IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

I'm an IT analyst and we are customers of IBM.

One of the benefits for the company is that if a major error has been made we're able to restore to a backup prior to when the error occurred.

The most interesting feature is without a doubt the 'management classes'. A management class allows us to configure the number of previous versions of each file that we want to keep as well as the number of days that we want to keep them. Thanks to the way in which the management classes can be assigned to file, the possibilities are endless.
To my knowledge only SP offers this flexibility.

We've noticed that restoring massive number of files is a time-consuming process and should be improved. We found a way to deal with it by using the 'no query restore' where the restore operation is done on more than one thread and is restartable as opposed to the 'query restore' which is a single thread process. The 'no query restore' needs setting a few parameters for the node in order increase the number of resources that will be used by the restore process.
In addition, we've found that this is not the best solution for backup and restore of virtual machines. Even with Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environment which could be improved a lot. I believe they're working on that with the new product Spectrum Protect Plus.

Finally, the licensing is complicated and could be simplified.

I've been using the solution for 15 years. 

Scalability becomes somewhat limited with the growth of the database, but we are still able to run with only one instance on one database, although we are reaching the limit. We have thousands of users. We have three network administrators dealing with the solution. I'm an analyst and the others are service administrators. 

We haven't used technical support for quite a while but when we did use them, they were very good. 

Deployment is a difficult question because we've been using the product for so many years that it's simple for us. I think implementation for the server and the node is simple but the configuration is a little complex. Part of the issue is that there are so many features and if you want to use them all, it needs to be via configuration. There are a lot of configuration parameters in Spectrum Protect. To add a new computer to the server takes a minute. To deploy a new server might take a day or two. All our deployments are done in-house. 

The cost is high and the license is complicated. You have to figure out which license best suits your needs. It's not as simple as Veeam or the other software products we use. We need an ILMT license with IBM. We have a computer dedicated to compute the license we need for our IBM project. We pay an annual license fee of somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000.

I recomment this solution if the need is to be able to quickly recover one or more files destroyed by mistake a few weeks ago. We must ensure that the configuration meets the needs of the users. The best advice I can give is to read the tutorial provided by the IBM documentation. And for anyone administering the backup, they should perform restore tests regularly.

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

However if the needs are to be able to quickly restore a cloud infrastructure, there is undoubtedly better solutions.

Our primary use case is using it for protecting the physical environment.

The feature we have found most valuable is when you want to integrate it with a Tape Library and then do the DRM life cycle. That is when it works the best.

In terms of what could be improved, the integration with Cloud and a simplified, unified GUI. They do not have a unified GUI, they only work on CLI and operations center, which is really complicated for the installation and configuration.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for almost 15 years.

It is very stable.

Yes, it is scalable. It is scalable with Db2 and it can be scalable with the metatext.

Their technical support is good.

The initial setup can be a little bit complex.

It could be simplified.

The pricing is costly.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM Spectrum Protect around a 7.

To raise that score, I would like to see Cloud integration and full Cloud support.

Additionally, they have much less support in terms of backing up the SQL databases than other applications.

There are many modernized applications out there in the market. If someone has a full legacy with tape in front or if they have purely tape and they want to use tapes, then for them I would say it is a very good solution. But if they want to move towards Cloud and modernize more, then I think there are better solutions to look into than IBM, such as Veeam or Cohesity or Rubrik.

We use IBM Spectrum Protect for all the organization backups. When there is loss of data, we can restore it from the backup.

We have found the building, compression, backup, and the tool to save point-in-time backups to be valuable features.

The backup is very good. In other backup systems, you need a lot of storage to gain the same backup policy.

There aren't too many bugs, and it is good for storage and backup.

The high availability of the backup servers can be improved because we can replicate nodes, but the software is very complicated. It's very complicated to do backups in several clusters.

You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore.

To go to new hardware, it's a project because you would need to do tests of the backup and restoration of the  DB2 database. A lot of time would need to be spent.

There are lots of configuration issues.

I think it would be good if they could improve the self service of the users.

We've been using this solution for about 20 years.

It is a stable solution.

It's not a scalable solution. For example, if I need to move to a better host or if I need to move my database that gives them the metadata, then I would need to move the IBM Spectrum Protect database to another storage spot. So, I would need to do a backup and restoration of the database. There is no scalability in the backup server.

I can't move it to another host without downtime. I would need a minimum of one day of downtime to move the database to another storage spot or to move the server to another server. I can't build another host and then switch.

We do plan to increase usage because there are more backup needs.

The technical support is okay. Sometimes, they give the answer but not immediately. At other times, we have to handle a case for a very long time.

The initial setup for IBM Spectrum Protect was complex. It's not a software that you can install and do a little bit of configuration and be done. You have to know very well what you're doing with it.

It works with DB2, and you have to know what the sizing, the log sizing, and so forth are. This is the difficulty with this software.

I did the deployment myself, but it would be very difficult to do it alone. I did it because I had enough time as a new employee 20 years ago; I took it on as a project.

