SCOM Reviews

Our primary use case is to perform server monitoring in the Windows environment.

This solution has improved our organization from an insight point of view. We have gained valuable insight from a holistic level to inform us what's happening with infrastructure, across our data center, servers, and client environments as well. It also integrates into our service desk systems, so it is a vital part of the organization.

The reporting capabilities of this solution are amazing.

We also make use of APM, Application Performance Monitoring, and this gives us valuable insight into our application level, where we could experience problems.

The ability to integrate into Azure services, as well as the old OMS that now forms part of Azure Monitor, is a good feature that we might make use of.

On-prem network monitoring is something that could be improved drastically. In fact, it should have better end-to-end monitoring from the physical layer up to the software.

The stability of this solution is great.

Obviously, monitoring more devices requires upgrading your SQL backing and adding new gateways.

I have worked with many monitoring solutions including CA Unicenter and SolarWinds, and the scalability of SCOM is really great. Especially compared to CA UIM, from a scalability point, Microsoft has done very well.

Given that SCOM 2019 is the last iteration of on-prem SCOM solutions, we are looking to expand into Azure with Azure monitor.

The vendor support from Microsoft is fantastic. I've dealt with many consultants from Microsoft before and I would rate my experience a ten out of ten.

I have worked with several products including CA Unicenter and SolarWinds, and we currently make use of more than one solution. From a network monitoring point of view, we have found that other solutions perform this task better than SCOM.

The initial setup of SCOM is very easy. It is packaged in a great fashion and it is a very simple process. I have done it many times over the years, and the installation process has been made very, very easy.

There is some preliminary work that needs to be done in terms of an envisioning phase and technical design. After this, all of the hardware needs to be provisioned, the service accounts and the required access for these all need to be in place. Once we completed all of this, implementing the solution took us about two days.

Beyond the setup, we have a team of seven administrators that look after the monitoring role. In addition, we have between twenty and thirty operators. There is a command center that looks at that part of the business, which purely consumes the SCOM control. We provide the monitoring service for them and they've got the operators.

I handled the design and implementation of this solution for the company.

We have always had SCOM, and it is one of our preferred Windows monitoring solutions. However, from a network point of view, we are making use of other products.

I really know this product quite well, and I would highly recommend it. It is highly customizable and the automation is great. It takes a lot of the headache out of managing your data centers and software in other places. It's a fantastic product.

If the network monitoring were improved then this product would be a ten out of ten.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is to monitor our Windows Platform.

We are using all of the management parts that are related to Windows.

I would like to see better support for monitoring Unix-based systems. The Unix management functionality is not yet truly mature.

The reporting capability needs improvement.

This solution would be improved if the management functionality were expanded to include other products, such as WebSphere MQ. 

This is a stable solution, compared to other products.

It is quite easy to add more users to the platform.

There are ten people on our team who use this solution. We are responsible for administrating different projects and we use this solution on a daily basis.

The support is fine with Microsoft. I don't have any issue with that. Compared to companies like HP and Micro Focus, the support from Microsoft is awesome.

This solution satisfies all of the requirements that we need for our Windows-based systems, so if you are using the Windows platform then this is an easy solution. When it comes to managing Unix-based systems, however, you will need to do more research.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is to monitor hardware and network devices.

This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network. It helps a lot for auditing purposes.

The most valuable feature is the extension of the libraries that they have for other solutions, such as monitoring ASP, Office 365 and others.

This product is not easy to use.

I would like to see more standard libraries for the market solutions, out of the box, that you don't need to do a lot of work on.

It's very good, very stable.

This solution is not too scalable.

The technical support is good. We had some problems post-implementation. There are not many people who really know this software, so there are not many experts on the market.

We did not use a solution prior to this. 

The initial setup for this solution is complex in terms of the configuration. The standard product is very simple to set up, but if you go for different solutions then it takes a lot of effort to set it up.

We use a full-service Microsoft partner in Brazil. 

We have not considered ROI for this solution. The most important part for us is monitoring the environment and also reports for auditing.

Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month.

We use a lot of solutions from Microsoft and we consider them to be reliable, so we did not evaluate other solutions.

