SCOM Reviews

• Network monitoring feature
• Web application availability monitoring
• Web application transaction monitoring
• .NET app monitoring

These monitors are the most used in my infrastructure, because I have many websites and network devices to monitor and these features provide me different views such as the Detailed Dashboard list.

This product allows me to measure the level of availability of services and detect errors in them.

The console is a point to improve, because it is very heavy and a web console should be in HTML5.

I have been using it for five years.

I haven't seen any errors in my clean deployment.

The PRTG solution is easy to deploy and manage.

One of the most important features of SCOM is the Reporting Server role which runs on the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). It’s responsible for rendering and scheduling reports. With Operations Manager, you have extract reporting capabilities and multiple report libraries that you can select from to customize reports to your own granular requirements.

It will help you to visualize the data in your environment. The reports provide high-level summaries and detailed information about your systems and can be e-mailed on a specified schedule or simply exported and printed out. The reporting server performs queries against the Operations Manager data warehouse database and returns the results in a number of easy-to-read formats.

Another point, you can import management packs available for Microsoft products, which you can customize thresholds of several counters of each product. Also, you can create your management pack and define your customizations.

This tool could be improved especially for tasks for our Capacity Planning Team and Monitoring Team. The Capacity Planning Team collect data through the reports from the Operations Manager for the memory, CPU and disks during the month. The use this to make dashboards to show their customers about their environment. With this, it’s possible to show environment of each customer.

For the Monitoring Team, it helps monitor a simple and complex environment in IT sending determinate alerts. For example, if your team receives a determined kind of alert, they will work on the solution before that problem occurs. Through the Operations Console, the Monitoring Team can see critical and warning alerts and if necessary, dispatch for a responsible team is the Database Team, Operating System Team or Exchange Team, etc. It’s clear that it's also possible to send alerts creating split groups for Database Team, Operation System Team, and send alerts for the respective products to the team responsible. It depends on each organization.

I think that it should be made possible to monitor private systems, which are developed in each company. In my opinion, this option already exists in SCOM 2012, however we have a lack of resources to develop this.

In this company, SCOM has been in place since 2006, starting with MOM in 2005 and after that, it was upgrade to SCOM 2007.

I've used it to monitor several Microsoft Servers, which I've customized thresholds to support in Exchange, File Servers, SQL Servers, Clusters and others products.

I had issues with SCOM 2007 and MOM 2005, regarding the view of alerts in the Console Operations. It delayed showing critical alerts to the monitoring Team, because they could not see alerts in the Operations Console. For this kind of issue, I had issues with database maintenance as well.

I have a contact at Microsoft Premier, and I find it necessary to us them to open a case with Microsoft, if they think that it's possible to fix the issue.

In another company, I’ve had experience with BMC Patrol, Tivolli and SiteScope as NETQoS products, but this tool I’ve worked with administration.

There were no issues with setting up SCOM.

Follow the best practices and there should be no issues.

The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment. Microsoft has managed to create a user experience that builds trust in the product. The monitoring features are top notch. 

It is in our starter pack for new employees joining the IT division. Working with SCOM enables new hires or management trainees gain insight into the inner workings of the the business with emphasis on uptime. 

The monitoring features are top notch. 

The configuration, especially for alerts, are somewhat lengthy. 

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues with the stability.

There were no issues with the scalability.

The initial implementation stage can be a bit of a challenge but once things are up and running, it's worth it.

Microsoft Product monitoring and VMware monitoring using Veeam extension.

This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products.

Monitoring non Microsoft products and 3rd party applications.

From 2007 starting with SCOM 2007.

I have used Big Brother monitoring software before being acquired by Quest software.

The deployment of the server is really straightforward. You can follow step by step the installation wizard.

All the implementation has been done by an in-house team.

No, due to the fact there was a global decision at higher level.

Test it, you do not have what to loose.

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

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. 

Ten years.

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.

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.

It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available.

Ability for support staff to know when there is a problem, identify where the problem is, and figure out what is causing the problem, ideally before the users of the applications encounter the problems.

If it could have SysLog capabilities and if the Microsoft Management Packs were out of the box instead of a separate download.

Our current project is still ongoing, its been at least 7 years.

Yes, but only if you decide to integrate ACS with OpsMgr. Then storage could become an issue depending on where the customer believes the security logs must come from.

If you have Microsoft Premier Support, then all is well.

Understand what is critical in your environment first and what needs to be monitored.