SCOM Other Advice
Starlen Sass
Information Technology Consultant at University of the Witwatersrand
The problem is that the solution does not have a predictable alert. It would help you diagnose faults easily, but it needs more predictive alerts. If a service is about to get affected or if there's a lot of noise on the network, those alerts need to come through on time so that it's more of an early warning wake-up call. You can either add more resources to a constrained tool or apply an available solution prior.
Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
RM
Richard McLaughlin
Vocational Coordinator at UMMS
My advice to others looking into implementing this product is to make sure that you have a solid understanding of SQL commands, statements, databases, and Visual Studio. This will help you understand how to make the management packs more effective. I rate this solution a ten out of ten.
View full review »
Philippe Roussel
Delivery Manager at Inetum
I recommend others to try this solution. Also, I rate this solution a seven out of ten.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SCOM
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SCOM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Hussein Taha
IT Enterprise System Administrator at Misr Technology Services
I give the solution a six out of ten.
First-time users of SCOM need to be well prepared. There should not be too many management consoles. The SCOM gateway can be used as a way to transfer data to the management console, and the management console will have low latency so it can act as the management console for these sites. It will handle the queuing for the data through the centralized database. This is the best practice given to me by the Microsoft team because of an issue that occurred in our environment that took some time to be resolved.
View full review »
AJITHH G
Solution Engineer at AppSmart
I would rate SCOM as 8 out of 10.
It depends on how the customer is using the product. My advice is that if you're interested in SCOM, you need to consider the environment, the business case, and what kind of business you are running.
View full review »YA
YasirAhmed
Managed Services - System engineer at Brennan IT Pty Ltd.
I work for a managed service provider. We provide services for SCOM. We provide in-house support and services to our customers. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
View full review »
Mohammed Badowi
IT system manager at NBO
My advice to people who are looking for a solution like SCOM would actually be to advise them to move from licensed software to open-source. You can go to Nagios or most other open-source products and they do the same thing as SCOM. There is no need to pay additional money to get the same services.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate SCOM as a seven-out-of-ten. It is a good product, but so are the free open-source products it competes with.
Amar Sharma
Monitoring Systems Engineer at Monster Worldwide
I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by adapting to a cloud environment. I advise users considering the solution to use it if they have on-premise servers and more of a Windows-based environment.
BW
Bill Watts
Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government
We do use SolarWind, but I am not on that team; it is used by the network group.
I use the Operations Manager to manage my server infrastructure.
The most important thing would be to go to Microsoft and get some training. They provide a lot of free classes in the form of webinars and other similar events. It has a multitude of different deliverables that most people never get into.
It's a lot more powerful than people realize, and I believe people become dissatisfied with it because of the complicated setup, but once it's up and running, it's pretty amazing at what it can do.
I am pretty happy with the way it works right now, I would rate SCOM a nine out of ten.
View full review »
Trevor Watkins
Server Applications Senior Administrator at Home Hardware Stores Limited
I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I recommend it for users considering implementing it and advise them to do some research.
View full review »
GovindarajV
Systems Engineer II at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
SCOM improves system monitoring by centralizing server monitoring.
The alerting capabilities in SCOM are helpful for our organization. The notification feature works well and is beneficial for keeping us informed.
We use the default reporting tool in SCOM, which is Microsoft Server Reporting. It is user-friendly and integrates well with SCOM.
Integrating SCOM into our current IT environment was easy.
Overall, I would rate SCOM as a nine out of ten. I would recommend it to others.
View full review »
Robert Hedblom
Cloud and Solution Principal Architect at sumNERV Provider AB
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.
SergiusNkomadu
Service manager at Signal Alliance LTD
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.
View full review »
it_user937584
Manager, Principle Systems Engineer and team lead at BCX
As far as meeting our needs for a solution, I give it a nine out of ten. But it is interesting to rate the tool. My rating doesn't really have a context. It is mostly engineers that are using the product. In a sense, it doesn't matter what monitoring tool you use, the success of a monitoring tool is dependent on the engineers using it. The engineer has to make it work.
