SCOM Reviews

SCOM is used as a monitoring solution for managing Windows-based IT infrastructures within our organization.

SCOM has helped us to monitor all the VMs in our environment, especially the Windows servers. This is our scoop, we monitor all the VMs that have OS Windows servers. The best part of SCOM is that we have a major comeback with it and can apply something that could act as a counteraction. Once an action appears, there is a counteraction in order to avoid any interruption to the service. This is the best way the solution has improved our organization.

The solution provides a full insight report for all the VMs in our environment. SCOM also tells us whether the VMs are healthy or not, as well as provides brief information about the management console in each site and the agents under these management consoles.

There is no room for update or enhancement in SCOM because Microsoft has retired it as an on-prem solution and moved it to the cloud. The current version will be the last on-prem given Microsoft's push to move all their solutions to the cloud.

The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult. Another dimension that makes SCOM difficult is the number of components. The reporting server, the database, and the two components of the database (operational and warehouse) are all difficult to work with. This is why SCOM is a difficult solution to implement, configure, and troubleshoot.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution is not very stable. Sometimes we find alerts in the event viewer that we don't understand. we have to spend hours trying to figure out what the events mean. Sometimes we have to request support from Microsoft engineers, who may take a long time to respond, and the case may take longer than expected to resolve.

I give the stability a six out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We currently have six members, but we should add management consultants depending on our workload. We need to go through the Microsoft documents first. We need to calculate and prepare for our Virtual Machine (VM). We need to identify the storage, memory, and CPUs for our VM. This is important because we don't want to lose our solution or have bad performance. A bad performance will affect our environment. We also need to make sure the latency is less than 12 milliseconds. This is important because the management console needs to communicate with the database. If the latency is more than 12 milliseconds, it will affect the outcome of these records and the management console will be unhealthy.

Previously we used SIM by SolarWinds.

The solution is difficult to implement and troubleshoot. Sometimes we need the prerequisites for a task, but we encounter issues that we don't understand or that are not reasonable.

The first time we deployed the solution, there were three of us, but now that we have more experience, we can do it on our own without the requirement of additional people. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have not seen a return on investment. We have a lot of latency issues with the solution that is related to the network coverage between the sites. We have ten data centers using a management console but our database is centralized in the capital of Cairo. 

I give the solution a six out of ten.

First-time users of SCOM need to be well prepared. There should not be too many management consoles. The SCOM gateway can be used as a way to transfer data to the management console, and the management console will have low latency so it can act as the management console for these sites. It will handle the queuing for the data through the centralized database. This is the best practice given to me by the Microsoft team because of an issue that occurred in our environment that took some time to be resolved.

We mainly use SCOM for logging purposes and mounting configurations. It alerts us when any services have a problem. It really depends on the products that are being used in the backend. There are different kinds of virtual machines and different kinds of environments like VMware and Hyper-V.

One customer deploys the solution on a hyper conversion input service, and two customers deploy the solution on-premises.

The solution could be used in any sized company. It's been used in the manufacturing, IT, and telecom sectors.

The monitoring features are the most valuable. We have seen a major benefit from that so far.

There could be more integration of SIM in the solution.

The solution is stable.

Previous versions were not very stable. There were some issues while we were configuring the hierarchy.

The scalability is of medium difficulty.

Overall, support is not great but it's not bad. Microsoft's standard support is good. Sometimes, there aren't specific engineers who can help us with SCOM when we have an issue. A knowledge-based environment would help us more.

I would rate technical support 3.5 out of 5.

We have also used ManageEngine OpManager to monitor the environment and Solar Wind. 

They don't support integration of multiple products. Considering the stability and scalability, Microsoft is a better option. It depends on the use cases.

I would rate the initial setup 4.5 out of 5.

It's a complex process. When we deploy any other solution, it comes with a built-in SQL database. With SCOM, it was more of a complicated process.

If it doesn't have a hierarchy, then it takes about one hour. It's a standard installation. If there are hierarchies, like multiple site deployments, then it would take about three to five hours.

I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side.

I would rate SCOM as 8 out of 10. 

It depends on how the customer is using the product. My advice is that if you're interested in SCOM, you need to consider the environment, the business case, and what kind of business you are running.

