IBM Spectrum Protect vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.2, while NetApp is ranked #51 with an average rating of 7.7. IBM holds a 2.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

4,073 Views
3,133 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

NetApp SnapCenter

Read 27 NetApp SnapCenter reviews

1,230 Views
801 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

NetApp SnapCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and NetApp SnapCenter are two prominent data protection and management solutions. IBM Spectrum Protect shines in pricing and support, while NetApp SnapCenter is noted for its feature set, which users feel justifies its higher cost.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect offers comprehensive backup and recovery capabilities, effective scalability, and flexible deployment options. NetApp SnapCenter integrates with various environments, provides high speed, and has intuitive management features.

Room for Improvement: Users of IBM Spectrum Protect point out the need for more straightforward configuration, better documentation, and enhanced user interface. NetApp SnapCenter users seek enhancements in stability, broader platform support, and optimization of resource utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect is praised for its flexible deployment options and responsive customer service. NetApp SnapCenter is also recognized for its deployment process and effective customer support, though some users report additional time spent during setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect offers competitive setup costs and a strong ROI, benefiting from lower ongoing expenses. NetApp SnapCenter is seen as pricier upfront, but users find the investment worthwhile due to advanced features and integration capabilities that enhance long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

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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 Spectrum Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

149

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp SnapCenter

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

51st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

Read full review

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command

It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."

"Reliability: It has never had a problem with backups or restores. If you store something, it is there."

"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."

"We do not lose data. That is why we are using this product and have a backup in place."

"We optimize our costs of media and storage use, thanks to the Incremental Forever backup. The TDP software provides us many ways to protect our data, so we don't need to use monstrous scripts for doing backups now."

"The most valuable feature is the backup speed."

"Instead of taking three different backups of your systems, you're taking only one. You're able to crack that open and get what you need. The incident recovery, where it creates the VM and then you're running it, technically you're running it on Spectrum Protect. But then in the background, it's doing the storage motion and moving it off the Spectrum Protect back to your VMware environment. The users don't know the difference."

"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"It's very helpful because SnapCenter is already integrated with VMware Snapshot, so it's very easy to use."

"The central pane view is the most valuable feature. You have one console where you can monitor all your jobs, as opposed to going to different vCenters."

"The most valuable feature is that it's centralized. In the old SnapManager days, we had software for each server. Now, with a centralized system, we're able to manage all systems remotely, and all agents remotely, and update them remotely. That's a huge benefit for us."

"It's integrated with VMware vCenter. You can also see the backups there and you can do a restore completely out of vCenter."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The main advantage is its fast backup and restore."

"The product’s most valuable feature is cloning."

"The simplicity of backup and restore directly with VMware is an advantage and the time to backup and restore is reduced."

More NetApp SnapCenter pros

Cons

"In the next version of the solution, I would like to see cloud support."

"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."

"We are having a balance issue between the reclamation and the backup function. It has to take the space back from the tapes before it can record to those tapes, but sometimes those two processes are overlapping."

"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."

"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."

"I would like to see the operations center be a lot more functional. It was nowhere near as functional as the admin center, and I'm doing a lot of command line with it."

"It might be seen as leaning towards the legacy side, missing some features of newer solutions. The main drawbacks would be its complexity and high pricing."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"The tool could be faster."

"What I did witness lately are issues with some Microsoft KBs, the updates. But it happened only once, and not on a major platform, it was on a small one."

"If it was possible to create backups on non-NetApp storage, that would be helpful."

"There is one area that needs improvement and that's in the alerting. When you set up your SMTP alerts, it only has - and I don't understand why - the ability to send an anonymous SMTP. It doesn't do basic authentication, which frustrated me for a while until I figured out that I'm not missing something. It's just not there."

"I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid."

"I want to see a few more features add that will help our team in managing solution better."

"Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type."

"One thing that might be improved is the ease of management."

More NetApp SnapCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."

"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."

"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."

"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."

"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."

"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."

"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."

"The product is inexpensive."

"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."

"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."

"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."

"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."

"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."

"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

University

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?

Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?

The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?

The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Synology DSM vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 26% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 19% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 16% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 9% of the time

Cohesity DataProtect vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp SnapCenter Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

Download NetApp SnapCenter product report

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

SnapCenter

Overview

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.

IBM

Unified, scalable platform for application-consistent data protection and clone management. This software simplifies backup, restore, and clone lifecycle management with application-integrated workflows.

NetApp

Sample Customers

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

All for One Steeb AG, Accenture

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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