Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) vs. Power Admin PA Server Monitor

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

Power Admin PA Server Monitor works great for our needs. We do however wish that it worked for Linux Operating Systems.

Incentivized

• 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

• Alerts us when a server, storage device, or network device goes offline.
• Alerts us when a critical service running on a server stops running.
• Alerts us if files change, are removed, or are created.
• Alerts us if an unauthorized file type has been created on a monitored system
• Generate up-time reports for Executives.

Incentivized

• 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• The OOB SCOM reports are a bit clunky and feel outdated.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

• It does have bulk settings tools to set up bulk settings for multiple devices, but to me it could be a bit easier to use. However, I ran into a snag and reached out to support and they are great.
• It does not support Linux Operating Systems.

Incentivized

Excellent product, easy to use, many features, and fast/excellent support.

Incentivized

It is an excellent product that is much easier to use than many other open source type offerings. Easy learning curve.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Very fast, knowledgeable, and helpful support.

Incentivized

Overall it is an easy install and setup and their support is very fast and helpful

Incentivized

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

We tried some open source solutions. But, they were much more difficult to set up and maintain. PA is easy to use "out of the box". We looked at other paid solutions also, but they were cost prohibitive, since we are a small institution.

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

• It has decreased our critical services downtime, because we are able to VPN in and fix issues as soon as Power Admin alerts us of an issue. ROI has been excellent.
• It allows us to catch issues before they become critical by alerting us on errors that show up in our Event Logs.

Incentivized