--- title: IBM Storage Protect Reviews meta_title: 'IBM Storage Protect Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 76 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how IBM Storage Protect works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.1 review_count: 76 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: Backup url: https://www.g2.com/categories/backup --- # IBM Storage Protect Reviews **Vendor:** IBM **Category:** [Server Backup Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/server-backup) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 76 ## About IBM Storage Protect IBM® Storage Protect™ can simplify data protection, whether data is hosted in physical, virtual, software-defined or cloud environments. With IBM Storage Protect, organizations can choose the right software to manage and protect their data—while also simplifying backup administration, improving efficiency, delivering scalable capacity and enabling advanced capabilities. ## IBM Storage Protect Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **reliability** of IBM Storage Protect, ensuring secure data access and recovery options for teams. (2 reviews) - Users value the **app accessibility** of IBM Storage Protect, ensuring remote data access and secure recovery. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **variety of backup options** offered by IBM Storage Protect, enhancing its overall resiliency and capabilities. (1 reviews) - Users find IBM Storage Protect's **backup solutions** invaluable for reducing data loss and enabling remote file access. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **data recovery capabilities** of IBM Storage Protect, ensuring secure and accessible file restoration even remotely. (1 reviews) - Users value the **robust data security** of IBM Storage Protect, ensuring safe access and reliable file recovery. (1 reviews) - Features (1 reviews) - Users value the **flexibility** of IBM Storage Protect, enabling quick recovery and diverse backup options. (1 reviews) - Multi-Device Access (1 reviews) - Performance (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face **compatibility issues** with IBM Storage Protect due to a limited list and missing GUI options. (1 reviews) - Users find the **complex setup** of IBM Storage Protect to be frustrating and time-consuming for first-time use. (1 reviews) - Users find the initial setup of IBM Storage Protect to be **difficult to learn** , causing some frustration and delays. (1 reviews) - Users find the **difficult setup** of IBM Storage Protect frustrating and time-consuming during their initial experience. (1 reviews) - Users find the initial setup of IBM Storage Protect to be **frustrating and time-consuming** , impacting their overall experience. (1 reviews) - Lacking Features (1 reviews) - Users find the **learning difficulty** of IBM Storage Protect to be frustrating and time-consuming for first-time setup. (1 reviews) - Limited Compatibility (1 reviews) - Limited Features (1 reviews) - Limited Options (1 reviews) ## IBM Storage Protect Reviews ### 1. Software for the Everyday Man **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** This software has been around for ages and it has stood the test of time. It is easy to use with easy navigation and very straight forward for any business **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** I do not have any complaints because it has been a valuable tool **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** It is a very useful tool in any business to figure out financial data within a corporation **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are allocating different sales into different divisions and figuring out our sales percentage. ### 2. IBM Spectrum Protect **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** FNU S. | Software Development Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** Automatic installation of dependencies is best. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** I am still new to this and haven't found anything worth dislike till this point. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Developing applications to access correctness of tutorial completed by users and will user it in machine learning, ### 3. IBM Spectrum Protect **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 02, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The added features to support cloud storage such as AWS **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Nothing to dislike so far. IBM Spectrum Protect is making improvements. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** It has made headway in terms of making it more user friendly. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data protection with IBM Spectrum protect. It also allows for archiving to cloud based storage solutions. ### 4. Short but good **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The product delivers results based on what you have setup at the Vanilla flavor, since we use Sysplex D. it wasn't portable. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Portability is a tad weak specially when you multiple LPARS and utilizing Sysplex-D. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Have an available platform to stress-test your deliverables. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** At that time is was a POC/POV ### 5. Interesting **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 14, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** Ease of use for the normal user. Not too difficult to understand. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The formatting and flow of process could be better organized. