Data Center Real-User Monitoring (DCRUM), discontinued vs. Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

Dynatrace Network Application Monitoring (NAM), formerly DCRUM, has improved greatly compared to when it was DCRUM; however, it still needs a lot of improvement in end-to-end flow capture with regards to network monitoring. Its alerting and integration capabilities are very good and easy to use. But it still needs a lot of tweaking in usability.

Incentivized

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

• Dynatrace DCRUM can monitor legacy application protocols that are still used in a lot of organizations worldwide who still trust in those technologies.
• DCRUM monitors client-server architectures very well and can pinpoint issues along an infrastructure stack.
• Dynatrace DCRUM can analyze a wide spectre of protocols: Corba, DNS, DB2, Exchange, TCP, HTTP, IBM MQ, Citrix, ICMP, Informix, Tuxedo, SMB, LDAP, MSRPC, MySQL, NetFlow, Net8, Oracle Forms, RMI, SAP GUI, SAP HANA, SAP RFC, SMB, SOAP, XML.

• 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

• Major upgrades process is sometimes unpredictable.
• The use of SQL Server should be evaluated for something else.
• Easier SSL key handling.

• 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

Best of breed.

The only thing missing for a 10, would be if they texted or called you back.

Hard to get support. The product is not being actively developed anymore, so it is hard to get new features for the product.

Incentivized

Nagios can't trace real user transactions from a front-end tier through a backend-tier,;with Nagios you only can monitor server availability and hardware issues. Riverbed is commonly used to determine networking issues without considering real user transactions impact on an application stack.

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

• Dynatrace Network Application Monitoring (NAM), formerly DCRUM, helped us get a lot of info on an ongoing issue.
• It helped us figure out network bottlenecks in our environment.
• It is a very costly tool and a lot of other cheaper tools give same kind of info.

Incentivized

• 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