SCOM and Icinga compete in the IT monitoring and management domain. Each product has distinct advantages, but SCOM seems to gain the upper hand due to its comprehensive integration with Windows environments and robust monitoring capabilities.
Features: SCOM offers built-in features with management packs that enable extensive Microsoft application monitoring, robust Windows and Unix monitoring, and detailed reporting. Users benefit from its network monitoring capabilities, offering a flexible object-based monitoring approach. Icinga provides an open-source model with extensive plugins that support diverse technology monitoring and ease of integration. It features automation capabilities which enhance its open-source appeal.
Room for Improvement: SCOM is often critiqued for its high costs and the substantial resource demands it places on users, focusing on the need for multiple management packs and configurations. Its dashboard may feel cumbersome, and enhancements in cross-platform monitoring are needed. Icinga’s areas for development include designing a more intuitive user interface and dashboard functionality. It requires additional plugins for SNMP trap support and log monitoring, and its complex setup process presents challenges for newcomers.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCOM is typically deployed on-premises, with options for hybrid cloud environments, and benefits from Microsoft Premier Support, praised for its comprehensive nature, though some reliance on external assistance is noted. Icinga, largely deployed on-premises, leverages robust community-based support, offering flexibility in support despite the absence of a commercial support structure and its deployment complexity is acknowledged.
Pricing and ROI: SCOM’s pricing integrates with the broader Microsoft System Center suite, which may be cost-effective for organizations using Microsoft products, but its standalone use may incur high costs. Its ROI is linked to proactive infrastructure management, meeting SLAs and reducing downtime. Icinga, being open-source, offers cost-effectiveness with optional paid support, providing flexibility attractive to budget-conscious organizations, while potentially involving higher operational costs due to its manual configurations.
Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.
With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.
What are the key features of Icinga?Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.
SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) is a cross-platform data center monitoring and reporting tool that checks the status of various objects defined within the environment, such as server hardware, system services, etc. The solution allows data center administrators to deploy, configure, manage, and monitor the operations, services, devices and applications of multiple enterprise IT systems via a single pane of glass. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes.
SCOM Features
SCOM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SCOM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SCOM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SCOM solution.
A Manager at a financial services firm says, “The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use. I find it very user-friendly. I also like the knowledge base which it has. You can find the resolution to questions or issues directly within the SCOM itself. It will alert you with a recommendation of what you need to do at the same time. This sort of self-diagnosis or prompting is one of the great values you get from SCOM compared to other solutions.”
PeerSpot user Zahari Z., Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm, mentions, “Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well. You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.”
Bill W., Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government, comments, “ I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time. When we patch, things are automatically put into maintenance mode so that the numbers for our systems being down, do not count against us.”
A Project Manager at a tech services company explains, “The feature I have found most valuable is the book feature. While we run the Sprint one we can add some setups for multiple sprints.”
A Systems Engineer at an educational organization states, “Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it.”
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