No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM ProtectTIER vs StorageCraft ShadowXafe [EOL] 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

IBM ProtectTIER
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (65th), Deduplication Software (13th)
StorageCraft ShadowXafe [EOL]
Average Rating
0.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

AG
Technical Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Provides a short-term backup, archive, and cataloging for 20,000 people in our organization
The backup for a large amount of data is slow. When there's a large amount of data, sometimes the backup isn't completed in time. I have a 24 hour cycle, so it doesn't get completed in 24 hours with the large amount of data. With Veritas NetBackup, I can take 20 terabytes of backup in a day.
reviewer1281621 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder/CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
An expensive next-generation data recovery and backup software solution with poor data restoration
Their restoration protocols could be better. I pulled all my clients out of their cloud mostly because I wasn't confident that they could restore out of the cloud. This was backed up by friends who had been burned by stuff like that. We moved away because of the lack of resources to restore from a potential catastrophic failure. It's challenging, and in some cases, they couldn't do it because they didn't have enough resources. For example, if there was a major disaster, and everybody needed their images out of the cloud, they couldn't give them to everybody.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is highly stable."
"Overall IBM ProtectTIER is a great solution. It is easy to use."
"I will highly recommend this product for excellent and quick backup solution in small and large IBM I Series environment."
"The most valuable features are the self-service features and the ability to search the data."
"The most valuable feature is the incremental backup."
"The command-line interface is good."
"If you are looking for a reliable and scalable enterprise-class solution, you should consider this solution."
"In terms of stability, I've found it to be very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the backups."
"The technical support has been very good."
"I like that they have some new devices that are simpler to use because they kind of tie right into the cloud."
 

Cons

"Setting up the system to work with legacy equipment is a bit complex at times."
"It is unmanageable. Support would be good."
"IBM ProtectTIER could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The configuration wizards are still complex and hard to navigate. These should be easier to manage."
"I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM."
"My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to conduct a proof of concept first because everybody's needs are different, and this product is not suitable for every kind of backup."
"The backup for a large amount of data is slow. When there's a large amount of data, sometimes the backup isn't completed in time."
"These days, we are thinking about pushing another solution because of the poor support from IBM."
"StorageCraft ShadowXafe should improve the on-premises console management controls and protection and recovery."
"Their restoration protocols could be better. I pulled all my clients out of their cloud mostly because I wasn't confident that they could restore out of the cloud. This was backed up by friends who had been burned by stuff like that. We moved away because of the lack of resources to restore from a potential catastrophic failure. It's challenging, and in some cases, they couldn't do it because they didn't have enough resources. For example, if there was a major disaster, and everybody needed their images out of the cloud, they couldn't give them to everybody."
"I wouldn't use it. It failed me every time I tried to use it in a real-life scenario."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM ProtectTIER is an expensive solution."
"This solution is very expensive."
"The customer can decide how they want to purchase a license. However, the price of the solution is expensive."
"We have a capacity-based license, which is managed centrally for all the sites of my company."
"They are more expensive than some of the others out there. We have gone away from their cloud due to pricing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
ShadowXafe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Durham Police Department, Re-Store LLC, CenterGrid, pixx.io GmbH, Australian Government Department of Defence, QD, Refresco Gerber
Kawasaki, NASA, Amazon, Sonic, Callaway
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Rubrik and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: June 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.