We compared Amazon CloudWatch and Centreon based on our users' reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data, and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Amazon CloudWatch users liked the solution’s simplicity, intuitive interface, and ability to handle large workloads. Users also praised CloudWatch’s comprehensive monitoring and alerts. Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins.
Room for improvement: Some reviews mentioned that Amazon CloudWatch could improve performance and dashboard visualization. Others noted that the solution lacked compatibility with some databases. Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration.
Service and Support: Customers generally have positive opinions about Amazon's customer service. They commended the support team for its availability and timely issue resolution. Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate.
Ease of Deployment: Amazon CloudWatch is generally described as easy to set up. Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure.
Pricing: Amazon CloudWatch offers a flexible pricing structure based on usage and processing without any separate licensing cost. Some users said that scaling up can be costly due to the need for additional storage space. Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up.
ROI: Amazon CloudWatch offers a return on investment by minimizing the need for manual monitoring. Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings.
Comparison Results: Reviewers say that Amazon CloudWatch is a simple, intuitive solution that can handle large workloads, but some mentioned dashboard visualization and customizability as areas for improvement. Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement.
"Our team finds it overall quite useful."
"Every time we get an alarm or have an incident, CloudWatch is always there. We use it not only for resources we've spun up in the cloud, but also for some of our on-premises resources."
"The solution is easy to use."
"You can enable alarms and metrics, and it has robust integration with AWS services. You can also trigger events. For example, if the CPU utilization is above 80%, it can launch a new instance for you."
"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."
"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is reliability."
"The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
"Another feature we use is Business Activity, which provides us with an end-user perspective when a service is down or isn't working correctly. This is helpful when monitoring the KPIs. When we see a device or server that isn't working, we find the root cause."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks."
"We use the remote server functionality on some customer sites, because you can see an independent view and are not dependent on a single connection. If you have branch offices or bigger office outside your headquarters, you can use remote servers because if the connection is broken or disrupted, then remote server will obtain a view of your environment and server availability. This is a good point against using other solutions. Because with other solutions, you don't have this feature. Then, you will be blind if you have this type of a situation."
"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
"We have a single GUI where we can view the status of all our infrastructure."
"The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"The solution's auto-scaling could be improved."
"CloudWatch doesn’t monitor disk throughput by default."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible."
"Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial."
"Improvement of SSSD logs would be beneficial."
"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."
"I would like to see an improvement of the communication with big data systems, because Centreon is a monitoring system. In our point of view, Centreon should be a part of a source for a big data system, not a big data system itself. So, it should be easier to add data from the Centreon system to a big data system. For example, it should be able to teach machine learning."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"I went through a few things with them to do with Centreon MAP, to do with active polygons, being able to draw an area and make that active. The functionality was in the older version of Centreon MAP and in the new version, which was a complete rewrite, they dropped it."
"The reporting has room for improvement."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 9th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 40 reviews while Centreon is ranked 12th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 27 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Centreon is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Datadog, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace and SolarWinds NPM, whereas Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and Datadog. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Centreon report.
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