I'm really not aware of the total number of users that we service and with SCOM I don't really need to know. I don't know much about the actual numbers except that we've got 28 clients. Each of the 28 clients has a different number of employees and different engineers that are working on different environments to solve different issues. If I had to guess, I'd say there are really only 100 to 120 only. I wish it was more, and I think we can easily scale to meet additional demand. But the point is that we are responsible for monitoring and identifying issues in a variety of environments, and that is exactly what SCOM helps us do, with efficiency.
We basically use everything we can that is included in the package and have found a real use for every module that's available. That said, we don't do a lot of network monitoring. Server monitoring, absolutely. That we use extensively. Reporting, we use a lot, event collections we use quite extensively. But we bring to the clients what they need most.
We have confidence in the solution and we are going to put all or most of the clients on to Scrum 2019 if they are willing to accept the upgrade path. We are busy working on that in a project to upgrade it to 2019. It all depends on how well test upgrades go and the willingness of clients to enhance their services. We need to test it in the development area first, and then, depending on the type of environment that is running, we have to plan the upgrade in the proper sequence. Say the environment is a 2012 version, the upgrade path is to 2016, from 2016 to 1801, from 1801 to 1807 and then you must make sure that you're on the correct sequel version for 2019. But to do it at all depends on the license agreement that the particular clients have with Microsoft. Right now we are busy taking the environment up to 1807 and then we going to upgrade the sequel version, and then from there, we can go to 2019.
So we are busy the whole time trying to better service our clients. We do our UI updates quite often. We are quite busy with our upgrade paths and testing to make sure everything goes smoothly for the clients in the implementation.
OK
OmidKoushki
Solution Architect at KIAN company
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.
View full review »MO
Morne' O'Kennedy
Lead specialist at OKCIUS (Pty) Ltd
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.
View full review »UM
Usama Mustafa
Solutions specialist lead at Jaffer Business Systems
From a technical perspective, I recommend going for Azure, using Sentinel, using Azure monitoring services, which give in-depth results and monitoring opportunities.
Microsoft is known for its integrated solution. But what happens when those solutions have several issues, like SCOM or any other solution?
But some companies get solutions to those areas to address those issues. So people start moving towards them, like, i.e. VMware or Ivanti, as I mentioned. These companies emerged as Microsoft solutions could not provide detailed or ease of accessibility and utility to those software solutions.
I rate the solution a five out of ten.
View full review »YE
reviewer1423482
Group CIO at a import and exporter with 51-200 employees
We're using a lot of Microsoft products. We are also resellers and distributors of Microsoft.
Whether this solution works for you or not depends on how you do your model. If you outsource everything, then you don't have the problem even if you're an SMB. However, if you have an IT department inside your organization, you will likely need this.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
View full review »it_user397317
Programmer Analyst at a leisure / travel company with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »AB
Amit Ben-Horin
Monitoring Systems Administrator at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »KM
reviewer1647066
DevOps Engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
I'm just a customer and an end-user.
I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.
SCOM is a great monitoring tool. It's just pretty complex to set up, however, if you invest your time in learning SCOM, you can understand how it works and it will make things much easier.
View full review »it_user1297926
Owner at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
This is a good software. I would definitely recommend this software.
I would rate SCOM an eight out of ten.
View full review »MM
reviewer1566126
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would rate System Center Operations Manager an eight out of ten.
View full review »MM
Molatelo Mashabela
IT SEC at a government with 10,001+ employees
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.
HV
Helder Valente
Infrastructure and Networks at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
View full review »VR
Vinicius Ribeiro
Head of IT South America at Compass Minerals
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.
View full review »it_user368364
Senior SCOM Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
This is an excellent monitoring tool, especially for Windows servers, as the technology developers are usually the ones who build the management packs for SCOM. You must plan out your environment before implementing this product in large environments and build very beefy SQL servers one for the OperationsDB and the other for the OperationsDB Ware House. As this product is very SQL intense and any slowness is usually caused by the SQL servers trying to keep up with all the requests and updates from the product. Limit the number of admins that will administer this product, as too many cooks in the kitchen can cause more harm than not enough cooks. This product gets better in time with tuning, otherwise it is a very chatty product and users will start ignoring it, if it’s not tuned correctly.
