TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Microsoft System Center vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    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

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a tool for monitoring, performance management, capacity planning and optimization for on-premises or cloud-based virtual environments. It also integrates with other SolarWinds products.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Editions & Modules
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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 CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    We chose SolarWinds for the price point, the ability for Single Pain of Glass monitoring for Dashboards, and having a single vendor to support all our monitoring needs.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

    VMware vCenter Server accommodates only VMware hosts and guests. The dashboards are not customizable and require a lot of clicks to get the necessary information on a host or guest.

    MS Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager are cumbersome when compared to VMan. The …

    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Really came down to price. After the fact we felt that the predictive capabilities in VM stood out more than expected.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter
    Score7.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    10.0
    (66 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    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
    SolarWinds
    On the whole, Solarwinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is an excellent product which gives us a single point to monitor our virtual environment. After our initial trial I was sold on the product and what it had to offer. Immediately after implementing VMAN, we were able to spot virtual machines with old snapshots which were never deleted and no longer needed, we could spot virtual machines which either had over allocated resources or under allocated resources meaning we could make changes and fine tune them for best performance. We could also monitor virtual machine latency, IOPS, and show us where our bottlenecks were.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • I created custom dashboards, to view the different elements of the virtual environment. For example, you can view the number of online VMs and those off, or disconnected. You can also choose to see the status of every virtual cluster, the storage disk usage on every VM, the RAM usage, CPU usage.
    • I used this application to see the growth of virtual memory in each cluster and accordingly do forecasting for future growth. A capacity planner included in this application would help in doing accurate estimations and setting a future upgrade budget.
    • Another powerful tool was the customized reports, where i could generate reports on any element of the VM or cluster. Reports can be exported to Excel or PDF and are very useful for sharing information with colleagues and management.
    • Alerts can be customized. For example, you can set a rule to get an email alert if any virtual server RAM usage exceeds 85% and send a text message if RAM usage exceeds 90% for more than 10 minutes.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • We did have issues during the setup, with successfully connecting to some of our hosts and vCenters and we found support were just sending us back to articles we had already read, it was also taking long periods before getting a response. The issue is still ongoing, in fact.
    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
    SolarWinds
    Currently, there is no other tool that gives us what we need to monitor a geographically disperse environment with multiple non-related instances of VM clusters. In addition, the level of reporting, historical data trending, and alerting that VMAN provides is essential for our business process. Lastly, the effort to customize and set up any monitoring system is not trivial. This makes switching to any other product very difficult without being able to clearly demonstrate a ROI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds VMAN is easy to use for everyone. When I say everyone which literally means anyone e.g. Virtualization Environment SME, Consultant, Support Team, Management Officers etc. Anyone who have worked on IT technologies could easily deploy SolarWinds by reading videos, Thwack posts or Virtual Classrooms (Custom Success Centers) - this makes this application easy to operation and for maintenance support is always there.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We have yet to enconter any issues in terms of availability. We have a highly available SQL cluster running Orion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We find page load times to be quite slow at times. Flipping between tabs can also be very slow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds gives good support. I have never had a time when i was working through a support case where I did not get the support I needed for the required issues to be resolved. I have always had resolutions from SolarWinds support. They are top notch. Issues once had are no more.
    Incentivized
    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
    SolarWinds
    Its really the best product on the market for someone looking to have total control over their VM environment. anyone interested should download a demo and try it, I know you will buy it after you do. It changing the way you have to manage on a daily basis
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    The operation began using Nagios XI, after a year of use, and based on the results obtained, we realized that what our client wanted was not fully met. Our client asked us to use WhatsUp, however, SolarWinds covered in a more efficient way what was required by our client (IT) and even more.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Purchasing the correct license allows the platform to scale with your environment.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • VMAN has been used for reports provided to executive-level meetings. These reports showed our growth patterns, allowing for easier decisions on purchasing additional hardware.
    • VMAN has provided a positive impact on allowing for near real-time monitoring of resources, able to pinpoint when services are using more memory than expected, not running at all, or other options as defined.
    • VMAN was purchased to help monitor our VMware platform, the added abilities for AWS allowed us to migrate clients from on-prem to cloud-based with the same views.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot