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Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a monitoring and application performance management option, with the core datacenter and cloud-based systems monitoring.N/A

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a tool for monitoring, performance management, capacity planning and optimization for on-premises or cloud-based virtual environments. It also integrates with other SolarWinds products.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    We chose SolarWinds for the price point, the ability for Single Pain of Glass monitoring for Dashboards, and having a single vendor to support all our monitoring needs.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    83%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Features
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Feature
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
    6.1
    22 Ratings
    22% below category average
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    -
    Ratings
    Application monitoring5.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Database monitoring9.022 Ratings00 Ratings
    Threshold alerts10.022 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive capabilities2.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application performance management console3.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Collaboration tools6.017 Ratings00 Ratings
    Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications4.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application dependency mapping and thresholding4.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Virtualization monitoring7.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server availability and performance monitoring10.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    IT Asset Discovery5.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score8.2 out of 10
    OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
    Score6.8 out of 10
    OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (25 ratings)
    10.0
    (66 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (8 ratings)
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    More appropriate for:
    • Pure Microsoft ecosystem environments (Windows Server and SQL server) and the most common Linux and UNIX platforms.
    • Environments where cost is less of a factor than settling on a single platform for monitoring
    • Environments where the administrators are familiar with the setup and installation of SCOM.
    Less appropriate for:
    • Pure UNIX/Linux shops, especially versions not supported out of the box by SCOM.
    • Shops that cannot afford the engagement to setup/configure and maintain on a continuous basis.
    • Shops that cannot dedicate personnel to the care and feeding of SCOM, especially when supporting larger environments.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    On the whole, Solarwinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is an excellent product which gives us a single point to monitor our virtual environment. After our initial trial I was sold on the product and what it had to offer. Immediately after implementing VMAN, we were able to spot virtual machines with old snapshots which were never deleted and no longer needed, we could spot virtual machines which either had over allocated resources or under allocated resources meaning we could make changes and fine tune them for best performance. We could also monitor virtual machine latency, IOPS, and show us where our bottlenecks were.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Allows us to visualize our systems in a single interface and see the status of health as well as relevant performance metrics.
    • A flexible and powerful interface with active alerting covering domain controllers, SQL servers, etc...
    • Allows you to customize your views and workspaces for specific tasks and needs.
    • Reporting is powerful and flexible.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • I created custom dashboards, to view the different elements of the virtual environment. For example, you can view the number of online VMs and those off, or disconnected. You can also choose to see the status of every virtual cluster, the storage disk usage on every VM, the RAM usage, CPU usage.
    • I used this application to see the growth of virtual memory in each cluster and accordingly do forecasting for future growth. A capacity planner included in this application would help in doing accurate estimations and setting a future upgrade budget.
    • Another powerful tool was the customized reports, where i could generate reports on any element of the VM or cluster. Reports can be exported to Excel or PDF and are very useful for sharing information with colleagues and management.
    • Alerts can be customized. For example, you can set a rule to get an email alert if any virtual server RAM usage exceeds 85% and send a text message if RAM usage exceeds 90% for more than 10 minutes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • One of the biggest drawbacks to SCOM is the sheer scope and complexity of the system. This can be a pro and a con. The system is very customizable, what you put into it is what you'll get out of it. That said, the learning curve is fairly steep. An organization needs to be committed to putting time and resources into SCOM to get the most out of it. I've heard stories from colleagues of several different companies that invested in SCOM and then abandoned it due to the excessive time and care required.
    • SCOM is expensive. Not only is the enterprise licensing costly, SCOM requires it's own servers, operational and warehouse databases to be maintained.
    • The OOB SCOM reports are a bit clunky and feel outdated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • We did have issues during the setup, with successfully connecting to some of our hosts and vCenters and we found support were just sending us back to articles we had already read, it was also taking long periods before getting a response. The issue is still ongoing, in fact.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Currently, there is no other tool that gives us what we need to monitor a geographically disperse environment with multiple non-related instances of VM clusters. In addition, the level of reporting, historical data trending, and alerting that VMAN provides is essential for our business process. Lastly, the effort to customize and set up any monitoring system is not trivial. This makes switching to any other product very difficult without being able to clearly demonstrate a ROI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    Ease of Use and user friendly dashboard
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds VMAN is easy to use for everyone. When I say everyone which literally means anyone e.g. Virtualization Environment SME, Consultant, Support Team, Management Officers etc. Anyone who have worked on IT technologies could easily deploy SolarWinds by reading videos, Thwack posts or Virtual Classrooms (Custom Success Centers) - this makes this application easy to operation and for maintenance support is always there.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We have yet to enconter any issues in terms of availability. We have a highly available SQL cluster running Orion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We find page load times to be quite slow at times. Flipping between tabs can also be very slow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    Hard to get support. The product is not being actively developed anymore, so it is hard to get new features for the product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds gives good support. I have never had a time when i was working through a support case where I did not get the support I needed for the required issues to be resolved. I have always had resolutions from SolarWinds support. They are top notch. Issues once had are no more.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Its really the best product on the market for someone looking to have total control over their VM environment. anyone interested should download a demo and try it, I know you will buy it after you do. It changing the way you have to manage on a daily basis
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    We used Altiris and WSUS and in the beginning Altiris had the better admin interface than SCOM, but it is no longer the case as SCOM has refined their admin interface. Altiris still has better and more robust group assignments for management roles and those two other tools can better manage non Windows OS devices than SCOM but for a large enterprise Windows shop, if you can afford it, SCOM is the way to go.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    The operation began using Nagios XI, after a year of use, and based on the results obtained, we realized that what our client wanted was not fully met. Our client asked us to use WhatsUp, however, SolarWinds covered in a more efficient way what was required by our client (IT) and even more.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Purchasing the correct license allows the platform to scale with your environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • It has allowed us to provide an Enterprise Event/Alert management solution to the Global company
    • It has taken a long time to get it to provide valuable alerts and information, lots of user resources and investment.
    • It assists with 24/7 monitoring and out of hours support
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • VMAN has been used for reports provided to executive-level meetings. These reports showed our growth patterns, allowing for easier decisions on purchasing additional hardware.
    • VMAN has provided a positive impact on allowing for near real-time monitoring of resources, able to pinpoint when services are using more memory than expected, not running at all, or other options as defined.
    • VMAN was purchased to help monitor our VMware platform, the added abilities for AWS allowed us to migrate clients from on-prem to cloud-based with the same views.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) Screenshots

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