IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

We use the solution for our data protection.

We deployed the solution on-premises because the majority of our applications are also on-premises.

The file-restoring feature is the most valuable.

The Operations Center requires improvement. We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give the stability a ten out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support team is always prompt in their response.

Positive

I previously used, NetApp Backup and Atempo Time Navigator but in the financial industry IBM Spectrum Protect is the most popular solution.

I have more than ten years of experience with the solution, so setting it up is easy for me. The deployment took less than one hour.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment with IBM Spectrum Protect because we are guaranteed to have our data when we need it.

We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

We have two engineers responsible for the maintenance.

I recommend the solution to others.

The solution's use cases would mostly involve its use in finance and insurance companies.

The two features in the solution that I have found valuable are its functionalities related to UFS and KMS.

The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement.

In the next release of the solution, I would like to see the solution being able to integrate with EFS storage.

I have experience with IBM Spectrum Protect and have been working with the solution for thirteen years. Also, I am a reseller of the solution from the sales department. I have worked with versions ranging from IBM Spectrum Protect Version 9.x to IBM Spectrum Protect Version 11. The latest one I am working on is IBM Spectrum Protect Version 2.1.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a four or five out of ten. More precisely, I rate the solution's scalability a five out of ten. The low rating is due to its inability to integrate with the cloud providers today. So, if the integration is within an IBM cloud, it is good, and if it is outside IBM cloud, it is really bad. Also, most of our clients are enterprise-sized ones.

Regarding technical support, if one has the entire enterprise support, I would rate it a nine out of ten, but without enterprise support, I would rate it a five or six out of ten. So, to be more precise, without enterprise support, I would rate it a five out of ten owing to the timelines required for the technical support to resolve any issues.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is straightforward as long as the prerequisites are followed. So, I rate the solution's setup between seven to eight out of ten.

The time required for the deployment process is somewhere between two to three weeks.

Around 200 to 300 steps are involved in the deployment process of the solution. So unless specified, explaining all the steps involved in the deployment process can be difficult.

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

To the ones planning to use the solution, I would like to say that as long as your use cases aren't transactional, you can use IBM Spectrum Protect for anything they want. For transaction storage, it is better not to use IBM Spectrum Protect. Since the solution can only be launched on IBM cloud and not on Google or Amazon cloud, I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

IBM Spectrum Protect is used for the physical server databases.

I need two separate solutions for virtual and physical systems. I need IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for virtual systems and Spectrum Protect for physical systems and that's a pain. It would be an improvement if they were combined.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for approximately 10 years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is highly reliable.

The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good.

We are backing up approximately two petabytes of data using IBM Spectrum Protect.

I have contacted the support and my experience was good.

The initial setup of IBM Spectrum Protect is complex and the process took a few weeks.

IBM Spectrum Protect was implemented in-house. We have two people who deploy and maintain the solution.

With backup solutions, you never see a return on investment.

The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee.

My advice to others is if they need a rock-solid solution this is a great solution. However, the problem is it is not future-proof because you never know where IBM aims to go.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect an eight out of ten.

I am a consultant and work with different IT technology including data protection solutions. We work with the legacy version of IBM Spectrum Protect from 6.x version all the way to the latest version, 8.1.12.

I have implemented Spectrum Protect for organizations as big as 1,500 users and others that are small workgroups of 40 or 50 people.

Spectrum Protect is used for protecting virtualized workloads. It also allows you to protect traditional workloads such as physical machines and physical servers. It is well suited for storing data to tape.

The addition of the retention set feature provides a reduction in storage costs. It also reduces RTO and RPO so that you can respond quickly to your clients and services in case of data loss. 

Spectrum Protect is a robust solution. A valuable feature of this solution is the retention sets, which is a fairly new addition to the feature portfolio. This allows you to back up information to leverage all their copies of backup and not do new backups of the same information over and over again. 

The usability of IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved, specifically additional features to the product in the operations center. Additional reporting facilities and stronger reporting tools such as build dashboards would be beneficial. The tool should allow you to write SQL queries to get the information as it is not easy for entry users to retrieve some reports.

I would also value a comprehensive mass deployment solution for clients that would provide an automated method for deploying agents across a large environment, not only for Windows, but also for AIX and Linux. This would reduce the time required to deploy the tool.

I have been working with IBM Spectrum Protect for 10 years and consider myself an expert on this solution.

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

This solution is scalable. It is a very good solution for mid-range and enterprise customers. It is suitable for a broad range of different environments and types of customers, verticals, and other segments that can implement this product. 

