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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs VMware vCenter comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (3rd), Patch Management (1st)
VMware vCenter
Ranking in Server Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 6.6%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

MikeNelson2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements
While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.
Siva Kuppala - 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

"The solution is stable."
"It lets you know what your infrastructure is like and what state you are in."
"Technical support is very helpful and very responsive."
"The product is suitable for our size, handling 800 devices."
"What's valuable is the basic management of the systems, being able to control who can access the systems."
"The product is useful for patch management."
"It gives us the ability to set up schedules, according to what our security requirements are, to automate the patching of our servers and desktops."
"The solution has a very good set of features."
"It is easy to create and manage virtual infrastructure."
"VMware vCenter has significantly improved our infrastructure management by enabling virtualization. We can virtualize our infrastructure, eliminating the need to access servers physically. Everything can be managed remotely."
"The integration of vCenter server with any software, whether from VMware or a third party, is smooth and straightforward."
"The user-friendliness and stability are the product’s most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of VMware vCenter is the centralized management that allows us to see resources from different data centers and VMware clusters in a single dashboard."
"The initial setup is straightforward even for complex environments with around 100 hosts."
"I am using vMotion for live migration and storage migrations. I can use vCenter for both now."
"The product's emphasis on high availability and DRS aligns with our priorities, making vCenter an integral component in our virtualized environment."
 

Cons

"The deployment process is lengthy and should be quicker to complete."
"I would like to see an agentless version of the solution."
"There is a reboot issue with the patching. Sometimes, if patching runs into any issue whatsoever, it doesn't reboot but it doesn't tell you it errored out. It just sits there and we don't find out until the next day whether it patched or not. That was a big issue for us. We're working through that. They added some stuff in there now where you can actually tell reboot is pending. But we still need some kind of notification that if something fails or is pending, we know. We shouldn't have to go in and look. They don't have anything for that right now."
"Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI."
"The TSM component could be improved."
"Our company would prefer not rebooting computers while people are using them. There seems to be no strategy behind it."
"There should probably be better remote support. They should also continue to improve on patch management, patching, and creating or turning products in software into deployable apps."
"The tool's deployment is complex and depends on the architecture you want to implement."
"There have been some ongoing conflicts since VMware was taken over by Broadcom."
"It is not easy to upgrade VMware vCenter from an old version to a new version."
"Consolidating these plugins into a unified environment with customizable options to enable or disable features would be highly beneficial."
"We face some upgrade patch management issues."
"Sometimes, vCenter management can be difficult if you forget the password. You can't change or recover the password easily. We then have to reinstall vCenter, which means reconfiguring everything. That's a challenge we've encountered."
"There needs to be improvement in the pricing model, as the host license is already very high, and customers should have more open options for creating automation scenarios out of the box."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Efficiency and redundancy can be increased, minimizing or mitigating downtime."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a support license from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and the overall price of the solution is reasonable."
"We use the tool's free license. It is expensive."
"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."
"The price could be better."
"The price of SCCM depends on the size of the organization. The price is competitive."
"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."
"Presently, I am using a free trial version."
"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."
"The product is expensive."
"The product is affordable for now."
"We have purchased monthly licenses for the platform. There are additional costs involved."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is pretty expensive for small businesses because there are few lower-scale VMware vCenter solutions."
"The product's three-year license package is inexpensive."
"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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...
What do you like most about SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined ...
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.
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
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 Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. VMware vCenter and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.