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Na **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Security. ### 6. Good Product but has stability issues and minimal tech transparenecy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2016 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** I like the ease of integration and speed to storing the backup data . e. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The user interface from DBA perspective , IBM should inverst more tools development where in end user view only privileges could be facilitated. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** TSM is a ver stable product and could be potentially accepted industry wide. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have integrated it TSM for database log and full backup for SQL server and IBM DB2 UDB farms and find it quite intutiv ### 7. Flexible comprehensive solution for backup and recovery **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan B. M. | Technology Support Analyst, Financial Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The Tivoli Storage manager product suite is an excellent, complete disaster recovery/COB solution leveraging a multitude of software offerings to meet your storage needs.. The more you learn about TSM & facilitate the automation that the product is designed to use, the less administrative intervention is required comparatively to other products. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** As others have stated, there is a significant learning curve to fully understanding all of the various aspects of TSM & how all the parts work together. The migration to the DB2 database structure poses additional implementation as well as administrative challenges. These issues however are typically mitigated through IBM's support structure. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** In my experience & compared to other products, IBM Tivoli storage manager is the strongest product offering available. The trade off in complexity & learning curve to rich feature set coupled with support as well as product flexibility & automation is completely worth it. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Complete Disaster Recovery protection including the ability to quickly back up and restore data for users as well as system administrators in the event of server failure or a disaster scenario. ### 8. 15 years of ADSM / TSM - It's a mixed bag **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh-Daniel D. | Technology Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** * Scalable - if you need to manage a huge amount of data, TSM does it well. Where many products may take a stack of media servers, TSM can do it all from the primary server. TSM still supports media relay servers, and command routing between multiple TSM servers. * Incrementals forever / aka synthetic fulls - Reduces the data sent between the client and the server * SQL Database for metadata - You can query the metadata with select statements for reporting or diagnostics. * Web resources - TSM / ADSM has been around a LONG time, so there are a lot of web resources * HSM - TSM has support for overlaying on top of a filesystem, allowing cold files to migrate onto slower, higher density, lower cost media, while still being transparently available from the filesystem. * Powerful CLI - the CLI has built in help, and is the primary way admins run TSM. * Supports most common platforms (AIX, Linux, Windows, VMWare, Hyper-V, NDMP, Exchange, Domino, MSSQL, Oracle, etc etc etc. * Integrates with snapshots for major storage providers. * Unified pricing - some of the pricing models are fairly simple and include all of the subproducts that are actually made by IBM. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** * Very complex - Even in support, which is like accelerated admin and troubleshooting training, it takes 6 months to be able to help people with the product without having a senior tech sit with you. It takes years to become a "good" resource. It takes a decade or more to become an Expert. * High overhead - You cannot just set it up and leave it alone. You will touch TSM every day. If you are even slightly resource constrained, you will manually work on TSM for several hours per day. Basically, deploy at 25%. Plan for upgrades at 50%. Deploy the upgrades at 75% to bring you back down to 25%. If you hit 80%, you'll touch the server for a few hours per day. If you hit 90%, you will be logged in to the server all day, every day, and you may have occasional backup failures. If you hit 95%, you will hit 100%, and everything will grind to a halt. * Negative retention policy - While it is VERY flexible, this confuses many people. To work around this means bypassing the incremental forever. * Reclamation - With incremental backups defragmenting tape space takes a lot of time. * Lock contention - Admin processes and client processes fight with eachother, no matter how well you time things. * Rolling bugs - There's no such thing as a "stable" release. Base levels have new features, and huge amounts of bugs. Patch levels fix bugs, but often, they are not fixed until several major releases later. It's more like beta code is alpha code; release code is beta code; and final patch levels are semi-stable / frozen. * Deduplication scalability - this is about the same as with any other backup product. If you have a pool larger than about 60TB raw, then you will not be able to manage some of your daily operations. Deduplication is stored in sequential file volumes, which have to be defragmented by rewriting them completely. * Deduplication Ration - Dedupe reductions are about half that of Dilligent / ProtecTier. * Deduplication