Central is a cloud-based remote monitoring and endpoint management solution enabling IT professionals to monitor,
manage, and secure their endpoint infrastructure. Whether it is used for remote employees or endpoints scattered across the globe, the vendor promises that Central
provides IT organizations with the speed, flexibility, and insight needed to
increase productivity, reduce IT costs, and mitigate risk.
$80
per month
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Open source, cross-platform, virtualization software that enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device, used to deploy applications on-premises and to the cloud. Oracle VM VIrtualBox is Oracle's cross-platform virtualization offering, acquired with Sun Microsystems in early 2010. The software was originally developed by Innotek GmbH.
LogMeIn Central by GoTo is well suited for easy, direct access to specific, perhaps mission critical, machines. Its remote control functionality and speed is very good - best in class, really. However, it simply can't replace a true and traditional RMM product in terms of robustness and overall ability (or lack thereof).
It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.
I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.
What I dont like is when I run out of licenses that the only way to get more is to buy large amounts. this is very frustrating and as a small business I need to watch how much i am spending. smaller license packs would be better
It is wonderful after the initial setup and implementation.It's fairly intuitive and easy to use for more of our tech and users. These types of products have come a long way. I've been in tech for 20+ years, and thinking back to tools like PC anywhere things have become just so much more user friendly on both ends of the device.
Easy and quick to use. Runs at sufficient speed even with 5/6 VMs running, and can handle a bridged network with ease. Easy to disassociate from the host to ensure the environment built within VB is quarantined should anything happen, meaning no risk to physical hardware. Quick to pick up. Quick to add new machines. Cloning feature very quick and comprehensive. I've never had a VM crash or freeze.
During our 6 years of use, we [have] never seen any downtime from their side. The application simply works. We have had incidents when we were not able to connect to remote servers by any means, but LogMeIn Central always worked. It has saved us trips to other offices. We have few users are who live in rural areas where internet speeds are not great. Supporting these users is a big challenge, but LogMeIn Central was always a lifesaver.
Every time I called in with a question or concern, your support team always provided the right information. It's great to call in to support and everyone that answers is very knowledgeable of the product.
LogmeIn Central is the fastest RMM in terms of remote connection. It generally performs well on networks that have low bandwidth too. In terms of features, Datto RMM does best it because it offers such a good platform for integrations and also for scripting. The community is very open with that software which really gives it a boost, and this is something LogMein Central could work on.
VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition
The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.
For personal use, there is no monetary investment, I am running 5 CentOS servers flawlessly in my home lab.
Saves a ton of money in an enterprise environment by not having to purchase physical test servers. (Cost of Enterprise product is way lower vs Cost of standing up physical servers and/or cloud servers)
Makes virtualization very easy and friendly for everyone for test instances.
