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.
"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."
"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."
"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"
"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."
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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