Technical support of IBM Spectrum Protect is superb. They always help us to quickly get to the root cause of the problem. The incidents are well managed so that we can restore service quickly. The product comes with good quality documentation and videos that share best practices and help you get up to speed quickly. This knowledge helps you give a good description to their support team which also helps arrive at a quick solution.

In previous years we used Tivoli Storage Manager. The solution took up to three months to deploy. 

The initial setup of IBM Spectrum is straightforward. Currently, there are blueprints that have a solution to implement quickly. The blueprints come with automated scripts that can be leveraged to make the deployment simpler. You just have to run a script and then complete a set of policies, storage devices, users. The other configurations are already done for you. The documentation, or blueprints, are being updated all the time so you always have a way to reduce deployment time. Deployment takes as little as three or four days.

IBM Spectrum Protect listens to their customers and the feedback about each component and feature. They are always improving quickly based on new trends and software development and agile methodologies.

You have to be careful or aware of the different solutions and the different agents that the solution comes up with so that you select the right product for the right use case. The solution comes with different products that are intended to protect certain workloads such as databases like SAP HANA products. 

I also recommend that you get to know the product well, leverage the latest features so that you can get the most value from it. 

Lastly, I would recommend that you use IBM Spectrum Protect's service and support not only when you have problems but also for recommendations on how to do certain things properly so that you don't have problems in the future. 

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect an 8 out of 10. It is a great product, it's stable and has been on the market for a long time. 

Our primary use cases for IBM Spectrum Protect are for data backup and archive and high performance solutions.

I would not say that IBM Spectrum Protect is a product like any other product. We have selected this product because we want to standardize. One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product.

There are a lot of features within these products. One of them is for data backup and protection and the other one, the Spectrum Scale, is for parallel storage as a data storage solution.

All of these features are very important.

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. But overall, they meet the requirements and they're okay.

In terms of what I would like to see in the next release, I think better reporting. Today the reporting lacks some of the features, interface, et cetera. If they increased that reporting and made it user friendly, it will be good.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for over 10 years.

We have different versions. For the file system, the Spectrum Scale, we are using version 5 and for the Spectrum Protect we are using version 8.

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

IBM Spectrum Protect is scalable.

There are about two to three direct users for the backup who are the admins.

For the Spectrum Scale file system, we have more than 500 users who use the file system with two admins for staff to deploy and maintain. Of course with backend for both from IBM.

This solution is being used heavily because we are a 24/seven shop, so it's heavily used and we always go and refresh the technology.

Technical support in the region is average. But overall, when we talk about IBM, when they get the right resource for you, they bring the best resources.

We have been with this product for a long time. I know initially it was difficult, but after the team built the experience, things started to be straightforward. So initial setup is complex, but maintenance is average, it is not that complicated.

It was complex because of the learning curve, for people to know more about the product, how to handle the product and the features. That's where the complexity comes from. But once people get the knowledge of how to handle the solution, it can be very straightforward.

Because we have done multiple installations, the initial took a couple of months if I recall correctly. The last installation for the backup was done four years ago and I remember it took two weeks to configure and have everything up and ready. For the Spectrum Scale, it took less than two days because we're getting the appliance model that comes as a total solution - hardware and software preconfigured.

We deployed it by ourself.

When it comes to data protection and data retrieval, most of the time, the projects that you protect cost money. So just retrieving and protecting these projects are a key value. It's like the insurance in my opinion.

We have a yearly maintenance license.

We always look at alternatives, but there are certain things you do as a strategy because you want a certain standardization and there are things you do as a temporary setup for a project or two projects. So we have both actually. We have a lot of products and there is always an alternative to them.

Before choosing IBM Spectrum Protect we evaluated solutions from EMC, from Commvault, and from Veeam. We selected IBM because it meets all our requirements and we have been using it for a long time. Shifting to a new technology comes with the price which includes support, training, development, et cetera. So that's why we continue to use IBM.

My advice to anyone considering IBM Spectrum Protect is that they need to do a thorough study of the market. They need to look at the company's resources to determine if they have the capacity. If they are new to Spectrum Scale, there is a learning curve that they need to go through, and from my experience, it is more than if you go with Veeam or to Commvault. But if you're already established and you have that and you pass that stage, then it's worth continuing with IBM. But you need to negotiate the license pricing. It takes time to negotiate pricing with IBM.

The main lesson that I learned from dealing with IBM is that you always need to have alternatives. There is a reason for it. You have to have an exit strategy. Because IBM, once they see you are hooked up to their solution, they will go and unfortunately, they do this, they will try to raise their pricing. So if you are not ready for that with good negotiation skills, you will be paying more.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM Spectrum Protect an eight.