We leverage every component of SCOM. The solution uses monitoring mechanisms to send alerts and notifications for down systems or problematic trouble issues. We use it for all of that. We have dashboards up, customized management packs, and monitors for both Windows and Linux. We use SNMP traps to pull in information forward network devices that are in the enterprise. We use it for everything.

Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable. That's the bread and butter of the solution. That's what we use it for.

The SCOM dashboards have room for improvement. They've been improving them in iterations slowly and surely. Third-party tools have had to be created to make SCOM management pack creation more efficient and effective. However, this weighs down the application as it just adds a resource requirement, which is ballooning the size of the necessary storage and all that for essentially substandard components. I would suggest either using the dashboard and management packs to their full potential, so we don't have to go out to third-party vendors to install additional features, or allow them to be truncated during installation so that we're not wasting resources.

I've worked with SCOM for about ten years now.

SCOM's stability is pretty solid. 

SCOM has been scaling pretty nicely for us, which is what it's intended to do. We do have plans to increase usage. It's constantly evolving, developing utility. All new systems go onto it. It's not shrinking anytime soon.

The tech support is good. Our company has Premier Plus in place. They're responsive.

This is the only one I've used.

The initial setup is complex. It requires Microsoft's support in many cases. It takes about a month or two to get SCOM up and running and fleshed out so that you have all the configurations. For example, when you're migrating from '12 to '19, you have to look at everything that's already in place and then try to migrate it. Whereas if you're starting fresh, then you have to start one at a time looking at each component and building it out. They're too different. 

We deployed in-house, but we did leverage Microsoft.

The solution is provided by Microsoft for free but there are operating costs. Those would be the many hours necessary to prune it. We have a contract for support. If that didn't exist, then the cost of the solution would include paying for support. Because it is a complex system, I will contact support for assistance. I also have the general resource requirements just to have the systems up. This includes several databases and front-end servers running. However, added together, all of these costs are minimal.

We did not evaluate any other options before landing on SCOM. The reason for this is that SCOM is a Microsoft solution and we have a significant Microsoft presence in our environment, it's actually provided gratis by Microsoft, so it was just a logical utility to leverage.

My advice to others looking into implementing this product is to make sure that you have a solid understanding of SQL commands, statements, databases, and Visual Studio. This will help you understand how to make the management packs more effective. I rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use this tool to patch laptops, conduct an inventory, and gather information about our systems. We use SCCM and another solution around SCCM to gain a complete view of our laptops and desktops.

We use the solution for deployment purposes, including deploying solutions, new products, applications, and patch solutions.

The solution primarily drives system information, and I believe it works fine.

Regarding certain issues in the solution, it can be difficult to generate reports if we have a program that is not user-friendly for reporting. While this is not necessarily negative, we may need to use another solution. We can explore alternatives through certain products from Azure, but it may still be difficult to generate reports without specific development.

In short, I feel the reporting feature of the solution needs to be better since it is very difficult to have a report of the best quality.

We use the SCOM solution in our company and provide it to clients, if possible. Our role is to build a solution architecture for our clients. While SCOM is not our primary product, we have been using it for ten years, and it remains the latest solution to expedite our system information.

I think the solution is stable, but we had to meet with our engineer to address some tuning issues. When the solution gets appropriately tuned, it is a good solution.

I have worked with four big international companies using this solution.

My team uses Microsoft support to assist our clients, but we have a specific link with Microsoft to provide support for certain clients.

I work with solutions like Microsoft SCCM and Microsoft Intune.

We use the solution in our work for a big company, but we are rarely involved in the setup of the solution. The company uses and upgrades the solution but is not typically involved in new installations.

I work for a big company and thus have access to a certain piece of system information that can be considered big and vast. Due to its size, we have separated the activities, primarily because there are many activities. Also, we have many engineers working on the solution.

I recommend others to try this solution. Also, I rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use SCOM for all server applications, as well as service monitoring, such as Windows services, and auto-recovery of those services if they fail. Some of the processes that we monitor at the .exe level can also be restarted with SCOM. Then we use it all to monitor availability, health, and performance.

