IBM Spectrum Protect vs Quest Rapid Recovery comparison

IBM and Quest Software are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.2, while Quest Software is ranked #36 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM holds a 2.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to Quest Software’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Quest Software 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

Quest Rapid Recovery

Read 20 Quest Rapid Recovery reviews

1,311 Views
838 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Quest Rapid Recovery

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Quest Rapid Recovery are both prominent data protection solutions. Users report higher satisfaction with the pricing and support of IBM Spectrum Protect, while Quest Rapid Recovery is preferred for its range of features.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is valued for its comprehensive backup and restore capabilities, scalability, and seamless integration with various platforms. Quest Rapid Recovery stands out for its fast recovery times, image-based backup, and ease of use. Users find Quest Rapid Recovery's features more efficient for certain applications, making it the preferred choice.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest IBM Spectrum Protect could benefit from an improved reporting system and more intuitive configuration processes. For Quest Rapid Recovery, users highlight the need for enhanced documentation and better support for newer technologies. The differences show IBM Spectrum Protect requires a better user experience, whereas Quest Rapid Recovery needs updated tech support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Deployment for IBM Spectrum Protect is often described as complex, demanding significant customization and expertise. Its customer service receives mixed reviews. Quest Rapid Recovery is praised for easier deployment and a more straightforward setup process, though its customer support also garners varied feedback. Quest Rapid Recovery has the edge in deployment simplicity.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect is known for higher initial setup costs but provides substantial ROI through robust long-term performance. Quest Rapid Recovery features a more competitive pricing model with quicker ROI due to lower setup expenses and operational efficiency. For cost-sensitive users, Quest Rapid Recovery's pricing and ROI are more attractive.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Quest Rapid Recovery Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Quest Rapid Recovery

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

Quest Rapid Recovery

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

36th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

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 Quest Rapid Recovery is 0.6%, down 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

Adam Augustín

Country Manager at Prianto Ltd

Granular recovery, replication is good and offers good speed

It is for any kind of company that uses their own servers. From a global perspective, our clients are small-sized companies. All the SMEs, compared to the Slovakian market, are quite small. It's a small market with small companies. They just want to enhance security and follow regulations It's…

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 feature for data recovery in IBM Spectrum Protect is its database protection capabilities."

"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."

"This solution has improved our organization through better file and database recovery."

"The best part of this solution is that it just works."

"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."

"It has increased our security, scalability, and high availability."

"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."

"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"The most valuable feature of Quest Rapid Recovery for our organization is the VM recovery functionality."

"Definitely, the mount and recovery points are the most valuable, because if someone deletes a file or something, or if something gets corrupted, we can always revert back to an old change because our repository goes about a month back. The ability to roll back files and the ability to roll back servers is really important."

"The best feature of the solution is the user interface."

"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to back up a physical server to another physical or virtual server."

"The fact that it can take a snapshot of everything on a server and replicate it on another server in real-time is the most valuable feature."

"The solution offers a 100% guarantee that if it's backed up you will be able to restore it onto any platform you want."

"The general backup for replication and virtual standby are the most valuable aspects. It does what it says it does. It's a decent tool for not a big budget."

"One feature I found that's the most valuable in Quest Rapid Recovery is the VM standby feature which is very useful for my current customer. The solution also has a great replication feature. The third most valuable feature in Quest Rapid Recovery is the five-minute RPO and the fifteen-minute RTO. The solution is also very user-friendly."

More Quest Rapid Recovery pros

Cons

"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."

"This solution does not have good support for virtualization and a hyper-converged environment."

"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."

"Most customers still struggle with the reporting piece, especially generating reports. I think it needs some improvements in this area."

"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."

"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."

"It needs some software upgrades to fix some of its current bugs."

"It can be improved for large file systems with many files. Spectrum Protect can restore large files very well, but if you're restoring millions of little files, it is not as great. At one point, we tried to implement the VMware module with it, and it was awful and terrible. I don't know if that has improved. If it hasn't, this would be one big improvement."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"The terminology didn't seem easily available. When I go to the website, it is hard to search for things. You get all the articles, then you finally get the search button. They need the search at the top of the knowledge base. Then, on occasion, if you get an error message in the system, which is very important, it says, "Click here for more information," but I never get more information. The search engine doesn't find it or it is some weird error. It has never worked for me."

"It's not really Quest's fault, but the only issue that I had during the time when I was doing a lot of our restores is whenever the server reboots, it has to bring all of the repositories back in again, which takes around five to six hours to pull eight terabytes back in again."

"The on-premises deployment model shouldn't have a maintenance fee. If there's going to be technical support, they need it to be free or it should be paid on upon adopting the solution."

"There is room for improvement in customer service and support. I would like to see faster response time."

"In terms of what needs improvement in Quest Rapid Recovery, though the solution is seamless, right now, they are just giving the software which means we'll need to arrange the hardware. If they can combine the appliance and software, that would be a great approach. In the next release of Quest Rapid Recovery, it would be great if they'd add a folder backup feature because only a snapshot backup feature is available at the moment."

"Sometimes, when we have certain batches for Windows, it needs to be restarted. When it's restarted, the service is configured as a delayed start. Sometimes, you need to wait too long until it rights itself, or you have to do it manually."

"I think the self-paced learning and knowledge base can always be improved so that users can self-service without having to contact either a reseller or Quest. I know there are things that I would have been looking for to try and solve. And the only way I could get there was to actually open a ticket rather than go through self-service through the portal."