The reason for the high score is the availability of the solution. If you have mission critical functions, IBM is one of the companies that you trust. They do not release a product unless it goes through a lot of testing. And when it comes to data protection, you can count on them. If there is a bug, if there is any issue with the product, they always maintain it, which is very important when it comes to critical data backup.

Our primary use case is for Windows machines and SQL servers. I'm a senior systems engineer and we are customers of IBM.

In general, this is a good product. Specifically, I like the deduplication and compression features.

Replication of data could be improved and made a little easier to use. 

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

Stability is good. 

Scalability is good. 

Customer support is quite good. 

The initial setup is quite complex, but I'm familiar with the solution so it's not a problem for me. 

Licensing costs are a little high but it's not too expensive.

I recommend this solution for backup servers. We have around 700 nodes and servers. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use IBM Spectrum Protect as a backup solution. We do so with robots, each pair robot, making use of the LCO tapes. 

I find the solution somewhat difficult to use with virtual environments or VMware. 

The ability to schedule myVM on operation center should be addressed. 

Setting up the server is not easy; really difficult, in fact. It requires some skill sets. 

Automation should be added in the next release.

It is difficult for the Windows team, as it cannot make use of the solution. 

IBM Spectrum Protect is a big solution. As such, I have been using it for four years. 

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

I feel support to be good and they have resolved all issues of mine which have arisen. 

I did not use a different solution prior to IBM Spectrum Protect. 

Setting up the server is not easy; really difficult, in fact. It requires some skill sets. 

In my previous job, I handled the installation independently. However, we currently have support, as well as the central architecture and the manager sites. When it comes to the initial setup or an upgrade, we work in tandem with their support.

We definitely need certain people to maintain the solution. In respect of just storage, a backup engineering team can work with the IBM Spectrum Protect solution. The Windows team cannot make use of the solution, which poses a challenge for it. 

I am not in a position to comment on the licensing terms, as this is handled by the central team. 

We are the client. At the moment, however, I am focusing on the project involving our migration and upgrading from Spectrum Protect 1.6, dot 7 to spectrum version 1.8. 

The solution is not deployed in the cloud, but onsite. 

I have experience working with TSM and have trained on the old versions of TSM 6.

Our team exclusively uses the solution. 

We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect as an eight or nine out of ten. 

We are using it for backup and restoration. We also have agents for Oracle. Unfortunately, we are not using it for virtual restoration, like VMware. That part is controlled or set up inside the Veeam software.

We like IBM Spectrum's versioning capabilities. It lets us specify how many versions of a file we want to keep and for how long. Also, the archive component of the software helps us a lot. Let's say we have a department that needs 10 versions of one file that need to be kept for at least six months. So with IBM Spectrum, we can set rules that will respect what has been asked of us. For example, we can set it to save 15 versions, and if the file is deleted, we need to keep the last version for at least six months. 

We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack. If we could find a way to detect and alert us if specific data has been encrypted (except the ones we choose), that would be a good selling point.

We've been using IBM Spectrum for the past 20 years or so.

HAProxy is highly stable.

HAProxy is scalable. There's nothing that we cannot do with it. The entire IT department has access to it, so that's upwards of 100 users.

IBM support is great. 

Twenty years ago, we had the file server, and we were using tapes. It was a local software. At one point, we switched to the Unix machine — the AIX machine — which could not support the same software. We had an IBM system, and IBM had a solution called ADSM, so we used that on the AIX machine. And since the product was good, we deployed it on Windows Server.

We've been using IBM Spectrum Protect for a long time, so we've acquired the experience over time to deploy it. Installing it would be straightforward for us because we know the product. However, it might take a week for someone new to the platform to get it up and running. We have four people responsible for maintenance, and they're mostly system admins. 

Price and storage are an issue no matter which software you are using. It depends on what our customers ask for. If they want the sky, they will have to pay for it. It all depends on what they need. How much it does cost. The pricing depends on what products you intend to. For example, it's one price if you are using an agent for Oracle, but the price is different if you are only using basic backup and restore. It could be $15 to $25 for one license. It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain.

I rate IBM Spectrum Protect eight out of 10. The advice I would give to prospective users is to take stock of the value of your data. Spectrum is like insurance. Ask yourself how much it will cost you to restore the whole thing and get it back online. A backup solution isn't just a cut and paste of one file. It's a data recovery setup. I recommend doing your homework. When you decide what you want to do, search for the product that will deliver it.