SCOM Reviews

Our primary use case is to monitor infrastructure and the Windows ecosystem. We also create distributed applications within SCOM to monitor our custom applications. It is deeply integrated into our systems.

The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it.

The fact that you can use PowerShell is a big plus.

SCOM has a lot of powerful features but it is not simple to use. We are using a third-party presentation layer to show all of the data because SCOM does not show it in a very nice and easy way. It is not an interface that you would expect to see in 2020. 

The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified. For example, many of the things that we do require clicking through many menus.

Maintaining this product is very hard to do.

We have been using SCOM for about four years.

This product is quite robust.

I don't have much experience in scaling out and adding more servers, although I think that it's fairly straightforward. It may not be great, but it's better than many products.

I have not personally dealt with official technical support, but non-official support from various blogs and websites is excellent. There are a few bloggers that are really dedicated to the products, as they are Microsoft people, but this is not official support per se.

Overall, I would say that product support is good and better than expected.

Deploying SCOM itself is of medium difficulty. I would say that it is not too easy and not too complicated. However, configuring all of the monitoring and all of the management packs is somewhat complex. It's an ongoing job and requires more than one person. Actually, in our case, it requires that everybody contribute.

If you want to configure SCOM to work properly and bring value to your organization, it is very hard, which is one of the bad things about it.

SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing. The entire suite is expensive but it comes with a lot of functionality.

Overall, I find that this is a good solution but the presentation layer is really bad. If the interactive part of the console were improved then it would be better.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We are using the SCOM server for monitoring our network devices, our Windows servers, and Linux servers.

The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers.

The dashboard features are not user-friendly for our management team, only for the technical department. We are currently looking for a plugin for the dashboard to assist in monitoring the dashboard in the SCOM server.

At this time, SCOM is only being used in our IT department. Digital console is not available to our users, management team, or senior persons, and they are not allowed their own login to see what is happening in the network system. The only access that we have is to dump the reports to provide them to our management team.

It doesn't monitor the Fortinet devices well.

I have been using the Microsoft SCOM server for six years.

Because we work in a financial institution, we are not allowed to remove the SCOM server and replace the new monitoring software. We have been given permission by management to search for third-party software to provide us with the missing features, which is something that we require to make it easier.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

On-premises

We use it to monitor our internal work.

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.

Some checking issues could be improved. Checking some activators. It would help if we could export in some cases, because it may be that some people want to move the screen from the book to share reports. If it was possible to embed it in a report, that would be good. In other words, I would like more customized reports.

I would definitely like to see the ability to go through the total life-cycle in the next release of SCOM, to cover everything. But in some cases, especially retrospectively, this is not happening, or not happening well. I'd like to see the retrospective outcome in the knowledge base. It would be good if it could accommodate some learning out of the box, together with information from the recording session. There are levels to it, but some of the records we keep often go to quickly deliver the project. But in most cases, they skip the retrospective part and lessons learned. It would be good to declare something in the knowledge base where people can easily put it and access their input of lessons learned. We've yet to see that in previous projects. But I'd like to get to the level where whenever a new person starts a project, they could visit the knowledge base and the retrospective section, and get some knowledge out of the box, which was not covered in the process.

On a scale of one to ten I would definitely rate SCOM an 8. That's because people should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately.

I have been using SCOM for almost three years.

There are less than 100 people in my organization using SCOM. It is not widely used in the company. Just some individuals from different departments.

Before SCOM we were using Microsoft Project or Excel. The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need.

The initial setup did not take more than five minutes. It was activated in general, initially. 

The setup was implemented with help from our internal colleagues.

One thing I would recommend to anyone considering this solution is to give more people access to it so that whenever people want to use the solution they can get information from past experiences and what's currently going on. Say for example I raised one concern in your query box, I don't know how it's progressing because it doesn't record that. You should give some ticket number to it and update it. In other words, sharing feedback even on issues you are not directly working on.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We mainly use SCOM for monitoring and reporting purposes. The system enables me to monitor the usage of the system and to change the target or number of logs. 

SCOM has improved our organization by simplifying the monitoring process. The system tells you what the bi-weekly or monthly usage was and that enables us to report this information to the manager. It shows if there was a connectivity issue that needs to be fixed and it's easier to concentrate on what needs to get fixed. System errors, therefore, get fixed faster.

At the moment the monitoring feature is the most valuable. It allows me to monitor the usage as well as the format of the system. Whatever the system owners want to know from our side, I am able to help with.

I don't really think anything needs to be improved. We will soon be trying to use it with Microsoft to log analytics and that will be cloud-based. 

I would like to have the ability to schedule my reports via email or through SMS. 

Then there is also an issue with capacity and limited space. That is something that needs to be improved.

Our company has been using this solution for a few years now, but I've only been using it for the past two years since I joined the company.

The nice thing about this solution is that you tell it what you want and then it will give you what you want. I love this about SCOM.

Our company currently has 280 employees working on this solution and we don't have any problems. We will soon be upgrading to the newer version, as well as moving office. I am not currently monitoring any of the network devices but at our new office, I will be monitoring the network connectivity. There will probably be even more people working online than we have right now.

The customer service and technical support was very good. There was a human error from our side. I am not sure if it was from the database or not because I was unable to restore my data for a couple of weeks. The Microsoft engineer came on site, and he assisted us with that. He sorted the issue out and explained to us why we are unable to get it sorted out ourselves. 

Since I started working with our company we have been using the 2016 version of SCOM. We are currently upgrading to the 2019 version.

The initial setup was done with the help of a Microsoft engineer. From what I saw, it wasn't a complex setup.

This solution makes people's lives easier. Especially that of our manager. No matter what report or information you have, sharing it with him it makes his life easier. It enables him to see if there is capacity that needs to be increased or if there are things that can be deleted. 

I would highly recommend it. I would rate it a seven out of ten. I wouldn’t rate it a ten because I would like for it to be fully cloud-based.

Our primary use case is to monitor if the system is healthy and running well. 

The features we find most useful would be the automatic thresholds when disks are running full. If CPUs are causing high CPU load then we will be notified with triggers.

Price is always an issue with Microsoft and could be improved.

I've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is stable. It's working fine.

The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage.

I haven't called technical support yet.

We had nothing essential in an enterprise managing console. This is relatively simple tooling, but we didn't have another solution on this scale.

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment wasn't that long. Maybe a couple of days. We needed half a day for the installation and then three to four days for implementing and configuring all the monitoring agents. Deployment is not a big job, so you just need one person and then after that, you just need someone for an hour a day on the system.

Initial setup was done with a bit of additional support and then we added more and more services.

It's a Microsoft product so if you are using a lot of other vendors, other operating systems, then it's less compatible. For us, we're 99% Microsoft so it's not an issue. On this solution, the things we monitor are fine and perhaps other users will want more, but for our purpose and what we use it for, it's enough.

Once it's completed, you only get triggered by emails and you can respond to those emails so when the system does its thing it's not that complex. It's very simple.

I would rate this solution eight out of 10.

We are using this solution for monitoring our Microsoft servers.

In the beginning, we used this solution to monitor our Exchange servers. After we started using it, we went on to SharePoint, and then all of the Microsoft servers.

I am a member of the monitoring team. This solution saves us a lot of work, mainly in creating monitoring packages for Microsoft products, since those packages, created by the product team in Microsoft, can be downloaded directly from the console.   

All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved. It is not simple to get a report. Even the monitoring people, who are supposed to be familiar with the system, are having difficulty generating specific reports. Also, the information in the reports is not user-friendly.

The console is very slow, and not user-friendly. Even the browser for the web console is not very friendly, and I would not consider it useful compared to other ones that I have worked with.

I would like to see the inclusion of more monitoring templates, where I would just have to enter variables and nothing more. If there were a template then it would save time, rather than have to create it again.

The monitoring of Linux servers needs to be improved because it is hard compared to other products.

Between seven and eight years.

This is a very stable solution, and we have not had major issues within the past few years.

We started in a really big environment, and it did not grow, so I cannot really comment on the scalability. I don't expect our usage of this solution to increase because we are already at the maximum number of servers.