However, in most organizations there won't be enough time to learn about IBM Spectrum Protect yourself. It would be better to do it with a deployment company that has more experience.

I think that overall it's a good software for backup. There aren't a lot of bugs, and it's very good for storage. However, you have to be a specialist; it's not plug and play.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect at nine.

We use it for normal file system backups, database backups for Microsoft SQL, and VM image backups. We also use it for the backup of the Sybase database, which is an important backup for us. Sybase is the database for the SAP ERP systems. These are business-critical systems.

IBM doesn't provide its own data protection agent for Sybase. Therefore, we are taking Sybase backups by using the built-in API from SAP. We utilize Sybase ASE, which contains the API and allows us to connect with the TSM of IBM Spectrum Protect. We are currently on an older version, but we are going to upgrade to 8.1.9 very soon.

The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment.

They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution.

It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. 

It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect.

To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts.

I have been using this solution for the last 12 years.

It is stable. Stability-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect is among the best. It doesn't crash like Data Domain. It is not unsteady, and it doesn't become unstable. Once it is configured correctly on the right hardware, it will run pretty well.

It is definitely scalable. We are a service provider for another company, which has about 2,000 to 3,000 users. 

For its deployment and maintenance, we have 18 team members. We have 24/7 support. We have a couple of L3s, and the rest of them are L1s and L2s. 

Their technical support staff is not the best. They are among the lowest in the whole market. They never want to come for a WebEx meeting and always ask for logs. When the logs don't reveal anything, they ask for traces, which is a big hassle again because you have to do many things. After you upload the traces, they are not able to find anything. The case goes on for weeks. From weeks, it goes to months, and sometimes, you have to escalate to just get something simple fixed. 

IBM support is very difficult. They have improved everything. The documentation is excellent, but when it comes to the support, they just don't want to get into a WebEx meeting. They don't want to help you online. Commvault or other companies would just jump into a WebEx meeting, simply look at this stuff, and quickly fix the problem in no time. I don't know why they are resistant to getting on a WebEx meeting. No other backup vendor out there says no to this. It may be because they have a lot of work, and they're busy, or they don't feel that they can solve it quickly enough. It could be because the product is like this, and the support can't support or fix it quickly.

They should be able to quickly get to the root cause, but they take forever to get back to us on certain issues. We can read a lot of literature out there. There are a lot of pros out there, but the problem is that the support guys themselves should be like those guys. Their certain messages are so cryptic that we don't even know what to do. They are hard to understand. I ran into a migration problem the other day, and they were just asking for more logs, which was causing issues in production because the pools were filling up. Technical support has to be really quick these days.

In the past, I have extensively used Oracle's RMAN backups. I have also used snapshot and FlashCopy Manager a lot for critical systems.

In our own data centers, we had IBM Spectrum Protect, and then we migrated away from them. We are now only supporting those customers who are running this environment. If you look at some of the companies where we are supporting IBM Spectrum Protect, they have been an IBM shop for very long, mostly because their systems are on IBM. Most of their infrastructure is IBM and their software is IBM, so they will naturally go for IBM Spectrum Protect to protect their infrastructure.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

The initial implementation was done by a third-party vendor who was an IBM partner. I don't think it took long. It took a few hours.

We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing.

The IBM shops would use it because it fits very nicely into an IBM environment, but even with the VM capabilities, it is more difficult to configure and support as compared to other solutions in the market. If you look at other solutions, even your IBM ProtecTIER, for example, would be a data protection appliance. I could mix and match technologies, but I think other products are easier to manage. 

There are many third-party products that do it all. TSMManager is really excellent for managing a multi TSM server environment. If you have got 10 or 20 TSM servers, you cannot manage them natively. It is difficult to switch from one to another. You can always connect them and then jump from one to the other. You have that option, but it is easier if you have one UI sitting on top of them all, like a single management layer. IBM does not provide it. I have heard something is coming out in version nine or ten, which is going to change a lot of things, but I am not very sure.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect a seven out of ten. There are many good things about it, such as stability, reliability, and scalability, but it is tough in terms of manageability and things like that. Its support is also not good.

We used the platform for data backup purposes.

The platform has valuable stability.

There could be various client systems and process integration included in the product.

We have used IBM Spectrum Protect for 20 years.

I rate the platform's stability a nine out of ten.

We had more than 1000 IBM Spectrum Protect users in our environment. The scalability is low for process integration. Apart from that, it provides good scalability.

There was a team of two to three administrators for deployment. Two administrators maintain it at present.

We implemented it in-house back then.

IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs.

We plan to switch to another tool as IBM Spectrum Protect doesn't meet our business requirements. I rate it a one out of ten.

It serves as a backup solution, and although its user interface may not be perceived as unique, its administration process is reported to be smooth. The community project aspect ensures reliable backup communication, especially when dealing with lost backup features. It simplifies tasks such as fixing the entire system and storing data on platforms like Gmail or Hyper-V.

