Likelihood to Recommend Where you already have some Chef recipes to build your application boxes and are happy to run directly on VMs, OpsWorks really shines. It won't do anything too complex for you, so it only really works well for simple stacks (load balancers, application layers, database layers). If you want to do more complex infrastructure, Cloudformation or
Terraform are probably worth looking at.
Read full review Windows Autopilot makes provisioning user Windows PC laptops a breeze. A user only needs to turn on the laptop, join it to their local WiFi, login with their O365 account then sit back and let Windows Autopilot handle the app installations required for work, configure the laptop settings to meet my organization requirements. I have seen this all completed in less than 30 minutes depending on how fast the internet connection is. Where Microsoft Intune needs to improve I think is the part where it can push out software updates to 3rd party apps. Right now I have to use Automox to fill in this gap.
Read full review Pros connect between serveral AWS services (EC2, RDS, ELB) easy configuration management deployment via Chef Read full review [Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM)] helps to speed up the deployment of patches/software throughout our environment. I can easily build a package and then deploy across all endpoints. The ability to supercede software is also quite handy. This automates the removal of old versions and replacing them with newer versions. The Intune Autopilot option is very useful if you want to deploy software to devices straight out of the box. You can configure them to download software when a user opens a new PC and turns it on for the first time. Read full review Cons Getting up and running with OpsWorks is a very technical and potentially time-consuming process. You need to know the ins and outs of Chef/Puppet if you really want to get into it and there isn't a convenient way to test out the environment locally so debugging can be time-consuming. To take advantage of some of the newer AWS instance types you need to be running on a VPC, which again is a pain if you don't have a DevOps team. The error logs and monitoring metrics in OpsWorks are pretty basic and haven't changed much over the years. Read full review The program itself can be challenging to use, especially if there hasn't been any formal training on the use of the product. Either training/reviewing documentation is recommended prior to using SCCM. At times, it can be difficult to try and find out why a certain machine that's listed in SCCM says that the endpoint has the SCCM client and shows as Active, but in fact, it's not. It's also difficult at times to try and figure out why the client can't be pushed down to the endpoint. Even though the remote assistance features in SCCM are really good, it can be challenging at times when the remote options don't work for a particular endpoint, even though the machine is active, online, etc. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Mascom Wireless is a Microsoft shop and SCCM has proved to be helpful in keeping our Microsoft products up to date every month without fail. We also have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement which we renewed for three years ending 2022. The remote access utility works wonders for the organisation and have saved travel bills including subsistance allowance. We have been able to fulfill security audits both internal and external. We have been able to keep a robust inventory of our computer assets and nothing falls of the cracks
Read full review Usability The console is not intuitive and does not work well often. Due to the complexity of the product, documentation can be confusing. When properly configured, routine tasks like OS deployment, remote control, and software deployment are easy to do. Troubleshooting of System Center Configuration Manager issues is hard, as there are various logs, and their content can be hard to understand.
Read full review Performance It's a 'heavy' system, which demands a lot of resources form the datacenter perspective. So, make sure you followed the requirements to avoid frustration in the future. From the 'client' perspective, it's fine. I've never had any issue with that.
Read full review Support Rating Unless you pay for a pricey support package getting support on OpsWorks will be pretty slow. Documentation is also relatively limited and sometimes hard to follow when compared to competitors. Generally, we've been able to get the answers we need from OpsWorks support when we run into problems but don't expect rapid responses.
Read full review Being a Microsoft product, support was good. Out interaction was limited to our in-house IT team which was installing the Intune app in our mobile device. The installation was smooth and we haven't faced any difficulties with the app while using it. Provides a smooth and secure access to all Office 365 apps in mobile while separating the personal and professional data.
Read full review Implementation Rating Work with a "test group" of users who you have a good relationship with so that when things don't work properly they understand! Work with your partner nicely without forcing things especially timelines as you are bound to make mistakes and create oversights in the project Management can also interfere with the implementation (which can cause delays) if you make too many mistakes which takes me back to having a "test group" where you have good relations
Read full review Alternatives Considered OpsWorks isn't really a direct competitor to
Terraform /Cloudformation, but it does allow you to do some of the more simple things on offer quite quickly and effectively. Opsworks was used for this reason, along with existing internal knowledge of Chef. Along with some of the other services on offer from AWS, it is good to use as a stepping stone along the way when building your systems - or perhaps it would be entirely suitable for a fairly simple project.
Read full review We did not evaluate or use other products like Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM). The main reason we did not evaluate or use other products is because Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM) integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Windows PCs. Expenses would have increased as well if we had purchased another similar product.
Read full review Return on Investment very quick way of creating new infrastructure low maintenance costs easy to create high availability setups thus reducing costs Read full review In our current environment, this System Center Configuration Manager had replaced several standalone solutions for patching, imaging, remote assistance, reporting, etc. That saved a lot of time and resulted in money to manage the IT infrastructure. Once SCCM is deployed and fully configured, all agents are deployed and it is easy to automate a lot of processes and just control them from time to time to make sure that everything is working as supposed to be. SCCM + Windows 10: great built-in endpoint protection solution. As a result, there is no need to buy additional software for that purpose. The imaging process is better compared to WDS because you can modify deployment packages and apply patches to a newly imaged machine. This saves tons of time for new employees deployment. Read full review ScreenShots