The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production.""It seems very scalable and robust. It can do what we require it to do.""With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups.""Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it.""Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed.""You can protect your data and keep it for long durations, without it spending too much time on the local disk.""The file-restoring feature is the most valuable."

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Cons
"Currently, the NetWorker server only supports the Windows server bare-metal recovery, so an improvement would be built-in support for Linux and UNIX BMR.""The licensing rules are difficult to navigate and understand.""Reporting and support for this product need to be improved. There are multiple bugs that need to be fixed.""It would be beneficial to have a single user interface for all of the features.""The software also isn't user-friendly like Convault or Rubrik. The solution errors and management aren't so good in comparison.""I would like to see better support for the container systems, and we would like to see more support for image backups instead of pure file backups.""The initial setup is complex.""The user interface has to be improved"

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"I am looking forward to new features in the next release. One of the main features is the cloud storage integration, which was one of my main required features. I've had more difficult experiences with other platforms than with this one.""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.""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.""It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that.""The solution needs to work on disaster recovery integration. Basically, VMware applications to the cloud, for example. There needs to be integration with the storage, and integration with VMware.""The software is complex; setup is complex.""It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved.""Replication services would be nice. If these could be enhanced to be always on so multiple storage backup services could be added as a cluster pool. This would provide a better availability service."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Low cost is key."
  • "You have to buy the deduplication software separately from the license."
  • "It's approximate, but I believe we pay around $20-30,000 a month in licensing."
  • "The pricing of this solution is very good."
  • "If you purchase Avamar, NetWorker is free with Avamar, for one terabyte license capacity."
  • "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."
  • "The price is a little on the high side, but it's reliable and provides a good service."
  • "It is not very expensive and not very cheap."
  • More Dell NetWorker Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."
  • "Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
  • "At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."
  • "Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
  • "We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
  • "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."
  • "Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
  • "It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
  • More IBM Spectrum Protect Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Earlier, users had to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the product. The licenses were expensive, but users used to get the best device to use.
    Top Answer:The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups.
    Top Answer:The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.
    Top Answer:The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement. There could be an agent-less backup and recovery mechanism. In the next release, I would recommend the inclusion of a… more »
    Ranking
    14th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    8,478
    Comparisons
    6,912
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    437
    Rating
    7.6
    17th
    out of 131 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,719
    Comparisons
    5,477
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    522
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    NetWorker
    IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    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.
    Sample Customers
    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
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company13%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell NetWorker is ranked 14th in Backup and Recovery with 73 reviews while IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews. Dell NetWorker is rated 7.8, while IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Dell NetWorker writes "A stable tool that has an easy-to-use GUI that enables quick restoration". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". Dell NetWorker is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Dell Avamar, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veritas NetBackup and Cohesity DataProtect, whereas IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Cohesity DataProtect and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. See our Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.

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    We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.