performance - Raw performance on dedupe under the best hardware is equivalent to Dilligent's performance from 7 years ago with the DD4 nodes. Because of this, making secondary offsite copies is slower than minimum tape streaming speed. The suggested solution on the forums is that they'll drop support for offsite tape copies in dedupe, rather than allowing multiple threads to write to the same tape at the same time (interleaved). * Not everything is internal - Several clients are made by different vendors, and rebranded, such as HSM for Windows (which does not use the space management structures in TSM - it uses archives), Sharepoint (DocAve with its own server, then a tie-in to TSM), Christie (rather than a simple GUI for building ASR media), etc. * Many clients are fairly complex - Especially TSM for Virtual Environments (VMWare, Hyper-V) uses the normal backup/archive client for some pieces, plus separate components for Web admin, scheduling, etc. Instant Restore is yet another piece, that while VERY nice, was grabbed from a third party product, Files-X, and slapped on as-is with its own, separate style of GUI. * Incomplete support - Xen and KVM are not supported. Platform support comes and goes. Support is not stable. It seems more about chasing version numbers and new marketing directions than unifying and stabilizing what's there. * Internal scripting is very limited. You cannot set internal variables except a boolean return code. You cannot send emails. You cannot call external programs other than building a client schedule from inside the script. You cannot query process numbers and kill them off. Some internal commands support time limits, while others do not. * GUI disparity. Every single piece has a different GUI. Some are websphere. Some are Java. Some are executables. Many do not integrate together. There is no common look and feel. There is no common syntax between commands and output. Text windows are not scalable. There is no overarching GUI to manage multiple TSM servers from the same place. Basically, TSM is really 20+ separate products. Long-time admins consider "TSM" to be the server command line. Everything else is an add-on. * Server GUI - This has been replaced several times, and each time is more complex, with less functionality. Originally was a 3MB Windows executable called "DSMADM.EXE". This was great for long past when it was discontinued. This was replaced with an internal webserver that was fairly decent through version 4 and 5 of TSM, but also was discontinued. The replacement was "Admin Center", a multi-gigabyte websphere deployment, with container frameworks, horrible layout, and took many revisions to get the functionality added back in. In version 6, this was also discontinued and is being replaced with Operation Center aka Command Center. This is also Websphere, but with a better usability/design. Unfortunately, only about 10% of the daily admin tools are part of this after 5 years. It's still mostly a reporting/dashboard tool, though some new functions are being added to it periodically. * DB2 bloat - TSM used to have an internal fork of DB2. Support and skillset for this became difficult, and scalability was limited for about 0.5% of the customer base. This was pulled out in TSM 6, and normal DB2 was deployed. That caused a 250% bloat for the same data, as well as dealing with interoperability and/or new-DB2 bugs in every release. * Product renames every decade. This was WDSF/VM originally. In the early 1990s, it became ADSM. In the early 2000s it became TSM. In the late 2010s, it became ITSM. In the mid 2010s, it became "Spectrum Protect". With all of the changes, chunks of the code retain the old name, so there are still references to ADSM and command names are DSM. It's been owned by Adstar, Tivoli, and IBM, back and forth several times. * Reporting is completely external, kludgy, and requires more effort than simply doing your own SQL queries into your own database. This still relies on Admin Center, which also is klunky. The best reporting was a query tool called Operational Reporter, that was about 60 megs. If it had a database, and graphs, it would have been 100% better, but instead, someone got a bonus check to ditch that and stuff in a websphere portal. * Support is usually overloaded - It's been call-back only for a decade, and is moving to web-only. You'll spend a lot of time working your way up from someone who can barely spell TSM (Receive Call / call routing), to someone who can kind of search a database (Level 1), to someone with decent skill (Senior tech or Backend), to someone with specialization in one part (Level 2). If you don't have a system down, or major business impact, and you haven't gotten a critical situation / complaint manager involved, it may take weeks to get resolution. If there's a defect, it may take months for a fix unless it affects a large number of customers, or a customer with multi-million dollar contracts. * Complex pricing - There are multiple options (by CPU is with weighted factors rather than anything definitive like MIPS or benchmarks), by front end storage, back end storage, factors for dedupe or non-dedupe, etc. Granted, most enterprise products have complex pricing. Just look at the CommVault sheet and see how many line items are required. At least TSM lets you go with a few different "Unified" pricing options. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** * If you need to manage a huge amount of data, and like tape, then get TSM. * If you need a great GUI, and have a big equipment budget, then get CommVault. * If you are a small, VMWare only shop, then get VEEAM, not TSM. * If you need small to medium dedupe, pick the product you like best. Most products can do it, and most of them have similar limitations. There are benefits of doing dedupe inside the backup product (simplicity and efficiency of replication). * If you need giant dedupe, ProtecTier is the only way to go, no matter what Backup/DR solution you use. * There are also places for Avamar (integration with DataDomain or VMWare). * NetBackup, Legato, and most other enterprise solutions are good if that's what your people know, and they start small better, but otherwise are "meh" for scalability. * If you're looking for free, you need an expert systems engineer, not just an admin. Assessing, setting up, and scaling is more complicated, but many shops make this work. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** This is best for Medium to large footprint disaster recovery. If you want a small system, TSM is only good for you if you're already a TSM expert. Otherwise, the personnel costs are too high. For Business Continuity, this can be a major component, but there's still snapshots, RTO/RPO planning, etc that are outside of TSM (but part of Tivoli / Spectrum). ### 9. I use TSM primarily to qualify our products with TSM and add TSM support to our compatability matrix **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kenton M. | Software Q/A Test Engineer IV, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** TSM is very powerful and granular. It is able to utilize all the advanced features our products provide; Advanced Port and SAN fail-over with LTO tape drives, etc. I personally prefer using the command line interface, the messaging is very robust and informative. I also like the ability to write data directly to the tapepool, bypassing the disk backuppool. It is also great to get the throughput of writing to multiple drives at the same time. The TSM clients install very easily as well. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The TSM server component is somewhat difficult to install on Linux / Unix platforms, requiring an additional user being created other than root. Uninstall can be difficult as well, especially the DB2 portion. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** In a production environment, I would highly recommend having IBM TSM support engineers do the initial installation and setup. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Verifying support for our products both hardware and software features. Ability to sell our products into TSM environments. ### 10. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is Awesome! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike S. | Senior Technical Storage Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The ease of use with backup and recovery. The data deduplication of the backup storage is a MAJOR cost saver! **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** There isnt much to dislike. The web interface for the operation manager needs to be streamlined. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** You cannot go wrong with IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager. It is a rock solid backup/recovery system. The best way to obtain this software is to get it in an appliance bundle! When you purchase TSM as a backup appliance you not only get the best software, but perfectly matched hardware designed to optimize TSM's potential. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** TSM easily protects data for all business models. From Large Enterprise to small business I have seen the benefits of TSM and the speedy recovery of entire systems spawned from a simple virus all the way to the natural disasters. TSM is the best backup recovery solution you can find! ### 11. A very good product, but maybe not the most friendly one **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John E. | Storage and Backup Engineer and Solutions Designer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** TSM's incremental forever backup model allows for fast backups of file systems after the initial full, particularly useful for large or geographically dispersed estates. It's multi-platform client capabilities along with backwards compatibility allow it to work with the latest clients, or manage those troublesome legacy environments that are still so prevalent. It also has wide-ranging product integration with the TDP (Tivoli Data Protector) clients for applications such as Oracle, SQL, Exchange, SAP to name but a few, which add to its flexibility. This model also allows the applications owners, for example DBAs, to have full control over their backup and restore processes. It has an excellent security model, which allows it to be client driven rather than centrally driven, as well as secured in the more dangerous worlds of DMZs etc. as administration and BuR functionality can be separated and protected. It has its own internal scheduler, but the client-driven model allows for external scheduling with dedicated schedulers such as CA-7, Control-M and UC4. You could even use Cron, which is commonplace. Its mainframe background is obvious in its data collection abilities, allowing in-depth reporting and analysis, although you may need to be clever with SQL and accessing the internal DB2 database through the back door to extract some of information you may need. Its scalability is immense. Unlike many other BuR products, multiple TSM instances can be hosted on the same platform, allowing, for example, separation of data for security, different customers, data types, performance etc. whilst optimally leveraging server hardware. It works particularly well on Linux / Intel platforms. Support from IBM is excellent, and they are quick to fix bugs when encountered. The documentation is very well written and comprehensive, and web resources are excellent. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** TSM administration may not be for the faint-hearted. It is very easy to make a bad implementation, so it requires careful planning to ensure it is implemented properly. It is still very much at home being administered through the CLI - not an issue for old school engineers - but it can require deep knowledge to get the most out of it. It does have a GUI interface, but it has always been a bolt-on, and needs improvement. The downside of its incremental forever backup model is that restore functions can take a very long time if the backup media has not been regularly consolidated or the environment has been poorly planned. It also needs improvement in the area of restore reporting, particularly in the area of reporting restore media identification. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** One example is an estate which spanned several countries, multiple DCs with clients in both DCs and RoBos with numerous petabytes of structured and unstructured data. By implementing a well planned standardised model across the estate, centrally scheduled by a dedicated external scheduling product, the roll-out was relatively smooth and ongoing administration and support was greatly simplified. ### 12. TSM is very good for backups and not so good for point in time for restores. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Uday Bhaskar J. | Storage and backup engineer, Consumer Electronics, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** TSM handles backups very effectively and it will save us lot of backup space. Progressive incremental makes everyday backups so quick. from 6 version with DB2 in backend performance increased . Very good for medium and small number of servers. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Because of the progressive incremental backups to restore from single point of time it would require to read from so many days that makes restore very slow . Since it keeps index for very long time time in DataBase, it gets real slow if you have huge number of servers with good amount of data in them, Also little hard to adapt and manage compared to other vendors. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** very good for medium and small infrastructure . **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It takes very less backup windows which allows us to complete backups with in backup window this save us lot of costs. Also with the unlimited license per TSM server we have freedom to configure and backup any number of servers we want(even though we will end up with performance issues if we use too much) . ### 13. One of the best available tools for Enterprise Backup Management **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos P. | Backup Specialist, Computer Games, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** One of the best advantages of TSM in my opinion is the tape management and the retention. Features like reclamation and move data, also the version-based retentions make total difference in savings for a company needing a backup solution. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The way TSM db works, making harder to recover tapes from one TSM server to another and also to recover in the same server without having the DB. Other backup tools have features that scan and rebuild the tape index in case of losing the server DB, and such encryption is optional, not a mandatory feature. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** This is a very good tool with very good features. If you have a medium-large environment, go for it. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** As mentioned in what I like best, the way TSM handles the tapes make it a very good cost saving in an enterprise environment. ### 14. Overall, a good backup solution for a wide range of platforms and databases. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lisa C. | AVP, Disaster Recovery, Operations, RCSA, Financial Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The incremental forever policy makes backing up a larger amount of data more realistic but you also have the option to do fulls when required. Most of the installs are straight forward and upgrades are fairly easy as well. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Some of the error codes are not as easily resolved. Some of the installs are a little more difficult to complete and their documentation is not as clear as it should be. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a large amount of data to inspect and back up in a short period of time with not a lot of resources. TSM does assist in getting that done. We have not had to buy tapes for 1 year with utilizing co-location and this has improved our ability to quickly restore a complete server. ### 15. Good product. Room for improvement. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vinay S. | Lead Technical Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** It is very robust when it works well. Supports all kind of platforms and DBs. Once you are well versed with command line you can get every small detail easily. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The command line is a bit complex and you might not be able to identify the error codes very easily as the errors are not very descriptive. Once you are well versed it's easy but for beginners and low mid level the command line is not very easy. Some ppl who Prefer GUI over CLI would hate TSM. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's very good in terms of TSM DB recovery and has a very quick RTO. The reconciliation and migration features are very nice and saves lots of manual effort and storage consumption. It's the best suited product on AIX platform. ### 16. Worked with this product for a number of years with 20 thousand connected clients at a Large ISP. