AWS OpsWorks vs. Microsoft System Center

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS OpsWorks
Score 4.3 out of 10
N/A
AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet.N/A
Microsoft System Center
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft System Center Suite is a family of IT management software for network monitoring, updating and patching, endpoint protection with anti-malware, data protection and backup, ITIL- structured IT service management, remote administration and more. It is available in two editions: standard and datacenter. Datacenter provides unlimited virtualization for high density private clouds, while standard is for lightly or non-virtualized private cloud workloads.
$1,323
per month
Pricing
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard Edition
$1323
Datacenter Edition
$3607
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
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
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
Best Alternatives
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(21 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS OpsWorksMicrosoft System Center
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
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.
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Microsoft
For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • connect between serveral AWS services (EC2, RDS, ELB)
  • easy configuration management deployment via Chef
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Microsoft
  • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
  • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
  • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
  • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • 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.
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Microsoft
  • Needs web based storefront for requesting new software
  • Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better
  • Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
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.
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Microsoft
If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
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.
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Microsoft
We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • very quick way of creating new infrastructure
  • low maintenance costs
  • easy to create high availability setups thus reducing costs
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Microsoft
  • We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns.
  • We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops.
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