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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.1%, down from 2.1% 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

"Pandora's architecture is interesting. It's open so you can easily extend and enhance it. It's simpler to customize Pandora compared to other solutions. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"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."
"We must create a VIN on each node. You want to make the VIN ten times if you have a thin host. We mostly create VMs, and the vCenter publishes the template on all hosts."
"The alerting mechanism is very good. VMware vCenter simplifies infrastructure management with its intuitive interface."
"We manage practically everything using the solution."
"It's a very good tool for centralized management."
"The most valuable aspect for us is the ability to monitor all servers simultaneously and effortlessly move them between hosts."
"In vCenter, I can easily manage storage and move it from one server to another, which is beneficial for the environment."
"The platform is very effective for managing virtual infrastructure. It has improved our virtual infrastructure and virtual machine deployment in several ways."
"The most valuable features of VMware vCenter for our organization include its centralized management capabilities and the ability to handle virtual machines across multiple ESXi hosts efficiently."
 

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 find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"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 product's technical support services could be better."
"The licensing model needs improvement, especially with the transition to Broadcom."
"vCentre licensing cost is on the higher side as well."
"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."
"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 product's technical support services need improvement."
"VMware vCenter does not have a centralized security dashboard, and it is pretty tedious to configure."
 

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."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"We utilize the basic licenses of the product."
"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."
"For the healthcare industry, the price is considerably higher than the education industry."
"VMware vCenter is not expensive."
"The product's three-year license package is inexpensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"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 is expensive."
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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

Ask a question
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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.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.