We only had one problem that we needed Microsoft support for. They helped us with the problem but it took time. It is difficult to rate their support given that we have only opened a single ticket in the past.

Prior to this solution, we monitored our Windows servers using HP Operations Manager, which is now owned by Micro Focus. The switch was made because we already had SCOM integrated within the company. We were already paying for it as we were monitoring the Exchange environment, and we didn't want to pay double. It was a simple business decision. It was not based on a technical comparison between products.

The initial setup of this solution is very simple. It is not complex to establish the environment.

While the setup is easy, we have a large environment, so it took some time to complete. In total, the deployment took between two weeks and one month.

We used a field engineer from Microsoft to assist us at the beginning. They also helped us out from time to time to upgrade the system, although I took care of the last installation of patches myself.

We have a lot of servers in the company and we needed some kind of monitoring solution. Eight years ago we started using Microsoft Exchange, and we asked Microsoft how we should go about monitoring the Exchange environment. They suggested this solution and we adopted it.

This is a good solution, especially if your company is based on Microsoft products. For example, there is a new version of Active Directory and they contacted us to let us know that the monitoring is supported. On the other hand, the interface needs improvement, and there should be better support for monitoring Linux servers.

If the user interface, reporting, and support for other operating systems are all improved, then this would be a perfect product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for infrastructure monitoring and application monitoring. Predominantly, it is for infrastructure monitoring in the Microsoft space.

This solution helps our application teams by allowing them to drill further into issues and perform a root cause analysis. This is possible because we first built out the monitoring platform and made sure that all of the components were being monitored. Then, we created a distributed application view, which is a drawing of all of the components being monitored for each application. This is what we then provide to the application teams. 

The most valuable feature is the reporting, and the customization is quite flexible.

The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved.

I would like to see more focus on application monitoring in the next release of this solution.

Approximately seven years.

The stability is pretty good, although it depends on the infrastructure. We normally end up having issues with hypervisors and SQL servers, but it comes down to how those platforms are being administered, as well. From an application point of view, this solution is pretty stable.

This solution is scalable and very good in terms of availability and performance capability. It is very flexible, but you need to have your training properly done beforehand. If so, then it will benefit you a lot. If you need to expand at a later stage then you can do that as well.

We currently have more than three thousand users that vary from managers to developers and engineers.

I have never had to contact technical support.

Personally, I have used an in-house solution and I have used SolarWinds before. It was not a case of switching because these were with different companies.

The initial setup depends on the size of the environment, but on average, it will be more complex than straightforward.

The complexity comes from understanding the various components that contribute to monitoring a specific item on the server. First, you have to understand the Management Pack. Then, you move on to the workflows, and this leads to understanding the rules and monitors. There are bits and pieces that you need to understand in order to make it work properly in your particular environment. This will further depend on things like whether you have restrictions in place, or whether the networking is good or bad. All of these things play a role.

While the deployment time varies depending on the environment, on average, deployment takes about five months.

All of the companies that I have worked for have handled it internally.

One person is suitable for deployment, although this again depends on the company and the environment. If one person is in charge of the SQL environment and the hypervisors then they can do it alone. Obviously, if other departments are in charge of these things then they will need to be relied upon, but generally, it can be done with one person.

With respect to maintaining the solution, a team of three people, with two juniors and one senior, might be ideal.

If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement.

My advice to anybody looking to implement this product is to plan properly.

Overall, this is a good solution, but there is room for improvement in application monitoring and the dashboard.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

This is the main monitoring system for our company. We use it for monitoring, reporting, and analytics.

The most valuable features for us are the monitoring, the health explorer, and the console.

The console feature is very poor, and it would be very good for us if this were improved. The application monitoring feature is also poor.

I would also like to see better training materials. What we currently have is very light.

The ability to connect to cloud-based solutions would be very good.

Fifteen years.

We have approximately fifty users at this time. The IT operations team uses this solution, and there is a manager who uses the reporting functions as well. 

I like the service that we receive from the Hungarian technical support team. It is very useful and has good coverage. 

This is an easy solution to install.

I like SCOM and have used it for many years.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.