View full review »it_user617970
Senior System Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees
None really. Read a book or take a class on it. It’s complex and powerful.
View full review »it_user380994
Senior Officer in IT management systems department with 501-1,000 employees
SCOM should be a good choice for fresh IT environments based on Windows servers or switching from open-source monitoring tools. By adding e.g. SCCM and SCOrch, you get a fast-to-deploy and easy-to-manage bundle of enterprise-class tools.
View full review »PZ
paul zuber
Operating Partner at Thoma Bravo LLC with 51-200 employees
If you are using Linux, do not discount SCOM just because it is a Windows or Microsoft product.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
- Features
- Price.
it_user375357
Advanced Systems Engineer - 3 at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Implement a prototype management pack on the dev environment and analyze all the pros and cons before buying the product. You can get a free six months trial on this also.
it_user384843
Group IT Infrastructure Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Ensure you have plenty of resources to throw at the environment, space for data warehouse and SQL as it will be resource hungry for SCOM (server estate size relevant of course). Be prepared for some initial time investment and ensure regular updates and management packs are applied to make the product as useful as possible.
View full review »EP
Enginsys677
Snr Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I really know this product quite well, and I would highly recommend it. It is highly customizable and the automation is great. It takes a lot of the headache out of managing your data centers and software in other places. It's a fantastic product.
If the network monitoring were improved then this product would be a ten out of ten.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
View full review »it_user379620
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
SCOM is capable of providing full-featured infrastructure monitoring, alerting and reporting, especially for Windows-centric production environments.
I have heard a lot of people say that to do SCOM right, you really should create a full-time position, or at least a full-time System Center admin who works only on System Center stuff. Because you’re only going to get out of it what you put into it. If you don’t put any time into it, it’s not going to work well for you.
AD
Aymen Dridi
Systems and Virtualization Engineer at Altelios Technology Group
We have two system engineers who do the maintenance of this solution, but the number of people needed depends on their knowledge or qualification.
I recommend this solution to others, but I would suggest having some training.
I rate SCOM a seen out of ten.
View full review »TM
reviewer1505493
Systems Engineer at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
If new potential users want to monitor a Windows platform or Microsoft Server-related platforms, I would recommend it. But if they want to manage anything else, they have to create a lot of custom things for them to work properly.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give SCOM an eight.
View full review »it_user368478
SCOM Senior Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Get knowledgeable help, not someone off the street that says they know SCOM, but someone that can show a track record of working with it. You will save lots of time and money.
It is so flexible and easy to learn if the right processes are put into place.
View full review »TK
reviewer1417944
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would tell people looking to implement this solution that it's great for any historical tracking. But if they're looking for real-time, within-the-minute monitoring of servers from a console, then I would say that it falls short there.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give SCOM a seven.
View full review »AO
reviewer1260267
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
This is a good product and I recommend it. When it comes to monitoring Microsoft servers, it is very useful.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
View full review »SA
reviewer1381938
IT operation manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
One thing I would recommend to anyone considering this solution is to give more people access to it so that whenever people want to use the solution they can get information from past experiences and what's currently going on. Say for example I raised one concern in your query box, I don't know how it's progressing because it doesn't record that. You should give some ticket number to it and update it. In other words, sharing feedback even on issues you are not directly working on.
View full review »it_user1295745
Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »it_user657
Manager of Operations at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The good reporting capabilities was one of the major functions which made us choose SCOM as the tool for handling MS application operations (only used for that, not the OS platforms).
View full review »
it_user375540
SCOM Specialist at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I do like this product a lot and have followed its advances since the MOM2000 version and continue to do so toward the 2016 version and beyond. One thing to notice lately is there are more possibilities when combined with Microsofts OMS solution in a hybrid scenario to get even more value out of both products.
View full review »it_user372540
NOC Senior Technical Shift Leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
No comments so far. SCOM has a lot of potential and can give a helping hand in maintaining a healthy network.
it_user370203
Microsoft System Center Consultant with 10,001+ employees
SCOM is a great monitoring tool if you have an enterprise level infrastructure that you need to monitor and manage, it's mainly designed for Windows but it does have cross-platform and network monitoring support something which Microsoft keeps expanding. It is technically easy to implement and maintain but it requires an initial time investment for tuning and customizations.
