Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Pandora FMS comparison

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3,800 views|2,891 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
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1,169 views|854 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Configuration Manager and Pandora FMS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Server Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Pandora FMS Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is a very well-rounded product. It is a complete package with all the features using which we are able to manage our PCs very efficiently.""You can remote control or RDP. That has been the most valuable because we can go into one console and can get to anything we want. Instead of going to all these different consoles, we centralized everything.""The technical support is good.""The product is very stable compared to older versions.""The solution has a very good set of features.""The solution effectively handles inventory management, deployment, and reporting.""It is easy to install, and quick to deploy.""It gives us the ability to set up schedules, according to what our security requirements are, to automate the patching of our servers and desktops."

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"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it.""Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them.""The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console.""The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good.""We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool.""It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product.""Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control.""It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."

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Cons
"Microsoft should extend support for additional platforms.""Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager can improve by allowing us to schedule the scripts, we don't have a script scheduling option and have to do it manually.""The setup was complex and I faced a lot of problems initially because I was new to the solution.""Some of the capabilities aren't fully developed yet. It's an ongoing work in progress. I think they are making some steps in the right direction as far as managing workstations centrally, like Intune.""It would be better if automation options were available. For example, in Nexthink or SysTrack, there is an analytical tool. Creating dashboards would be very easy if you implement the same thing in Microsoft. That report will be a daily cost to the customers and good revenue for our organization. The price also could be better. In the next release, we need to include some features like tables, dashboards, surveys, services, and metrics in the dashboard. Whatever we are implementing will be downloaded by a report. Apart from the report, we will telecast from the dashboard. It's very easy to compare, and it will be easy to telecast to the end-users.""Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI.""The solution is a bit heavy on the sources such as RAM or CPU and the software needs to be a bit lighter.""One area of improvement is regarding the patching of Office 365 products. We have some difficulties on this side, and it can be improved."

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"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these.""It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service.""The price for Pandora FMS is expensive.""This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it.""Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box. You can work around these limitations with the help of other tools like Grafana. The shortcomings are mostly on the graphical side. The built-in report generators are a bit limited in some areas.""I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring.""Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios.""I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Pricing and licensing are horrible. You have to not look at dollar value to use SCCM. It's super-duper expensive but it works. The acquisition cost is expensive, it's labor-intensive. But it works."
  • "Pricing and licensing are a downside of SCCM. It's expensive. I'd have to confirm this, but I think they changed the licensing to core-based instead of socket-based. It's not cheap, because you have to buy the software, you have to buy SQL. Another thing we learned from talking to Microsoft is that they provide you a license for SQL if you run it on the same box as the primary server. If you run it outside that box, you have to buy SQL. Microsoft does recommend you running it on the same box because of performance. But then, in order to run SQL, SCCM, and everything on the same box, you better have some resources. It's an expensive solution. There's no doubt about it."
  • "Overall, I think it's fine. It's pretty much in-line because there are ways to offset it with the Office 365 licensing."
  • "SCCM comes with its own version of SQL Server. If you use that SQL Server with SCCM and don't use it for another applications than you get an SQL Server for free."
  • "The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."
  • "Pricing is negotiable with Microsoft, depending upon which of their packages you choose."
  • "When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."
  • "Its price is okay because it is part of our licensing."
  • More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
  • "Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
  • "You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
  • "My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
  • "In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
  • "The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
  • "Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
  • "The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
  • More Pandora FMS Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your… more »
    Top Answer:ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily and… more »
    Top Answer:One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined… more »
    Top Answer:Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data.
    Top Answer:Pandora is reasonably priced, and the cost depends on the environment.
    Top Answer:I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control. In the next release, I'd like to see, when it comes to monitoring, the… more »
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 42 in Server Monitoring
    Views
    3,800
    Comparisons
    2,891
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    436
    Rating
    8.4
    12th
    out of 42 in Server Monitoring
    Views
    1,169
    Comparisons
    854
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    396
    Rating
    8.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

    New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

    Pandora FMS is a monitoring as a service (MaaS) solution that is ideal for companies with at least 100 or more devices. Instead of multiple, difficult-to-integrate monitoring systems, Pandora FMS is an all-in-one solution that is easy to use. The software is able to untangle complicated technology infrastructures to easily identify the root cause of issues in order to find the most efficient solution. It does so by analyzing everything in your system, from databases and applications to services and desktops, as well as communications.

    Pandora FMS Features

    Pandora FMS has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Application Monitoring (APM)
    • IoT monitoring
    • Log collection
    • Inventory
    • Issue management / ITSM
    • Mainframe monitoring
    • Network monitoring
    • Remote control
    • Synthetic monitoring
    • Service oriented monitoring
    • Server monitoring
    • User experience monitoring
    • Virtualization & cloud

    Pandora FMS Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Pandora FMS. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Comprehensive overview: Pandora FMS provides a comprehensive overview of your system to make troubleshooting easy. It also provides all the tools to monitor and analyze an extensive range of data, from traffic to connectivity.
    • Easy forecasting: With Pandora FMS, you can use your network diagram for forecasting solutions, which gives you the necessary info you need to perform maintenance. 
    • Proactive solutions: Issues are proactively addressed. Pandora FMS provides alerts 24/7 so you can deal with problems before they grow even bigger. This also helps your organization eliminate any down time. 
    • Solve future problems: Another benefit of implementing Pandora FMS is that it enables you to optimize your services to ensure that future issues are minimized. In addition, they offer around-the-clock monitoring and automated solutions. As a result, the solution enables you to operate your organization with maximum efficiency all the time, saving you money and time. 
    • Personalized service maps: Pandora FMS allows you to create detailed, personalized service maps that can help you identify any shortcomings in your system and address them as soon as possible. 
    • SLA and availability reports: With Pandora FMS, you receive critical alerts when SLA levels aren’t met, which also helps you understand when your applications and systems are not meeting your business goals.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Pandora FMS solution.

    PeerSpot user Marc C., Systems Analyst at a university, says, "It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. It is really flexible. It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."

    Another reviewer, Alexandre J., comments, “What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it. The speed of locating problems and to be able to solve them quickly, so that it affects our client's network infrastructure as little as possible, is very valuable.

    Thanks to Pandora FMS we have everything unified in the same point and it is highly efficient.”

    Sample Customers
    Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
    Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Insurance Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Healthcare Company15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Educational Organization10%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise69%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business61%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise49%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Pandora FMS
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Server Monitoring with 78 reviews while Pandora FMS is ranked 12th in Server Monitoring with 22 reviews. Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2, while Pandora FMS is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Affordable, easy to use, and easy to understand". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and Microsoft Intune, whereas Pandora FMS is most compared with Zabbix, Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI and Centreon. See our Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Pandora FMS report.

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    We monitor all Server Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.