It has expanded its capabilities and is now part of the Storage Defender suite. This suite is designed to enhance cybersecurity, particularly in safeguarding against ransomware attacks. In addition to disaster recovery, the Storage Defender suite aims to protect against cyber threats by providing measures to recover data in the event of encryption by malicious actors.

The most valuable is its versatility, allowing users to efficiently manage IBM V and Hyper-V in diverse environments. The flexibility extends to cloud transitions, enabling easy movement from one vendor to another. The tool proves invaluable in scenarios where systems need recovery, such as restoring damaged data. Users can leverage it to migrate data between different environments, making tasks like moving from on-premise to the cloud straightforward.

The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system. Dealing with administrative tasks from my perspective has not been straightforward. The user interface for administration lacks the ease that is found in other tools, especially when dealing with storage.

I have been using it for four years.

It is a very mature tool and it has been reliable and stable throughout our experience. I would rate it ten out of ten.

I didn't have any issues with scalability, it has been good.

My experience with customer service and support has been satisfactory. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

The deployment process takes one week.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

The whole product is for doing backups, and it's a reliable tool. Everything stored can be retrieved. We have databases and virtual data storing systems we are covering, but the vast majority is what the backup guys call unstructured data. So we do direct backups from various flavors of file service.

The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses.

There's no single feature. It's the overall product, the reliability, and the ability to work at the scale we are working at. It's that incremental forever approach, which we definitely need for the amount of data we are handling. It's more a philosophy of product, but a certain feature.

The software is complex.

I've been using the solution for about 20 years.

It is definitely stable.

It's very scalable from the data and the client's perspective. The scalability on the process integration side is not equally advanced.

Once you overcome the first level of IBM tech support, they are great.

ISP by now is our "previous" solution. We successfully switched to Commvault Backup.

It's a complex software, so it's a complex task, especially at the large scale and the software is accordingly complex. You won't set up this software or any competitor within a few clicks. So it is complex, but it's adequately complex. And on the client side, it depends on the documentation given by the central IT on the server side.

It was not a software deployment, but it went along with a strategic shift here. When we introduced Spectrum Protect, we introduced centralized backup service. So it was very little a matter of software deployment, but very much a matter of mentality and processes.

We used our own team to deploy, and have two staff to maintain the solution.

My advice would be to start with a use case analysis and what you want to achieve to determine if Spectrum Protect is the best solution. There's no absolute ranking without looking at the use case scenarios.

We recently reviewed our use case analysis, and as a result, we switched to Commvault Backup.

We use the solution for backup since we have some AIX machines and a few Windows machines.

To be honest, there aren't many features in the solution. However, it is a very robust solution.

The solution is overly complicated in terms of architecture, especially compared to other tools in the market. So, IBM Spectrum Protect should try to declutter. Also, there are even some conflicts in the functionalities between IBM Spectrum and Spectrum Protect. That's my take on it compared to the competitors like Veeam.

In future product releases, the solution should be less complicated regarding architecture.

Also, they have to stop being dependent on anything, which is CLI. I am saying this even though I like CLI. So, they have to change. The problem is that the solution originates from IBM TSM, especially because they have not even updated it in the terminology. So, when I see the terminology, it does not communicate what has happened in the solution, especially in terms of if everything has developed or if they have to update and try to find a way of transitioning from the old terminology to the new terminology.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for a year and a half. I am either using IBM Spectrum Protect Version 8.1.14 or IBM Spectrum Protect Version 8.1.15. My company has a partnership with IBM.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Four engineers in my company are using the solution. It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I am trying to categorize it as a workstation, backup software, or data center backup software because they are all different. If you categorize it as a workstation kind of backup software, then definitely it's not good in scalability terms. As we are trying to evaluate it as a data center, it becomes a different story and gets complicated.

I have contacted the solution's technical support. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I haven't previously used any other products. So, I didn't know that Veeam had AIX. A huge part of my problem is that my installation is based on AIX. It would be much easier if I had a Windows installation.

The solution's initial setup process wasn't easy. It's okay to have trouble installing the server. So you may have problems installing the clients. They have a lot of documentation, and I can tell that it requires an expert to install the client itself. Even for Windows applications, it was a hassle. There are complexities with the installation phase.

Regarding the time for deployment, it took me a long time just for you now because you have to start from the planning through deployment. The setup isn't simple or straightforward. They have one document, which makes sense compared to what's available in the market now. However, it is not easy to manage and can be a hassle. It took me weeks to deploy the solution.

The people required for the solution's maintenance depend if it is only on the basic operations, then one person is enough. A professional team ready to troubleshoot would make it a different story. Two qualified people would be more than enough.

It is an overpriced solution. I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective.

Once IBM Spectrum Protect restarted, we couldn't figure out why that happened. The solution's operation center made the solution's GUI, or graphical user interface, really nice. The way the operation center started making it more engaging and trying to make it good is something that made it nice.

I would recommend the solution to my foes and enemies. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.