IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

Inside my company, we are using Spectrum Protect worldwide to back up all our server systems. We have it in use at our data centers and remote locations.

We have a cloud strategy. Our strategy now is to develop a solution for our customers to have a middleware also in place; a portal where we provide services independent if the site is internal on an external cloud. Therefore, we plan to give external cloud services to our customers.

We have a lot of IBM equipment, mainly in our SAP environment. We are using storage solutions: XIV storage solutions, all-flash solutions based on A9000, and using POWER System servers in S/4 HANA. We are now using ESS storage and power servers, and also using equipment from other companies, especially in the Intel world.

We have a long history using Spectrum Protect. We are working close together with IBM development to make solutions happen that we need and solve issues very fast.

• The product is very stable.
• Performance is mostly perfect.
• We have been very satisfied with the product.

We need everything cloud. Strong support for cloud services. S3 connectivity, which is mandatory for us in the future along with this integration of Spectrum Copy Data Management or Spectrum Protect services together with these Spectrum Protect Plus functionalities, e.g., hardware, snapshots, and Copy Data Management. They should come together in one solution.

Coming from the last issue we had, the requirement was to have snapshots in place for our fast recovery of our SharePoint environment. With the original Spectrum Protect, this was not possible. After IBM provided the product, Copy Data Management and now spectrum protect provide a solution resolving this issue to have a fast recovery in place. That was the main issue with Spectrum Protect.

We have been waiting for solutions for approximately one year.

Scalability is a given because we have solutions for our data centers, mainly in the tape area, and tape drive-based solutions. We have disk-based solutions at remote sites. We are using containers and replication for central data centers. Therefore, scalability is given, and we are completely satisfied with it. Our group manages the infrastructure for the company.

We have maybe 500 remote locations, then we have six data centers with multiple solutions. Therefore, we have maybe 600 to 800 Spectrum Protect instances.

We always grow by an average of 30-35% per year. It is not always in new server systems. It is an increase in backup storage, but very often we have to add new Spectrum Protect systems, too. We feel the product can grow with us.

We are very happy with the technical support. We work very closely together with IBM using their Support Center, but we have a strong contact in their development teams, and we have dedicated people from IBM working with us.

I think the initial setup with IBM was easier for us because we have a strong relationship with them. We have a history of working together for about 15 to 18 years using Spectrum Protect.

At the moment, we are using Spectrum Protect Plus. We already tested CDM for SharePoint though there were some issue with it, and we plan to go live with Spectrum Protect Plus at the end of May this year.

The basic objective of this solution is data protection, whether it's at the virtualization layer, physical layer, or database layer. This is basically a whole data protection suite for entire enterprise workloads. It includes your VMware workloads and any physical workloads, bare-metal workloads, databases, and all this, email. This solution is being used for everything for data protection.

All the useful features are valuable actually. You can't ignore any one of them. We also use Spectrum Protect Plus actually, the other product, where you can integrate the VMware Hyper-V or any other solution for the backup, data protection, and using that one, you can protect all the databases also.

Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus still have separate use cases. From the IBM side, these two products are running in parallel. But in the near future, they are combining the Spectrum Protect Plus. There will be no Spectrum Protect itself in the near future. But as both are currently separate, Spectrum Protect Plus is mostly for the virtualized workloads, whereas Spectrum Protect is for the bare metal and databases kind of thing.

This solution itself protects the data, but the solution itself should be recoverable quickly in case of disaster on the production side or something. So this solution is not mature in terms of disaster recovery and could be improved. The architecture of the solution needs more flexibility.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

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

The solution is very good in terms of scalability. We are running almost a petabyte of data protection for our solution, so it's pretty stable. From a scalability point of view, it has plenty of options. The solution will work for any entry to mid-range customer.

We used to have technical support from IBM and it's good. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it eight or nine, because we get the solution to the problem immediately.

The solution has a capacity-based licensing, front and back-end license. It's yearly with front-end capacity license or back-end capacity license per terabyte; customer's choice.

This product itself has evolved quite a lot. Before it was quite difficult for the administrator, for the end-user, whoever has to manage the product. It was not user-friendly compared to all other data protection solutions. In the last three to four years, IBM has put a lot of R&D and effort into this solution. It's very easy to use, and it has a lot of improved features. Any normal administrator can handle this one now.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution in order to back up VMware, Hyper V, SQL, and Oracle. We also do Linux, AIX, and solutions that Cisco has as well.

We also do voice logging.

The solution has excellent performance overall. 

The product's initial setup is pretty straightforward. They offer good documentation that helps with the process.

The stability of the solution is very good.

