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IBM Storage Protect vs Quest Rapid Recovery [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

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 Storage Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (13th)
Quest Rapid Recovery [EOL]
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Adam Augustín - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security."
"They have recently added support tickets specifically engineered around performance. This has been very useful for us when we run into issues where customers are looking to try to squeeze a lot more horsepower out of older system."
"One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product."
"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."
"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."
"In general, the solution is quite user-friendly. The GUI is very nice."
"The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"The local mount utility is most valuable. I do restores fairly regularly. Thankfully, I have not ever lost an entire server that I've had to resurrect, but I certainly have people who erroneously saved over a file or have deleted a file. So, we've done that quite a bit. We still have the DL4000 appliance, and we had, kind of, extrapolated that out over a five-year period. Now, we're in year six, so we had to add storage, which we did as a SAN next to DL4000, but prior to adding in that extra storage, we, here and there, would run into situations where for whatever reason, it would want to be pulling a new base image, and then we would run out of storage. So, we would utilize the archive feature and archive the old data that we want to hang on to, but we don't necessarily need it taking up current data storage. Being able to export out really old data is most valuable to us. Then, we just store that on a NAS that we keep in another building."
"Built-in encryption helps to secure our data as it travels from our on-site server to our off-site backup server."
"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."
"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."
"Not having to switch tapes is wonderful. It makes it so easy. We have an on-prem deployment that we also replicate to an offsite replication host. So by not having to deal with tapes and moving them off-site every day and every week, that's amazing ease of use for us."
"It is more fully integrated with the hypervisor, particularly with VMware solution, and it is simple to create replica sets to our VR site."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to back up a physical server to another physical or virtual server."
 

Cons

"I find the Level 1 and Level 2 support spend 80% of the time communicating the same information that I have already provided."
"The solution should improve the ability to monitor backup failure."
"This solution is not mature in terms of disaster recovery and could be improved."
"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."
"I want a better user interface, support, and integrations."
"IBM Spectrum Protect does have a lot of the features that we need, but I think they need to improve their backup virtualization and backup for container."
"The product should be improved to save more space."
"This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short."
"It's buggy. That's a big problem. We're arranging to get rid of it. We're going to switch to Veeam."
"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."
"Rapid Recovery can only backup the machine or disc, but it can't back up from folders, and files, and things like that."
"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."
"When you do a full backup, all of the memory resources on the server are used, which is something that should be improved."
"For the most part, it is really good in terms of flexibility and choice of recovery methods. What we found lacking was being able to back up virtual volumes that are clustered. We ran out of luck there. There should be an option for backing up clustered virtual volumes."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support. I would like to see faster response time."
"In case, if there is anything, it would be the speed of the operation to be finished. Even then, I can easily work on the storing function before the operation is finished."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is not cheap."
"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."
"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."
"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."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is a little expensive. However, I haven't compared it to other solutions. Being a nonprofit, it is always good to have nonprofit discounts on products."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Non Profit
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise94
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage 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...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Rapid Recovery?
Dell solutions are approximately 30% to 35% more expensive than Veeam.
 

Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover
Dell AppAssure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CEMEX
PRIME aerostructures GmbH, Tamworth Regional Council, Rhondda Housing Association, Stadtwerke Pforzheim GmbH & Co., Guangdong Aiyingdao Childrens Department Store, Nspyre, Tarrant Technology Partners, CloudRunner
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: August 2025.
868,229 professionals have used our research since 2012.