View full review »NJ
reviewer1412814
SCOM Administrator at a government with 201-500 employees
Overall, I find that this is a good solution but the presentation layer is really bad. If the interactive part of the console were improved then it would be better.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
View full review »EN
Endre Németh
Senior IT System Owner and System Management Specialist at MOL Plc
I like SCOM and have used it for many years.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
View full review »it_user146802
QA Engineer at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Having been in IT for over 20 years, with Microsoft, you know what you are getting. I have not logged a single support case for this product, whereas with other, similar products, I would log cases every month. It’s extremely well-tested and you know what you are getting: quality.
View full review »EP
Edgar Parra
Senior Technical Consultant at The Instillery
I find this product very clunky and not very intuitive to use, it took me a while to find my way around and understand where I needed to go to configure or even get a report is a bit complicated.
View full review »it_user382557
IT Administrator & Major Incident Coordinator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
In order to use all the features in SCOM, one must learn the tool from the inside out and then customize it so that it fits the paricular business. This way you know the foundations and are able to build a robust tool to monitor and control a large amount of servers and services across the world
View full review »it_user369678
IT Consultant with 501-1,000 employees
SCOM is a Microsoft solution designed primary to Monitor Microsoft servers and applications, capable of Monitoring Non-Microsoft OS and applications as well.
View full review »it_user82122
Solution Architect at a cloud provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The planning phase is crucial. Also note that SCOM admin can not plan the whole infrastructure. All application owners should be involved in planning phase. Also, post-configuration tasks should be taken care of by application owners, such as custom monitors, tunings for alerts, etc.
View full review »it_user337107
Manager: Monitoring, Performance, and Availability at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
SCOM works well for Windows, but if you need a broader solution and have a heterogeneous environment, SCOM is lacking.
View full review »it_user372657
Infrastructure Consultant, specialist SCCM, SCOM, VMware, Hyper-V at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
So if you want to implement this software initial installation is easy. But a high level of understanding of your own business needs is required. You need clear process to setup MP.
View full review »it_user375618
Senior Technical Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
SCOM can monitor a whole lot of products, not just generic server components. Make sure that you contact the product vendor and ask if they have Management Packs for SCOM.
View full review »it_user1063098
Head of ICT at JAROLA
It's a Microsoft product so if you are using a lot of other vendors, other operating systems, then it's less compatible. For us, we're 99% Microsoft so it's not an issue. On this solution, the things we monitor are fine and perhaps other users will want more, but for our purpose and what we use it for, it's enough.
Once it's completed, you only get triggered by emails and you can respond to those emails so when the system does its thing it's not that complex. It's very simple.
I would rate this solution eight out of 10.
View full review »it_user190191
Technical IT Manager at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
If you are a large Microsoft shop then this product excels in monitoring Microsoft services.
View full review »it_user352575
Senior IT Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Think about the cloud. Try to move everything (if it is possible) to the cloud. You will save a lot of money on monitoring themes because most of the cloud services include it, so you don’t have to worry about monitoring. (Azure is an example.)
Microsoft is currently more valuable because this brand is wide used. Microsoft is also cheaper than Riverbed’s APM offering, but it is a matter of time because there are another brands conducting successful marketing / testing / training campaigns to replace Microsoft.
View full review »it_user402498
Director at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
Thorough analysis of the current environment and the goals that need to be achieved should be defined (from an end-results point of view) before rolling out SCOM. If the groundwork is not properly done, SCOM implementation can cost the organization.
View full review »it_user382458
Senior Production Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Follow the best practices and there should be no issues.
View full review »it_user79782
Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Test it, you do not have what to loose.
View full review »
NM
reviewer1404762
IT Officer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
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.
RD
Enginefra677
IT Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user140667
Principal ICT Architect with 501-1,000 employees
Understand what is critical in your environment first and what needs to be monitored.
View full review »
Buyer's Guide
SCOM
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SCOM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SCOM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
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