"I don't really think that there is a whole lot that needs to be changed. It would be nice if you could deploy the agent without having to reboot. When I upgraded my core to the latest version, I also wanted to update all of my servers, but I had to put that off because I can't just shoot it out there. I have to make sure it is at a time when I can do a reboot right away."

More Quest Rapid Recovery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."

"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."

"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."

"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."

"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."

"At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."

"It is expensive."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is on the higher end."

"Its price is okay. It is reasonable in terms of the way it works."

"I believe the basic license comes with six terabytes, whereas a lot of the other ones are four terabytes. From the price point, it seemed a lot better than the comparative models, such as Datto, Barracuda, and some of the others. I believe Barracuda was about $15,000 for four terabytes, and Quest was around $12,000 for six terabytes. Pricing is based on the period. There is just the maintenance fee that you have to pay annually, or you can pay for a three-year or four-year contract. This includes Premier Support."

"It's very expensive which is why I want to drop it. They charge us per core and we have a six-core server. It's expensive to pay for maintenance charges. I want to switch to something cheaper."

"Licensing fees are based on the amount of data that you want to store, which is related to how many customers you want to cover."

"When I purchased the change to the license, it was $1,600. I think that was for changing the license. I don't believe that I had to purchase technical support in a while, so I must've bought maybe for five years, but I don't feel there was a huge cost involved in technical support. Its cost was definitely worth it because we've had a fantastic experience with them."

"I don't think the licensing for the product is very expensive."

"I'm not aware of the exact cost of Quest Rapid Recovery because I'm from the technical team, but in general, the solution is quite competitive cost-wise."

More Quest Rapid Recovery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

University

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Real Estate/Law Firm

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 Quest Rapid Recovery?

The most valuable feature of Quest Rapid Recovery for our organization is the VM recovery functionality.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Rapid Recovery?

Dell solutions are approximately 30% to 35% more expensive than Veeam.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Quest Rapid Recovery?

The product is expensive.

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

Veeam Data Platform vs Quest Rapid Recovery

Compared 54% of the time

Quest NetVault Plus vs Quest Rapid Recovery

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Quest Rapid Recovery

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Quest Rapid Recovery

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Backup vs Quest Rapid Recovery

Compared 9% of the time

More Quest Rapid Recovery Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

Quest Rapid Recovery

April 2025

Download Quest Rapid Recovery product report

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Dell AppAssure

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

Quest Rapid Recovery is a software solution that helps you recover your lost or deleted data quickly and easily. It works by scanning your hard drive for any traces of lost or deleted files, and then recovering them for you. You can use Quest Rapid Recovery to recover files from any type of storage device, including your computer's hard drive, an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, or even a memory card.

Quest Rapid Recovery is easy to use and comes with a user-friendly interface. It also has a wide range of features that make it one of the most powerful data recovery tools available on the market today. Whether you need to recover a single file or your entire system, Quest Rapid Recovery is flexible enough to get the job done.

The software offers simple solutions for backup and restoration. You can monitor and manage backup and recovery environments across multiple sites from one cloud-based management console. The software also tracks changed blocks to speed up backups and reduce storage usage. In addition, Quest Rapid Recovery deploys application-consistent backup with fast recovery for file servers and applications on both Microsoft Windows and Linux systems.

Quest Rapid Recovery Features

Cloud archive: Stores your static data in Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, Rackspace, or any OpenStack provider. This gives you more options for recovering your data. You can directly mount the archives to do a bare metal restore or a file-level restore.
Rapid snap for applications: Incremental-forever snapshots can be used to capture an entire application and its relevant state every 5 minutes, so that the application can be recovered quickly with near-zero downtime and minimal data loss.
Rapid snap for virtual: Protect your growing virtual environment by protecting VMware and Hyper-V VMs without disrupting applications and users.
Live recovery: Restores operations rapidly with an RTO of minutes.
Virtual standby: If the primary machine has any problems, the virtual machine will be activated to take its place.

Quest Rapid Recovery Benefits

Offers the ability to easily back up data in the data center and in the cloud.
Allows users to return to work quickly and without any impact on their business.
Ensures you set recovery point objectives that are specific in order to reduce the risk of data loss.
Reduces the amount of storage space you need to back up your files and save money on backup costs.
Uses the cloud to back up, archive, and store your data in case of a disaster.
Functions as a single solution for both physical and virtual environments.

Reviews from Real Users

Quest Rapid Recovery stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to greatly reduce backup and recovery time and its ability to mount an entire server.

PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews. Glenn R., an ICT network manager at St Christopher's School Hove, writes, “We have reduced our backup and recovery time by between 80% and 90%. Built-in encryption helps to secure our data as it travels from our on-site server to our off-site backup server.”

Bill V., a systems and network administrator at a tech services company, notes, “Probably the point-in-time recovery is most valuable. The other piece that is really nice is that you can mount a whole server at any point in time. So, you can mount the server with all the drives to a Z drive or something like that. It will just mount it all up, and your data is accessible right there on one drive, which is nice."

Quest Software

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

PRIME aerostructures GmbH, Tamworth Regional Council, Rhondda Housing Association, Stadtwerke Pforzheim GmbH & Co., Guangdong Aiyingdao Childrens Department Store, Nspyre, Tarrant Technology Partners, CloudRunner

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Quest Rapid Recovery

April 2025

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