SCOM Reviews

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.

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.

Mature product, strong brand, many customers, Gartner awards

Excellent Microsoft server/application monitoring capabilities

Fast and consistent UX for system admins

Extensive dashboarding capabilities

REST API available

Excellent technical support, rich user community

Designed for on-premise installations

After reviewing alternatives based on our existing needs, we decided against SCOM for the time being.

Lacks common network monitoring features found in alternatives.

Poor support for non-Microsoft systems at this time.

User dashboards require posting to Microsoft SharePoint Server.

Very high administrative burden, requires constant maintenance.

Application transaction monitoring only available in .NET applications on IIS.

Limited analytics capabilities (you must build your own in SSRS)

Full monitoring capabilities requires integration with the rest of the Microsoft System Center suite

2 years

Yes, many. Official documentation fails to list all required TCP/UDP ports necessary for installing the base server as well as gateway servers that are members of remote domains.

We also encountered many issues with each service account used by SCOM that took several days to resolve (domain account rights can be troublesome if not set up correctly from the beginning).

No. Once SCOM was up and running we never had a failure.

No. Scalability is one of the hallmarks of SCOM. It is designed for scaling up/out.

Good.

Very good. Microsoft's technical support team for SCOM is very knowledgeable and is responsive. Most of your technical support documentation/ information can be found on TechNet as well.

Initial setup was extremely complex with security certificates, multiple installation options depending on the server roles in the system, multiple service accounts are needed, as well as delegation of rights for each account. It took several days of troubleshooting to resolve each issue as they were found during initial installation.

Our own team installed the system in-house.

None.

With regards to licensing, if your organization has Enterprise CALs then SCOM is typically included in the suite and may help you if you are trying to save operational costs.

SCOM truly demands it's own support team to manage and administer it (not to mention applying the monthly patches) and is designed for monitoring mid-to-large on-premise environments. If you have a somewhat small environment, or if you do not have the people resources to support a SCOM install then I would recommend to look for alternatives. However if you are an existing Microsoft Enterprise CAL customer SCOM is worth the evaluation.

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.

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 SCOM for proactive monitoring that we code ourselves. We code it with a management pack, which is the actual logic of all monitoring experiences. We develop our own monitoring capabilities instead of using Microsoft's. We could use them as a base but always add extra deliverables with our own code.

The most valuable feature of SCOM is the capability of using classes within your management pack development.

The solution’s initial setup is difficult. SCOM should include more in-depth trend analysis.

I have been using SCOM for 15 years.

I rate SCOM an eight out of ten for stability.

More than 100 users are using SCOM in our organization. I rate SCOM ten out of ten for scalability.

It took one day to deploy SCOM.

We have seen a return on investment with SCOM, and the solution is worth its money.

SCOM's pricing is average.

I am using the latest version of SCOM. Users should do a POC for the solution.

Overall, I rate SCOM a nine out of ten.

I primarily use SCOM to monitor services, logins, devices, and workstations and get notifications when there's a problem.

SCOM's most valuable features are the network path feature, reporting, and integration with business intelligence.

SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product. In the next release, SCOM should add more and simpler integration with other software.

I've been using SCOM for eight years.

SCOM is stable.

SCOM is scalable, but it can be difficult if you don't fully understand the product.

Microsoft's technical support employs a lot of remote workers as support engineers. While some of them are very good, sometimes they can't handle the problems and will procrastinate until the time is up before referring you to someone else. This means that our time is wasted by people who are not technically sound and can't help with our problems.

Neutral

The initial setup is complex if you're using the cloud elements because not every part of SCOM works in the cloud, and some need to be integrated in different formats, which not everyone will know how to do. If everything is complete when you start the deployment, it will take an hour or two, but the cloud-based part will increase it to about six hours.

I implemented SCOM by myself.

SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL. Support is initially free but will incur an additional fee once you exceed a certain level.

I would recommend SCOM to those using a Microsoft operating system, but those who don't would be better looking for another solution, like ServiceDesk. I would rate SCOM eight out of ten.

We work with our global team to produce software delivery packages and patches. We push the changes to the servers as well as to the computers of the end users.

I enjoy its integration with the Microsoft Active Directory functions, which means users, computers, or other group policies can connect with Windows Active Directory.

There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results. You have to wait for a long period to refresh the policy to push it to the software or other patches.

I have been using this solution for five years.

It is very stable.

We can easily scale-up when we have a new global site. It is just so easy to extend this solution to other sites, which is an advantage. 

On the IT side, we have 30 people working on this platform, and on the user side, we have 600 people. We use it every month to push down new patches.

We used LANDESK and Manager Engine. Both of these solutions are similar to SCOM and suitable for the simple purpose of management. 

SCOM is just one user interface. It is a Microsoft service user interface. However, it is not user friendly like Manage Engine, which has a self-service desktop where users can log in and change their password themselves. The software also sends out an automatic notification. Manage Engine has a user-friendly interface.

It is very complex to install because you have to plan the whole deployment. You have to design the central server, the deposit server, and the domain. It is a little bit complex as compared to other common server installations. The deployment took two months.

We have a consultant.

This is a good software. I would definitely recommend this software.

I would rate SCOM an eight out of ten.

We are using the System Manager in a state university. They have around 1000 workstations and clients, that were using a System Center Configuration Management to upgrade only those clients and Windows servers, as well as the WHS server.

The solution is very user-friendly, and it offers upgrade options and updates features with a simple click.

I personally found the initial setup to be straightforward.

There are excellent simple options on offer.

They have great integration with the active directory. You can see active directory users in the System Center.

In recent years, no doubt it's improved. 

That said, at the time I used it, System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already.

The initial setup should be a bit more straightforward.

I have experience working with the solution for about one year or so. I only have one experience with SCOM.

At any given time, 10 members of the IT department, all engineers, would be working on the Assistant Manager Console.

I never dealt with technical support in the past. I can't speak to how knowledgeable or responsive they are in general. 

The initial setup was a very simple process. That said, in general, the installation process is not very straightforward, as you need to install it and then secure the server, and configure the database, and you need to provide different specific options in the configuration process. It can be a bit tricky. It should be improved to provide a straightforward installation.

I handled the installation myself. I did not use a consultant or integrator. I was able to handle it in-house.

I can't speak to the actual cost of the solution. It was more or less handled by the sales department. The licensing aspect was not my responsibility.

We are using System Center 2016.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It was mostly a very positive experience working with it.

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations.

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.

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.