This product is both stable and reliable, but it is not easy to use and there are not a lot of experts on the market to provide help. You have to do a lot of it by yourself.

I do recommend this product, but I would suggest that somebody who really knows the product is in place before implementation.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use it to monitor Linux systems. It has performed well.

We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes. 

Graphing processes. It can send messages to our ticketing system. It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system.

I would like to better be able to monitor Oracle processes.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

I have not used technical support.

We did not previously use a different solution, so I asked my manager to look into it.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We evaluated Zabbix.

If you are using Linux, do not discount SCOM just because it is a Windows or Microsoft product.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. Features
2. Price.

Monitoring specific to Microsoft Windows and apps: native monitoring. It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not.

It has streamlined alerting and gave us the ability to monitor websites better.

Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable.

Five years.

No.

No.

Support was mediocre when I had called once or twice. I drove the call ultimately.

I used SCOM 2007 prior to 2012.

It’s complex and somewhat painful to get all the accounts created (SQL configured). Overall, it’s not bad though.

No, we were already licensed for System Center. We just hadn’t started using it. Others have used WhatsUp though.

None really. Read a book or take a class on it. It’s complex and powerful.

Both SCOM and WhatsUp Gold afford us in-depth troubleshooting capabilities.

SCOM: The product has helped our organization with in-depth monitoring.

WhatsUp Gold: The product has helped our organization with VM monitoring.

Both SCOM and WhatsUp Gold could use some system enhancements, such as better dashboards.

SCOM: I have used SCOM for about eighteen months.

WhatsUp Gold: I have used WhatsUp Gold for nine years.

We did not encounter any stability issues with either product.

We did not encounter any scalability issues with either product.

For both products, I would give technical support a rating of 6/10.

We previously used open-source solutions before switching to SCOM and WhatsUp Gold.

SCOM: The initial setup was complex.

WhatsUp Gold: The initial setup was easy.

For both products, the pricing and licensing are fair.

Before choosing these products, we evaluated Symantec.

Extensible dashboards allow us to create customized service-level dashboards for business owners.

.NET monitoring capabilities are crucial for our organization to monitor the availability and performance of our IIS-based .NET applications.

Network monitoring also completes the monitoring story by providing visibility over the network layer. All backend routers and switches are monitored by SCOM and also we consume some third-party network management packs to extend the capability.

SCOM provided end-to-end monitoring for all aspects of the infrastructure, including web sites, network devices, databases and applications. Now, c-level management can easily see overall service-level dashboards and SLAs for mission-critical services.

I would like to see true multi-tenancy support. When it comes to service provider type of customers, it's quite difficult to have a complete monitoring view for different tenants. The System Center suite is not designed for true multi-tenancy overall. But SCOM is also lacking some multi-tenant environment requirements.

I have used it for nine years.

High-available deployment with SQL always on requires detailed planning and testing before production implementation. We needed different internal teams involved in the planning phase including the network team for bandwidth utilization, the database team for SQL and application owners. We also encountered some problems while implementing SQL always on on a multi-site SCOM deployment. We resolved problems by contacting Microsoft support.

Single-server deployment was quite straightforward. We deployed it for a POC and pre-prod environment. Online TechNet articles cover most of the steps. But when it comes to HA design for multiple datacenters, it gets complicated.

Also, we had to use PowerShell for some settings to reduce the deployment time. SCOM shell commands are not enough to achieve most of the tasks so we used SDK instead of PowerShell, which was an oddly difficult experience.

I have done both types of implementations in the past. See below.

The planning phase is crucial. Also note that SCOM admin can not plan the whole infrastructure. All application owners should be involved in planning phase. Also, post-configuration tasks should be taken care of by application owners, such as custom monitors, tunings for alerts, etc.

Asset monitoring and auto alerts are the most valuable features of this product to me.

We are a service provider of these solutions to our clients. And we can see the change, how the IT team were able to have control and adapt quickly with SCOM.

The dashboard is still not so great and, most of the time, a third-party tool is required for presentation. There is a lot of room for improvement here.

Thorough analysis of the current environment and the goals that need to be achieved should be defined (from an end-results point of view) before rolling out SCOM. If the groundwork is not properly done, SCOM implementation can cost the organization.