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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft System Center

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center is an enterprise-grade IT Operations Management (ITOM) suite designed for the centralized administration of data center infrastructure, virtualized environments, and hybrid cloud workloads. The platform provides unified management across heterogeneous environments, including support for Windows Server, Linux, and Azure Stack HCI. System Center is Microsoft's ITOM stack for organizations that maintain a significant on-premise footprint, vs the company's Azure-based…

    $1,323

    per month

    Salt

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AVMware Salt is an Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management platform that provisions, configures, deploys, and manages infrastructure components at scale. The solution utilizes an event-driven automation engine to enforce compliant software states across virtual machines, servers, containers, and network devices. The VMware Salt solution is comprised of software components from both VMware and the open-source Salt Project While the Salt Masters and Salt Minions are a part of the open…N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    Editions & Modules
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    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
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System CenterSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
    • Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
    • Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The product could improve in the area of having better mechanisms in place with how the SCEP client is deployed/installed from the server on the management side. We have run into this firsthand with the client not installing on an endpoint, and then having to take the time to investigate why it was not installing.
    • A second improvement that can be made is to keep trying to improve the products detection rate for finding malware/viruses. The case can be made that there are some products out there that do a better job at this and have a higher detection rate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Managing network hardware should be more native and easy
    • SaltStack should buffer jobs and, when a client returns, make sure it is executed proberly
    • SaltStack should provide basic pillar and states structures to help get newbies started
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • It has allowed the enterprise to standardize on a single platform for monitoring.
    • Easier troubleshooting of issues with Microsoft platforms.
    • Greater visibility of issues across platforms when applications are hosted in a mixed environment.
    • Additional costs for monitoring systems that are not directly supported with additional packs (iSeries, Linux on Power).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
    • Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
    • Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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