In general, the solution is quite user-friendly. The GUI is very nice.

The solution requires organizations to purchase an extra license to go to the cloud. I've got a limitation of going to the cloud. I don't want to pay more. It gets expensive.

There needs to be a bit more automation.

We've been using the solution for the last five years or so. It's been a while at this point.

The solution is quite stable. We're actually in the process of doing a POC for a sister company to make sure the stability holds and it's doing very well. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's good.

We had to look at the scalability as we wanted to expand. You need to purchases extra licenses if you want to expand. 

I'd rate the technical support at a nine out of ten. Every time they change some aspect of the product, we need to call them to get clarity and they are always very helpful. We're extremely satisfied with the level of support they provide to our organiztion.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward overall. They have very helpful documentation and assistance from the engineers. It's a smooth process. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation.

The solution does have engineers that can help with the initial setup.

The solution can get pretty expensive. They also charge an extra license if you would like to go to the cloud.

The solution charges companies a licensing fee on a yearly basis on the front-end. You pay at the beginning of the year.

We are customers and end-users.

Our contract is coming to an end and the way that the budget is going, we've decided that we going with peer storage at this stage. We're going to change the way we are doing things, both on-premises and in the cloud.

Whether this solution makes sense for a company depends on their environment and their overall goals.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We were mostly happy with the product, however, there were some limitations around the licensing that's making us rethink our commitment to it.

We use this product to back up our VMs and files locally and then to the cloud.

The most valuable feature is the backup speed.

The interface could be more user-friendly.

In the future, I would like to see more features regarding file backup, as well as multiple cloud integration.

We have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for about two years.

The stability is good.

Spectrum Protect is used to back up our infrastructure on the backend and is not directly related to the number of people in the company.

We are using both Veeam and Spectrum Protect.

The initial setup was a little bit complex. Our deployment took a couple of months to complete.

A consultant assisted us with our deployment.

The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to implement the newest version, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

This is a good product, although it would be better if it were easier to use and manage.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We have a lot of happy customers when we sorted our files. We had someone in admissions, and they have a file which everyone shares. There are users who have deleted or trashed files and will need to restore them, sometimes even overwrite it with a new one. They will need the old file from a particular date and the Spectrum Protect system lets you retrieve a specific date file, which leads to a lot of happy campers.

We have an on-premise infrastructure. We use Iron Mountain, then we have a tape library. We have tapes that go off-site, so we can restore for our disaster recovery solution if the premise goes down. Though, we have not had to use it yet.

The VMware/virtual people take more of the snapshots, though not too much with the main AIX boxes.

Recovering files which have been lost. You can't place a value on it. If someone loses a day's work, or they had this file that they had been keeping for years on end and now all of a sudden the data is gone, they can recover it with Spectrum Protect.

The backup feature. Everyone wants a full backup. It gives them safety and peace of mind, like an insurance policy for that rainy day when they may need to restore a system. It is not necessarily as good for migrating to a new release, then putting back a D-drive. However, for daily operations and disaster recovery, it is a big use case.

Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups. I am doing more work these days with Identity and Oracle, why would I use the pump and dump on Oracle or would it be better if I am able to send it off-site using something like Spectrum?

It has been very reliable. 

The biggest issue is educating users. The compatibility if you put out a newer server can take backups from old Clients, but you want to keep Clients up-to-date. Some users are more proactive than others, so they won't all come and ask for the Client. It is a job that we should be educating users more about regarding when they should download it. With Spectrum Protect, you can push things from the hubs to the spokes and keep the Clients up-to-date.

I have not seen any big issues. I sometimes handle the tape library, unloading and loading tapes. and it is very predictable. 

We recently had a situation where we quickly got code, and the number of tapes exceeded the library capacity so we were waiting a while to change. We got a fix for this right away.

We only have a couple servers, but loads of nodes and Clients (hundreds of them). We have some domains, active directories, backups, and shared drives. The shared drives are big. Since driving the recovery scenario, where someone deletes something off of their shared drive, it is not just that person's data but it's a whole department's data.

The technical support has very good turnover for problem solving. They have been spot on as we received a response within a few days.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

Spectrum Protect would free up backup space that could be used from files in our databases to grow. It allows for growth of the database, so it is a good use case. However, I might use Oracle pump and dump because I am in test mode (and cheap), but if I were to put it into production, I would really have to use something like Spectrum to do that.

Main criteria for choosing Spectrum Protect: disaster recovery. It is something you seldom use, but it is big if it happens, so it is the security and insurance policy.

It is for enterprise backup and recovery. I support customers who use this product for their enterprise backup and recovery.

