Microsoft System Center vs. Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)

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.

Incentivized

RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
• Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
• OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
• 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
• 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
• 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
• 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
• We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
• There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.

Incentivized