We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudWatch and Microsoft System Center based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cloud Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is a stable solution...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"You can enable alarms and metrics, and it has robust integration with AWS services. You can also trigger events. For example, if the CPU utilization is above 80%, it can launch a new instance for you."
"It is a robust analytical tool and it goes beyond mere functionality and extends into the realm of providing comprehensive insights."
"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The deployment and asset management features are the most valuable. These are the product's main features."
"The detail in the alarms is great."
"The availability performance matrix and the reporting capabilities are the solution's most valuable features."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ease of configuration and the easy discovery of the environment."
"I like the automated features of it that let you schedule those updates and the ability of the product to focus on the specific updates, specific platforms, and products that we're interested in keeping up to date."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft System Center is its GUI (graphical user interface)."
"Managment Packs for Microsoft-specific products, help us implement the best practices for each product."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."
"The solution's integration could be easier for laypersons."
"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."
"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"When customers want to see the CPU or memory utilization there is a cost. This should be free to see the utilization."
"Some of our customers want to use Kubernetes to monitor their CICD flow but Amazon CloudWatch does not support it. We need to use another solution, such as Datadog or Dynatrace has the needed capability."
"Improvement of SSSD logs would be beneficial."
"In Microsoft System Center, it is difficult to follow the steps to create dataflows at times."
"System Center hasn't updated to keep up with the industry. It needs improvements in the user interface, ease of use, and overall product functionality, particularly the cloud-monitoring features. It needs more capabilities to monitor AWS and Azure infrastructure."
"Implementation and integration in the case of multi-tenant environments needs improvement."
"Something super important that we need is this integration via Intune Configuration Manager."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The platform performance and responsiveness need improvement. It still demands high computing resources."
"They should have some customized solutions or internal development, then maybe it could be easier to use different solutions or some self-developed solution."
"The multi-tenancy support needs to be improved. We need to have the ability to manage several different environments from one central point of administration."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 9th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 40 reviews while Microsoft System Center is ranked 29th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 18 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Microsoft System Center is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft System Center writes "Makes user management and application management easy for users". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Datadog, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace and SolarWinds NPM, whereas Microsoft System Center is most compared with Oracle SOA Suite. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Microsoft System Center report.
See our list of best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
