Actifio Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect

Actifio is a good fit for anyone looking for draas or backup as a service with Bluechip.co.uk being able to tailor a solution to fit your need if you are a medium size business looking to protect over 20TB of source data on a mix of virtual and physical servers in your datacentre our hosted within our state of the art datacentres.

Incentivized

Tivoli does well running file-level backups, but Exchange is clunky and restores are really hard. With no SharePoint agent, if you use SharePoint you will need another product like AvePoint DocAve. The web-based GUI console is MUCH improved over earlier versions, but you will still need to be a command-line guru to make Tivoli do everything, and local (node) config files still rule. This product was originally ported from Unix and retains may of its 'nix roots.

Incentivized

• Reliable and easy to deploy backup solution with low administration overhead.
• Fast backup solution with low impact on production systems as it backs them up.
• Dedup and replication of backed up data between sites and with streamsnap very quick recovery on dr site.
• Great customer support with quick response to changing demands.

Incentivized

• Tight integration with Db2. As an IBM product, it works seamlessly with Db2. You can query what is stored in TSM via Db2 itself. You can also use DB scripts to maintain the items being stored there.
• Like most of its competitors, Tivoli handles deduplication well.
• Provides a GUI for browsing and maintaining items stored there. I rarely use this feature, due to the next item I will post:
• Command-line interface directly from my Db2 database servers.
• Both client and server-side deduplication, compression and encryption are available.
• If the requirements are zLinux and DB2 support then it's the most solid solution.
• Can be complex to implement, but once up and running, it is rock-solid and immensely scalable.
• Scalability is huge. Can be added onto easily.

Incentivized

• Single file restore has always been an issue but hopefully will be added soon.
• Physical server backup restoring has always been tricky but achievable.

Incentivized

• Deployment and configuration is not easy for an unexperienced IBM Spectrum Protect administrator
• Operations center uses a lot of data and needs a lot of storage for larger environments
• Have not seen a redbook about it in the past 10 years

Not required, company closed. TSM is not used in my current role at my current job.

Incentivized

It is suitable for a huge part of our organisation, supports many operating systems (including Windows, Linux and IBM AIX), supports many databases - also for online backups (like Oracle, Db2 and SAP HANA), has an Operational Center for control, command-line and GUI for backup/restore. It just works well, once setup correctly.

Incentivized

The few times we've called for support we eventually got an answer, but it's IBM and a very big company and getting to a support agent is hard.

Incentivized

Actifio is quicker to deploy easier to manage and capacity plan with less components to keep patched.

Incentivized

We have been using TSM (former ADSM), rebranded Spectrum Protect and now rebranded Storage Protect a long time already. The product served us well. Last time we compared it to competitors we found they all had something lacking. And switching backup suites is no small task if there is data you need to keep 5, 7 or 10 years anyway. Commvault gets close, but doesn't match all features.

Incentivized

• We have managed to scale up the size of our environment without the need for extra admin overhead.
• Over 99% backups complete.
• Solution is robust and quick to scale to meet demands.

Incentivized

• It can be used as a disaster recovery solution when you have the right configuration (either replication or tape copies in a safe location). This way it can be a lifesaver for any company.
• It can bring back the information you need if you are hit by ransomeware.
• It is also needed if you are accounting for user error, sometimes people delete the files they need by accident and without a backup solution they are out of luck

Incentivized