Personally, I enjoy it all. It's fairly powerful.

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.

I would like to see them improve their network monitoring.

We use Solar Winds, and it has a direct interface into SCOM. We can see all the Solar Winds dashboards from the SCOM interface, which is nice to have.

I have been involved with SCOM for seven years.

We just completed a major upgrade from 2012 R2 to 2019.

I have had a lot of success with the 2019 product. When we were on 2012 R2, I had to reboot the servers, particularly the database servers, at least once every two weeks. I believe we've been up and running for about three months in 2019 and have only rebooted once a month for monthly patching.

The scalability is good. It's very easy to scale.

It can support up to a thousand nodes per management server, and we are nowhere near that number. I have three management servers in place for a 400-node network. Load balancing is simple, stable, quick, and efficient.

In terms of speed and agility, I believe it is significantly better than the 2012 version.

Our systems team and then the applications team, use this solution, totaling approximately 75 people within our government. We have 2,000 employees, and our IT department has about 100 people, and about 75 of them use it.

For 2019, I haven't used technical support yet. I've never had to call him. 

In 2012, Microsoft's support was good.

We were using HP Open View at the time, and their technology was quickly becoming obsolete. They weren't keeping up, particularly when the 2012 operating system was released. They just couldn't keep up, and their pricing was spiraling out of control.

It's quite complicated. I would call it complex.

On a scale of one to five, I would give it at least four or four and a half.

There are a lot of customizations, and it's quite noisy out of the box.

You have a lot of alerts, which is normal for most of them. 

I have tried some of the other monitoring systems as well, and they all seem to work in the same way. Basically, all you have to do is tune it. That is what requires time.

Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price.

All of the Systems Center products have a backup, which we don't use, but SCCM is included in the pricing. As a result, we can afford it because we have the Enterprise agreement.

We do use SolarWind, but I am not on that team; it is used by the network group.

I use the Operations Manager to manage my server infrastructure. 

The most important thing would be to go to Microsoft and get some training. They provide a lot of free classes in the form of webinars and other similar events. It has a multitude of different deliverables that most people never get into. 

It's a lot more powerful than people realize, and I believe people become dissatisfied with it because of the complicated setup, but once it's up and running, it's pretty amazing at what it can do.

I am pretty happy with the way it works right now, I would rate SCOM a nine out of ten.

We use SCOM for proactive monitoring that we code ourselves. We code it with a management pack, which is the actual logic of all monitoring experiences. We develop our own monitoring capabilities instead of using Microsoft's. We could use them as a base but always add extra deliverables with our own code.

The most valuable feature of SCOM is the capability of using classes within your management pack development.

The solution’s initial setup is difficult. SCOM should include more in-depth trend analysis.

I have been using SCOM for 15 years.

I rate SCOM an eight out of ten for stability.

More than 100 users are using SCOM in our organization. I rate SCOM ten out of ten for scalability.

It took one day to deploy SCOM.

We have seen a return on investment with SCOM, and the solution is worth its money.

SCOM's pricing is average.

I am using the latest version of SCOM. Users should do a POC for the solution.

Overall, I rate SCOM a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for the solution is monitoring the health of our Windows servers. We deploy the solution on-premises.

The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped.

We have been using the solution for approximately one year and currently using the latest version, SCOM 2022.

The solution is stable. I rate it a ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have not seen a return on investment.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The price could be improved.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I recommend it for users considering implementing it and advise them to do some research.

It is used for monitoring on-premises servers, and we deploy it on-premises.

The solution helped monitor web servers, database servers and alerting, which is very useful.

The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable.

The solution can be improved by expanding to cloud usage. Currently, a lot of people do not use SCOM because it is limited to strictly being on-premises, and many organizations are moving to the cloud.

We have been using the solution for approximately 11 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. It has an excellent capacity to monitor 100 to 1,000 servers, based on how the SCOM servers are provisioned. You can easily scale up your monitoring capacity.

I rate my experience with customer service and support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward, and only one person was required for deployment and maintenance.

We did not evaluate other options.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by adapting to a cloud environment. I advise users considering the solution to use it if they have on-premise servers and more of a Windows-based environment.