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** It's easy with a learning curve. You do have to know about databases because its was designed to use SQL. SQL is a language used for databases. But once you know the tables you will enjoy it. I do like it's complexity and user integration just keep in mind its software raided. Those raid5 parity storage devices are not a practical design. Simple and it works when you design it and manged it **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** I disliked the amount of tapes it identifies when you are doing a DR. The shipping of many tapes does get discouraging. But if you do the DR you'll be please to know it works! If you have someone that doesn't know the product the DR will fail I've been in the situation may times when the admin on hand is not correcting the problems for a great outcome with a DR. Also notice many implementation were not the best - either cost cutting priority made the product not work well. Invest in the product because it's the only life line to your business. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Make sure you find someone who's worked with the product and has the knowledge to provide you with the best implementation. Because when the foundation is not the best the product will show its worst! Jr Leonardo Perez **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Problems with cost are the only thing most companies realize that are a major problem to a company. TSM is affordable, and interesting challenge. ### 17. Good but needs improvement **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** I have used TSM since 1994. I've never really had an issue with it until IBM decided to change the internal database structure from proprietary to DB2. The upgrades were PAINFULL! I don't know why IBM killed the mainfame version of TSM. IMHO, A better enterprise BURA platform would be FDR Upstream/SOS/ Reservoir on the mainframe. Mainframes are built for I/O and as we know all BURA applications are I/O intensive. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** The product has excessive patching requirements which I believe are caused by the "farming out" of the TSM development to inexperienced groups. Years ago, the quality of the code was such that you didn't have to patch or upgrade TSM unless the version your were using was being sunset. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** If you have a mainframe try to run FDR Upstream/SOS/Reservoir in one LPAR then run TSM in another( I think TSM still runs under z Linux and then compare you findings. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** The basic backup & restore issues. The database, lan free and TSM4VE modules need lots of work from a usability perspective. These add ons are a real hassle to configure and get working correctly. ### 18. Tivoli Storage Manager since version 5.2 to current. **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Hardware | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** It's a proven backup and recovery application that has several models to choose from. One that can grow with a company no matter how large it gets. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** One of the legacy or older style systems that still uses agents to accomplish it's tasks. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Consider moving to an agent less based backup system that also supports deduplication. You will save tons of money in storage with dedupe. You will also save yourself maintenance and downtime if you don't have to update agents and reboot systems every time you do. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Because this product has been around a long time, it can connect to just about any type of storage device on the planet. It's is also capable of backing up just about any directory structure, Windows, Linux, Unix, AIX, Etc. It is able to expand it's base to a global scale. ### 19. IBM TSM Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 18, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** One of the best user friendly interface, easy to manage nodes, scheduling backup tasks and defining retention policy is much easier. I really like the database backup using TSM data protection. Backing up Oracle using TSM beats all of its competitors by integrating the script with oracle RMAN. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Limitation in reclamation when there is a shortage of Tape storage. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** 100% recommended to other users. A little complex compare to other products but once you get along with it, you will stick to it. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Been solving software development storage issues, TSM provided support for every single product they needed back up for, sharepoint, oracle, virtual environment, almost everything ### 20. Its very robust with convoluted retention and bad DR strategy **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sravan N. | Senior Data and Infrastructure Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** I like the breadth of API's that TSM supports for various applications and also LAN-Free architecture. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Retention policy is convoluted for different applications.For example db2 database retention is more driven the DBA than TSM and DR **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** DR strategy is a concern with TSM and retention is convoluted but overall as a product its robust since it supports wide variety of applications **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am solving simple backup/restore functionality in our current environment.Instant restore is one of the benefit and deduplication is another benefit ### 21. General Overview/Review of Tivoli Storage Manageri **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Roy S. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** The versatility of the software, with little not being supported either the O/S or the various business applications that support businesses worldwide. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Sometime slow response to user requests, in regards to software development, which may or may not lay totally with IBM. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Again, interaction with other products like Cristie and TSM Manager, amongts others. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Almost total data recovery, the interaction between Tivoli and Cristie TBMR, CBMR. ### 22. Tivoli Storage Manager **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** I have worked with TSM for over 10 years. It is a good enterprise backup solution that gives you the ability to configure it to suit your companies needs. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Learning TSM takes a while and a lot of hours of experience. Some of the logic in the software just doesn't make sense. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** If you are going to deploy TSM make sure you have an experienced admin onsite. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you will be able to handle the product with a training class. It takes real experience to understand the nuances of the product. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** All of our backup and archive needs. ### 23. I have worked with TSM for a year and it is an easy manageable Backup Solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** Forever Incremental Backup, Easy Maintenance for different OS flavors, Storage Pool - On pool & Off Pool architectures Colocating data on tapes for faster restore. Absolute security by not storing catalog information on the Tapes. **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Database needs to be safeguarded all the times , if we lose the tsm db , then we cannot perform any restore. **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business has customer sensitive data that cannot be lost at any point. Faster backup solution, ### 24. Best Backup and Recovery tool out there **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ed F. d. | Sr. Systems Engineer, Hospital & Health Care, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** Enterprise class - which means this is a total Data Management tool **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Nothing in particular - just continue improving **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Don't look elsewhere - TSM is the solution **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** RPO and RTO meets standards ### 25. 6years **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** prasad k. | Sr.Storage Engineer/Unix, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** reclaimation, migration and tape management **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** mgmt class and stg pools the way IBM support is horrible. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Need to improve GUI and flexible options... **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** TDPO,TDPS OS backups.CLuster backups, Storage agents etc.. ### 26. TSM is a wonderful technology for backup especially for archive requirements **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Storage Protect?** Archive policy. TSM archival is as simple as creating a new management class if customer needs to change his archive policy for existing data **What do you dislike about IBM Storage Protect?** Restore search for finding some files are not user friendly and effective. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Storage Protect:** Its good secure and satisfy all your data backup needs **What problems is IBM Storage Protect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I liked the TDP backups for dbs. Its good and easy to implement. ## IBM Storage Protect Discussions - [What is IBM Spectrum Protect used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-ibm-spectrum-protect-used-for) - [How do you protect your open source databases with IBM Spectrum Protect?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/ibm-storage-protect-how-do-you-protect-your-open-source-databases-with-ibm-spectrum-protect) - 1 upvote - [How do you protect your open source databases with IBM Spectrum Protect?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-you-protect-your-open-source-databases-with-ibm-spectrum-protect) - [View IBM Storage Protect pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-storage-protect/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-06+00%3A04%3A22+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=50bac7a7-cd4e-41d5-8acf-55eb2bb2ac14&secure%5Btoken%5D=86fc798dc10bf012ec7ede7dfccc33c9acd5caad792d38c606c1367b4b89532f&format=llm_user) ## IBM Storage Protect Features **Administration** - Alerts/Notifications - Security and Compliance - Administration Console **Compatibility ** - File Server Backup - Database Server Backup - Virtual Machines - Repository Models - VM Backup **Functionality** - Real-time Sync - Storage Capacity - Remote Backup - Versioning - Mobile Backup Application **Functionality** - Data Backup - Backup Automation - Integration - Diverse Database Handling - Cloud Backup - Continuous Backup **Functionality** - On Premises Recovery - Cloud Recovery - Prior State Recovery - Recovery Automation - Replication - Backup and Recovery - Data Replication **Management** - Real-Time Analytics - Solution Integration - Infrastructure Compatibility - Monitoring **Functionality** - Versioning - Scalability - Speed of access **Management** - Disaster Recovery - Storage Formats - On-Demand Restoration **Operations** - Service Management - Workflow Management - IT Discovery - Intelligent Automation **Management** - Continuous Backup - Disaster Recovery - Storage Capacity - Remote Backup - Activity Monitoring - Data Recovery - Automatic Backup - Differential Backup - Incremental Backup - Data Storage Management - Secure Data Storage **Compatibility ** - Disk Backup - Local Backup - Storage Formats - Automatic Backup - Cloud Backup - Document Storage **Admin** - Backup Management - Resource Management - File Management - Policy Management - Compliance Management - Incremental Backup - Remote Monitoring & Management - Data Storage Management - Audit Management **Management** - Local Management - Infrastructure Compatibility - Solution Integration - Real-Time Analytics - RTO and RPO Management - Data Management - Policy Management - Incident Management - Action Management - Risk Management - Third-Party Integration **Solution Provision** - System Failover - Pay by Usage - Service Provision **Reliability** - Redundancy - Availability **Reporting** - Activity Monitoring - Documentation - Alerts/Notifications **Recovery** - Disaster Recovery - On-Demand Restoration - Incident Reports **Compliance** - Security Standards - Cloud Data Protection - Data Deduplication - Ransomware Protection - SSL Security **Management** - File Sharing - Security Standards - Encrypted Storage **Security** - Encryption - Auditing - Access control **Agentic AI - Database Backup** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Agentic AI - Disaster Recovery** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - Intrusion Detection System - Scenario Planning **** - Encryption - AI Copilot - Remote Access/Control - Data Loss Prevention - API - Secure Data Storage - VM Backup - Generative AI - Risk Analysis - Access Controls/Permissions - Activity Dashboard - Security Auditing - Continuous Backup - Deduplication - Archiving & Retention - Continuous Monitoring - Sensitive Data Identification - Business Impact Analysis - Business Continuity Exercising - Alerts/Notifications **** - Access Controls/Permissions - Disaster Recovery - HIPAA Compliant - Data Recovery - AI Copilot - Two-Factor Authentication - Data Visualization - Remote Access/Control - Scheduled/Automated Reports - Alerts/Notifications - Backup Scheduling - Archiving & Retention - SSL Security - Version Control - Duplicate Detection - Data Migration - Data Replication - Local Server Options - Document Storage - Compression - Status Tracking - Secure Data Storage - Backup Log - Role-Based Permissions - Generative AI - Reporting & Statistics - API - Alerts/Escalation - Backup and Recovery - Remote Server Options - Activity Dashboard - Email Alerts - Web Access/Restoration - Activity Tracking - Encryption - Monitoring - Automated Scheduling - Self Service Portal - Data Synchronization - Task Scheduling **Security** - Security and Compliance **Compatibility** - Infrastructure compatibility - Interoperability **Agentic AI - IT Resilience Orchestration Automation (ITRO)** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Agentic AI - Server Backup** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - File Transfer - Third-Party Integrations **Agentic AI - Online Backup** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - Microsoft Outlook Integration - Active Directory Integration - Third-Party Integrations **** - Data Loss Prevention - Bare-Metal Restore - Compliance Tracking - Data Replication - Two-Factor Authentication - Drag & Drop - Compression - Single Sign On - Activity Dashboard - Duplicate Detection - Remote Monitoring & Management - Multi-OS - Backup Scheduling - Backup Log - Alerts/Escalation - File Management - Encryption - Sensitive Data Identification - Data Retention Management - Search/Filter - Data Synchronization - Reporting & Statistics - Version Control - Data Capture and Transfer - Data Migration - Archiving & Retention - Workflow Management - Generative AI - Access Controls/Permissions - Policy Management - Multiple Format Support - Real-Time Reporting - API - Data Visualization - AI Copilot **** - Remote Synchronization - Data Synchronization - Audit Trail - Monitoring - Role-Based Permissions - Approval Process Control - Real Time Synchronization - Alerts/Notifications - API - Single Sign On - Reporting & Statistics - Version Control - Customizable Branding - Synchronization Scheduling - Two-Factor Authentication - Real-Time Monitoring - Secure Login - Backup and Recovery - Data Recovery - HIPAA Compliant - Conflict Tracking - Authentication - Mobile Access - Chat/Messaging - Generative AI - AI Copilot - Access Controls/Permissions - Commenting/Notes - Activity Tracking - Two-Way Synchronization - Archiving & Retention - Encryption - Activity Dashboard - File Transfer ## Top IBM Storage Protect Alternatives - [Veeam Data Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/veeam-data-platform/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (703 reviews) - [Druva Data Security Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/druva-data-security-cloud/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (728 reviews) - [Arctera Backup Exec](https://www.g2.com/products/arctera-arctera-backup-exec/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (264 reviews)