I have small customers with about 40 cartridge libraries, then I have others who have petabytes of data and using everything under the sun. This is another good feature of Spectrum Protect; it does it all.

I support a customer base of about 25 customers. So, I support probably 50 instances.

It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection. 

Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less.

Scalability: Our customers are able to grow the product without having to buy additional hardware, so it is very scalable.

For Spectrum Protect Plus, I would like to see more enhanced reporting features and integration with Spectrum Protect. 

In terms of Spectrum Protect, usually the IBM features are ahead of where the customers' demand is, so I generally do not even install the latest version for at least a year. Therefore, I think they are doing good with this product.

It really depends on the hardware that you are running it on. If you run it with the right resources, it can be up for years on end.

It scales from very small to very large. It is easily the most scalable product out there.

I use technical support quite often, calling in PMRs for customers. Support is really good, as I have never had to close a PMR with them having fixed the problem. Also, they are very responsive.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and easy to implement.

Customers will look at other vendors in the enterprise backup space: Commvault, NetBackup, Veeam, and other similar solutions.

Most of my customers have already been Spectrum Protect customers. Therefore they are happy with the product. The new implementations that I have done, they have generally chosen Spectrum Protect for its scalability and reliability.

I would absolutely recommend Spectrum Protect.

It has a tried and true tested ability. It has been around for approximately 30 years. The roadmap is definitely aligned with where businesses are going, e.g., cloud support, virtual backup support, etc. In the eight years that I have been a business partner, I have lost one customer that switched off of the platform. This was not because they were unhappy with the product, but from an acquisition,

The most valuable feature is the breadth of what it can do in an environment for backup protection of data. It's very scalable. Customers can adopt a Spectrum Protect solution at an entry level.

As their environment grows, the solution will grow with it. They don't have to worry about purchasing additional vendor solutions to meet their backup and storage needs.

With a single solution, a customer can manage all their data from a backup protection perspective. I think, single-handedly, the way that it does their backup is quite unique. It incorporates data reduction during all stages of the backup process. Customers can manage more data without incurring additional licensing costs.

I would like to see IBM take the solution more into enabling customers to work with cloud solutions. While they are making great strides to do that today, I think there are some areas for growth required in that area.

In addition to the hypervisors, whether it's VMware or Hyper-V, there are still some areas that I would like to see continued. So to sum up: Handling with the cloud and the hypervisor.

It's a very stable solution. It's been around for a very long time. Because of all that length of time it's been in use, it has become a very, very stable product.

IBM does a great job of innovating and keeping the product current with their new roll-outs and new updates to the solution to meet the ever changing needs that customers are facing today in managing and protecting their data.

It's really scalable. Great scalability.

I personally have never used support, but we work with customers who do. We find that their support, on the average, is very good.

We look for stability when first considering solutions. IBM, overall, brings the greatest set of solutions that can tackle a customer's storage needs. This is not just from a data protection perspective, but through the whole lifecycle of managing their data. IBM has a full spectrum of solutions they can bring for customers' needs.

I would definitely do the research. Part of that research should include the IBM Spectrum Protect solution.

One of the benefits they should always look at is the total cost of ownership of any solution. I think that's where Spectrum Protect really shines. You need to look past just the software costs.

There are also going to be hardware costs, training costs, and services involved with it. You'll find that with Spectrum Protect, the total cost of ownership of implementing and maintaining the solution is going to be less than other vendors.

Client scheduling, deduplication, parallel processing of restores, disaster recovery manager.

Very reliable backup and recovery system. If you have SAN on the back-end housing TSM’s storage pools, you can achieve blazing fast restore times.

DB2 at the back-end database has some bugs in version 6; however, I have not yet worked with version 7 of TSM, so perhaps IBM has improved this, but don’t know for sure.

Since 2005.

Yes, with deduplication turned on, you need to be careful about how you scale server ratio to clients. Dedup takes more DB space and processing time. We overloaded our first v. 6 server when we moved from 5.3 and this was a major headache.

For some reason on 6.2, when DB2 does a reorg, dsmserv will hang. Have not been able to troubleshoot deep enough due to lack of time.

No. You just need to have the servers and backend SAN storage with which to scale. $$$

IBM has been pretty good so far and you get people who know the product with great expertise.

5/5.

No, I have used TSM since I started managing backup/recovery.

I would say its fairly complex and would be best done with a consultant. It is a product designed to scale to immense proportions and takes a team to put it together right.

Implemented through a vendor team. The consultant we had was an expert.

Not sure. But it has saved us from data loss many times.

Not sure.

No.

Definitely recommend it.