SCOM Reviews

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.

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 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.

SCOM is a very powerful tool if deployed and eventually maintained correctly. It is an improvement over MOM 2005. It no longer monitors just a node like MOM 2005 used to do (eg: a server) but it can be made to monitor a whole service.

SCOM 2012 monitors each node and advises you that a particular node is unreachable/down in a very short time. This time a.k.a as the polling time is dependent upon number of nodes, network traffic and the speed of the scom servers and network equipment. Having a short time helps to meet the SLA target.

Unfortunately, when you need to monitor member servers which are not joined to the same domain as the SCOM servers, you need to go through the certificate route (so that you can have the required trust through the certificate). This is very time consuming and very prone to error.

3years.

SCOM requires that all servers are from 2008server upwards. Does not work with Server 2003 or lower. Moreover, the respective service packs need to be installed.

As regards Linux servers, a specific file must be configured so that SCOM is allowed to communicate to.

No particular issues were encountered. If it is allocated the required resources, service pack installed etc, it should have a reasonable performance.

SCOM 2012 was implemented and monitored 300+ servers and various network connections. Issues that were encountered is with respect to servers which were not on the same windows domain as the SCOM servers.

Customer service was fine. However, a trained support team is required so that the SCOM is handled correctly and in a timely manner.

Technical support from Microsoft was always given in a timely manner when required. Technical support advice was analyzed and taken on board when required.

MOM 2005 was used but this supports up to 2003 Server. Having upgraded all servers to Server 2008 upwards necessitated this switch. Finally it proved to be a good choice.

MOM experience helped a lot since the basics are the same. You have to open the required TCP ports and allocate the required resources so that setup succeeds.

It was implemented in-house. A group of engineers designed, planned and implemented SCOM 2012. Their level of expertise was very high and they were MCSE engineers.

The ROI is in the form that the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is met and downtime minimized as possible. This reduced the penalties incurred to us from customers.

Cannot comment on this. I was on the technical aspect of SCOM. However this was given "for free" as part with the SCCM package.

There are various other options, like OP5 and Zabbix but being in a Microsoft environment, SCOM was the way to go.

No comments so far. SCOM has a lot of potential and can give a helping hand in maintaining a healthy network.

My primary use case for SCOM is to monitor service availability and performance, such as operating systems. We also integrate some Linux based operating systems to monitor our databases. We also monitor the Microsoft Exchange. We are having some difficulties in the case of the monitoring a couple of our networking devices, so I wouldn't say that monitoring networking devices is also part of the primary use cases. 

I also have Internet Information Server and Application Service from Microsoft Monitor.

Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well.

You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.

In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices. We have not seen the collected data so it makes it challenging.

I would also say that agentless monitoring needs to be included. Something like this is pretty difficult if you don't have a particular agent.

It's not so easy if you have to use something like a proxy to implement a work around. They should include a solution for discovering devices and something like an agentless monitoring solution for a particular device - just to understand what your environment looks like.

I'm not saying that they should provide all the information for the device, but at least availability and partial monitoring based on SNMP. Because I know that other solutions have it. Maybe Service Center Operations Manager has already provided those things in the latest version, but I'm not familiar with it.

I have been using Microcoft SCOM for roughly five years.

Our whole department that maintains SCOM is five people, so the IT department is pretty small and it's relatively integrated. Plus, we have only two dedicated System Administrators. Basically, a few people are doing many things.

We are doing the usual maintenance, patching, and updating. Alignment and configuration are also needed because we are trying to support a higher version of the application, Exchange 2016, with the previous 2012 version of Service Center Operations Manager. It's quite difficult and some type of maintenance is performed internally as we try to align as much as possible. 

Generally speaking, SCOM is stable from an operations point of view. Once it's set up and established and all the configuration is in place, there is no significant amount of time needed for stability or to support the availability of the solution itself. It's relatively simple to support.

In terms of scalability, we increased the amount of supported devices from 50 to 150, but it's not a significant scale. I couldn't say yet how it would behave for a thousand or 2,000 devices.

We have a pretty simple setup for SCOM, we are not using any kind of clustering or virtualization.

Microsoft support can vary. It's great for people that are used to other types of support. Meaning, software vendors usually provide a little bit more focused and dedicated Microsoft support teams. For general support, it's okay from my perspective. But to really understand the deep and the intense nature of your issue, it's a little bit tricky to get to that level.

Overall, technical support needs some alignment. The technical support should be separated from general support. They should start with the general support for people that are end-users or a single user in a simple environment. Then, to reach to the real technical integration-related support later because it's a little bit tricky. Usually, we use our integration partner as someone that is really dealing with those kinds of discussions with the vendor. But if you go directly as a single enterprise, it will be a little bit challenging.

In my previous work I had experience with Network Node Manager, a new solution from HP. It's more focused on agentless monitoring. Also, there is a capability for a monitoring device without any kind of agent installed, which is a little bit more professional. It's not the general solution for monitoring, so I wouldn't say that are comparable. My perception is that Microsoft is just focused on the software stack layer they provide. While Network Node Manager is more of an umbrella, it's much more focused on enterprise level devices and environments. So they should not be compared.

As far as I can remember, the initial setup was pretty simple, but we started with pretty easy devices to monitor. We started with a couple of servers and almost all of them had the same version of the operating system. So it was simple to figure out how things were progressing.

I would say it took a couple of days or a week for the whole setup. It took about five days to install all the servers, and installation and all the integration, and the checks probably took a week.

Initially we implemented on our own. But for a couple of integrations, we used integrators for support, especially for particular application servers and installations, Exchange and partially for SQL Server.

My recommendation to anyone looking to use SCOM is that they should start with the latest version because it's pretty difficult to update later. From an operational perspective and regarding migrating many devices and whole environments, it's better to start with the latest version for Service Center Operations Manager.

On a scale of one to ten I would rate Microsoft SCOP a seven.

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.

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.

SCOM's greatest attribute is that you can customize every monitor to specifically match the intended system. For example, you can monitor two servers for high CPU usage and customize it so one alerts if it goes above 95% and the other only alerts over 98%.

If SCOM is implemented correctly, it can take away the need for administrators to constantly monitor things or perform health checks. SCOM can be set up to alert when an issue occurs and SCOM is often easy to link to a ticketing system so a ticket will be generated automatically when issues occur. SCOM can even be set up to send emails/SMS when a problem occurs in your environment.

The System Centre Operations Manager (SCOM) is great at alerting you when something breaks. It's not so great at reporting. For all of the information that SCOM collects and stores it has no good way to put this information into a useful reporting format. For example, it would be fantastic to be able to have a historic view of the memory usage on a server to assist with pinpointing the root cause to the issue.

Also, SCOM comes with many built-in monitors. Anything that isn't already there can often be add by installing a management pack. These management packs include a heap of monitors for a specific item (EG exchange). The main issue is that by default most items alerts are enabled. This means when you install SCOM or add a management pack you will need to tweak all of the sensors or you will be over run with alerts. It's a turn off what you don't want situation rather than, the more sensible, turn on what you do want.

There were no issues deploying it.

There have been no stability issues.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

Microsoft offers many partnerships to businesses. These partnership agreements can get you some great discounts on software/support. To become a Microsoft partner you often only need to have staff with Microsoft certifications. The more certificates you have the better your partnership. Microsoft are great to call for support as they have a wealth of knowledge. They may not always be the most helpful, but by logging a ticket to Microsoft you will often get your management temporarily off your back.