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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (1st), Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and IBM Spectrum Protect aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is designed for Deduplication Software and holds a mindshare of 28.2%, down 29.8% compared to last year.
IBM Spectrum Protect, on the other hand, focuses on Backup and Recovery, holds 2.2% mindshare, up 2.2% since last year.
Deduplication Software
Backup and Recovery
 

Q&A Highlights

AaaAaa5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 05, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Faisal_Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient data management with robust features and reliable performance
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) can be improved in terms of price. While Dell is providing a proper device, other solutions, such as Symantec, can replicate their data through any NAS storage. Although their deduplication and compression might not be as effective, they can still accomplish the task. Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
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

"Dell is more stable than any other device."
"The licensing model is the most valuable aspect of Dell PowerProtect DD"
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerProtect DD are ease of use and deduplication."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability."
"The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment takes about two weeks."
"This solution has a feature called Domain Boost, which allows for source deduplication and compression."
"I find the data to be most valuable."
"It's very easy to use the domain once it's been set up. The interface is also user-friendly."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"Its incremental forever approach is valuable, so we don't have to load tapes to do a restore."
"With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
"It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state."
"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is stable."
 

Cons

"The Dell PowerProtect DD architecture offers several significant features. One is DD Boost, which is utilized at both the source and destination sites for application processing."
"The software from Dell that can be used to operate Data Domain needs to have enhancements made to the user interface. It is too complex."
"The price of the product is high."
"The Data Domain solution appliance is quite expensive."
"Looking at Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), there is a need for improvement, especially in terms of protection from cyber resiliency, cyber recovery, or man-in-the-middle attacks."
"They need to make migration easier."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The tool's pricing could be cheaper."
"I find the solution somewhat difficult to use with virtual environments or VMware."
"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."
"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."
"We have had some problems about using storage agents on the X6 environment. It is not quite stable, but it is also not supported in a virtualized environment."
"The Hyper-V and SQL Server backup could be improved. In the 2016 version there was a significant improvement, but I think IBM has a big challenge with these technologies."
"It seems like they are a little behind on the integration to Azure Cloud as well as Amazon."
"Its management part can be better and simplified. It is kind of a beast as compared to Commvault or Veeam, but they are more user-friendly. They are also easier to learn, whereas Spectrum Protect definitely takes time. They should simplify it. Our teams are pretty comfortable with it because we have been using it for a long time, but from the perspective of a new user who is evaluating or using this solution, it is definitely more complex in terms of manageability. Its monitoring could be improved so that it can even monitor the jobs that are scheduled by external schedulers. There are situations where a database team might decide to use their own schedulers, but currently, Spectrum Protect is not able to catch those jobs in the Operation Manager console."
"Anytime you are not very current and call in with an issue, it is hard to get it resolved. It will depend on how far back you go though."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is one of the more expensive backup solutions on the market."
"Pricing for this product could still be improved, though several years ago, its price was very high. When buying an IDPA product such as Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), you don't have to buy anything else, because you'll have an integrated solution: a data domain appliance plus software."
"If we do not move to the cloud solution and stay with our on-premise version we will miss some new features."
"The cost is expensive."
"Dell PowerProtect DD's pricing is expensive, and there is no option for perpetual licensing."
"The pricing is cost-effective for the solution"
"The price is really high compared to other vendors. The licensing cost is huge. Normal, mid-tier companies or small-scale companies wouldn't be able to afford it easily."
"The price of the backup appliance is slightly expensive. Compared to other vendors, the pricing will be slightly higher."
"The solution is not cheap."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"The product is not cheap."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"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."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."
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Answers from the Community

AaaAaa5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020
The biggest difference is that Data Domain is an appliance storage system (SW + HW storage) but Spectrum is a software (licenses) solution only.
2 out of 10 answers
it_user1115376 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
The biggest difference is that Data Domain is an appliance storage system (SW + HW storage) but Spectrum is a software (licenses) solution only.
CR
Jan 20, 2020
I would look at the way they dedup. DataDomain uses variable-length deduplication so they are very effective. I do not know anything about the IBM product, but we have dealt with IBM and in my opinion, the difference that is going to make the biggest impact is the way they sell TCO. EMC almost negatively impacts themselves by giving a more realistic and often more expensive quote, where IBM gives a seemingly cheaper solution, but later on, it works out more.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The typical use case for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is for backup purposes; it is disk-based backup, which provides fast backup capabilities. Additionally, data can be replicated from site ...
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
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. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
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 Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in Deduplication Software. Updated: June 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.