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Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) vs. Zabbix

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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

    Zabbix

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AZabbix is an open-source network performance monitoring software. It includes prebuilt official and community-developed templates for integrating with networks, applications, and endpoints, and can automate some monitoring processes.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)Zabbix
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)Zabbix
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    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)Zabbix
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Zabbix
    No answer on this topic
    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
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Features
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)Zabbix
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and Zabbix
    Feature
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
    6.1
    22 Ratings
    22% below category average
    Zabbix
    -
    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)Zabbix
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Veeam ONE
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Icinga
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
    Score6.8 out of 10
    Veeam ONE
    Score8.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)Zabbix
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (25 ratings)
    8.3
    (28 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (8 ratings)
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)Zabbix
    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
    Zabbix
    Zabbix is great for monitoring your servers and seeing alerts when the system uses too much CPU or memory. This allowed the system Engineer to be proactive and add resources to these systems to avoid interrupting the services. Especially servers running operations applications and services. This is one of the best usages for Zabbix.
    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
    Zabbix
    • Collecting hardware data - CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Metrics are collected and reported on.
    • Flexible design - It is very easy to build out even very large environments via the templating system. You can also start where you are - network monitoring, server monitoring, etc. and then build it out from there as time and resources permit.
    • Provides a "plugin architecture" (via XML templates) to allow end users to extend it to monitor all kinds of equipment, software, or other metrics that are not already added into the software already.
    • Very complete documentation. Almost every aspect of Zabbix has been documented and reported on.
    • Cost - Zabbix is FOSS software and always free. Support is reasonably priced and readily available.
    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
    Zabbix
    • Creating an alert & its trigger can be made easier.
    • More VM-based data collection counters should be introduced to have better VM monitoring.
    • The raw counters collection agent in every node is relatively weak. It goes down often, which needs more stability.
    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
    Zabbix
    It is free. It didn't cost anything to implement (other than my time and the cost incurred for it) and it is filling a badly needed gap in our IT infrastructure. Support is available if we have issues and can be done annually or paid for on a per incident basis as needed. Expansion, updates, and all other future lifecycle activities are likewise free of cost, so as long as someone is able to implement/maintain the software (and the OSS project is maintained) then I imagine the company will never leave it.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Microsoft
    Ease of Use and user friendly dashboard
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    I think every organization, especially the IT department, needs a tool like this. I know of another product like Zabbix that gives a similar or the same solution, but its range makes it very useful. You can see almost all the device info in one place: disk usage, disk space, network usage, etc.
    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
    Zabbix
    The setup is the most time-consuming portion of using zabbix. It takes a lot of effort to shape it into a usable format and even then it can get very messy. It's not exactly intuitive and as mentioned the UI seems a bit antiquated. If I was to roll out a monitoring solution from scratch, I'd probably look for alternatives which are easier to use and maintain.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
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    Zabbix
    We are a mainly Windows environment, so it would be useful if we could have used Active Directory to deploy agents. As of version 4.2, Zabbix has announced a new agent MSI file to allow exactly that. Unfortunately, we didn't have that option. Also, for Linux and MAC deployments, there is no simple way to deploy that. Using remote scripts you may be able to create something, but most places will opt for either SNMP (agentless) or manual installation of agents to add to Zabbix. A way of deploying agents via discovery would go a long way to helping in the adoption of the tool.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Zabbix
    We're using the Solarwinds suite as our global monitoring standard, but it is very complex and its licensing model makes it difficult to monitor a wide range of technologies. So, we're using Zabbix as a complement on our monitoring process. Zabbix is a way more flexible and has free integrations to a wide range of technologies. It is also more 'user friendly' and easy to manage.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Zabbix
    • Good ROI when trying to get ahead of network related problems instead of waiting for users to complain
    • Good ROI when doing upgrades or exploratory work on a neglected network
    • Good ROI when showing usage trends to management showing higher actual usage versus what was thought to be happening
    Read full review
    ScreenShots