

SCOM and Zabbix are well-known monitoring solutions. SCOM appears to have the upper hand in environments with a strong Microsoft focus due to deep integration and robust features, while Zabbix stands out for its cost-effectiveness and flexibility across diverse systems.
Features: SCOM is ideal for monitoring Microsoft products with its management packs, strong reporting features, and extensive integration with Windows environments. It supports both Windows and Unix systems. Zabbix excels in flexibility with features like automatic network device discovery, versatile alerting options, and robust scalability. Its open-source nature allows for customization without additional costs.
Room for Improvement: SCOM struggles with monitoring non-Microsoft applications and faces challenges in cost and complex configuration, often leading to numerous false positives. Zabbix could enhance its interface for non-technical users, improve reporting capabilities, and offer better integration to ease customization and setup burden.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCOM is mainly deployed on-premises, integrated with Windows Servers, and benefits from Microsoft's support network. However, complexity arises without premium support. Zabbix offers flexible deployment options, including on-premises and cloud environments. While it features an optional support service, users often rely on community support or paid services for intricate problems.
Pricing and ROI: SCOM involves higher upfront costs linked to Microsoft's System Center suite, yet offers good value for Microsoft-centric enterprises through better infrastructure management. Zabbix's open-source licensing eliminates such costs, providing robust monitoring capabilities that offer substantial ROI, especially for technically adept organizations managing diverse environments internally.
They often treat issues in isolation, not considering how one problem might relate to another.
When I was working directly with Microsoft at TCS, my first company, the support experience was quite smooth, and we received solutions promptly.
It is so straightforward that I have never had to use the support.
The scalability of SCOM, meaning its ability to adapt to our needs, is excellent because we are working with SQL systems and multiple servers.
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
Zabbix has high scalability.
Zabbix is good and scalable, but not as fast as SolarWinds.
I have not seen many errors or frequent data loss because once we have installed the agent on the system and have the details, not much manual intervention is required.
SCOM is a bit unstable lately, primarily due to a lack of resources.
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
I think the stability of Zabbix is around five to six on a scale of ten, where ten is the best and one is the worst.
Zabbix is quite stable, and we haven't had any problems with Zabbix itself.
I would like to see a software-as-a-service version in Azure to eliminate the need for on-premise infrastructure.
SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure.
It would be beneficial to have a summary on one single dashboard, as there are many more possibilities available.
The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the best.
The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts.
Zabbix is providing everything free of cost.
It is literally free.
It assists me in detecting server downtime and delivers basic performance monitoring right out of the box.
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool.
SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS.
If disk usage surpasses a threshold, say 70%, I receive alerts and can take proactive action.
The alerting systems are very good in Zabbix, and it has helped us to reduce time for reaction.
Zabbix is Linux-based open-source software, and the main use case is to reduce costs.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Zabbix | 5.0% |
| SCOM | 1.6% |
| Other | 93.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 16 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 22 |
| Large Enterprise | 54 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 56 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 23 |
| Large Enterprise | 34 |
SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) is a cross-platform data center monitoring and reporting tool that checks the status of various objects defined within the environment, such as server hardware, system services, etc. The solution allows data center administrators to deploy, configure, manage, and monitor the operations, services, devices and applications of multiple enterprise IT systems via a single pane of glass. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes.
SCOM Features
SCOM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SCOM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SCOM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SCOM solution.
A Manager at a financial services firm says, “The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use. I find it very user-friendly. I also like the knowledge base which it has. You can find the resolution to questions or issues directly within the SCOM itself. It will alert you with a recommendation of what you need to do at the same time. This sort of self-diagnosis or prompting is one of the great values you get from SCOM compared to other solutions.”
PeerSpot user Zahari Z., Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm, mentions, “Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well. You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.”
Bill W., Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government, comments, “ I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time. When we patch, things are automatically put into maintenance mode so that the numbers for our systems being down, do not count against us.”
A Project Manager at a tech services company explains, “The feature I have found most valuable is the book feature. While we run the Sprint one we can add some setups for multiple sprints.”
A Systems Engineer at an educational organization states, “Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it.”
Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.
It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.
With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.
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