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Pandora FMS vs VMware vCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pandora FMS
Ranking in Server Monitoring
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (42nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (27th)
VMware vCenter
Ranking in Server Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.1%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…
SivaKuppala - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance monitoring tools help track resource usage, identify performance bottlenecks, and optimize the efficiency of virtual environments
It is like a single point of failure. In an environment, vCenter is deployed as a single instance, which represents a single point of failure. The concern here is that tasks such as provisioning, monitoring, and maintenance may be impacted until the server is restored. This only affects management; users are not impacted. But, again, management capabilities will be impacted. The entire system goes down until recovery is completed. You will not be able to provision new VDI. Also, vCenter requires a lot of additional resources for managing capabilities. It uses a significant amount of CPU, memory, and network bandwidth, which can sometimes slow down. Proper sizing is important for vCenter so that it does not impact end-users. vCentre licensing cost is on the higher side as well.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"The most valuable features of the solution are virtualization and ease of backing up the virtual and on-premises servers."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of migrating services from one host to another during maintenance."
"One feature I really like about VMware vCenter is its ability to change hosts easily. It is highly available and very useful for our operations."
"The product's emphasis on high availability and DRS aligns with our priorities, making vCenter an integral component in our virtualized environment."
"I integrated with VMware products, which makes integration easy."
"The most valuable aspect for us is the ability to monitor all servers simultaneously and effortlessly move them between hosts."
"Some of the most valuable features of vCenter are LACP and vSphere Distributed Switches, as they simplify VLAN propagation between hosts and enable networking duplication and replication."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"In the future, we may have double the number of devices, and we do not want to have any issues with performance in the data display."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"The main issue with VMware vCenter is its pricing and licensing model. The licensing model has shifted, leading to higher costs, particularly for smaller organizations."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"We have to buy more VMware products to leverage the centralized management."
"The protocol interface or web page is not easy to use, and the personal portal is difficult to navigate."
"There is a feature called Fault Tolerance (FT), which has been part of vCenter servers since the product's inception. However, it has a lot of complexity, and when my team tested it, we found it difficult to manage. It also has some bugs. Consequently, we decided not to offer any fault tolerance features to our customers."
"The process of creating VLANs or any similar tasks requires following a specific procedure, which must be executed accurately to ensure successful deployment. That's the main concern."
"It is not easy to upgrade VMware vCenter from an old version to a new version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"The solution is pretty expensive for small businesses because there are few lower-scale VMware vCenter solutions."
"VMware vCenter is not expensive."
"The pricing is significantly high."
"The tool used to be worth the money, but after Broadcom acquired it and changed the pricing structure to subscription-only, it became too expensive for us to continue using. Unfortunately, we haven't found any alternative solutions that meet our needs, so this is a significant drawback for us as we explore other options."
"The platform has reasonable pricing."
"The product is affordable for now."
"The product is expensive."
"The licensing model was a bit complex, but thanks to the vCenter product usage program, which VMware introduced, it's kind of easy for us to use a pay-as-you-go model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Media Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about VMware vCenter?
The filtering capabilities also enhance scalability by optimizing resource allocation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware vCenter?
The pricing and setup cost are rated seven out of ten. It is mentioned that the price might be a little lower to increase customer adoption. The specific details of the financial cost were not prov...
What needs improvement with VMware vCenter?
The performance is well, however, i didnot use different products to say my opinion.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
1. Amazon 2. Apple 3. ATT 4. Bank of America 5. Cisco Systems 6. CocaCola 7. Dell 8. ebay 9. Facebook 10. Google 11. HP 12. IBM 13. Intel 14. JPMorgan Chase 15. LinkedIn 16. Microsoft 17. Netflix 18. Oracle 19. PayPal 20. SAP 21. Siemens 22. Tesla 23. Toyota 24. Twitter 25. Visa 26. Walmart 27. WeWork 28. World Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. VMware vCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.