No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

BMC TrueSight vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC TrueSight
Ranking in Event Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (28th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (26th), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), AIOps (14th)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight is 7.9%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 4.4%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC TrueSight7.9%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server4.4%
Other87.7%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Has improved monitoring efficiency and supports fast issue resolution through responsive support and reliable automation
I work with BMC TrueSight and have been using it for eight-plus years BMC TrueSight brought a positive impact and benefits to our organization. The customization part is one of the advantages of the product, along with the monitoring capabilities. Automated root cause analysis and predictive…
reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"From the time we get the incident logged to the time we get the customer back up and running, it has improved that by 33 percent or greater."
"It has provided more value than we expected and it does what it says it's going to do."
"The initial setup of BMC TrueSight Operations Management was easy."
"It's a really good tool and most of the issues we've got, they've either fixed or they're fixing to fix."
"We're using native monitoring capabilities for all our server hardware, for visibility for applications, for URLs, for webpage response and accuracy, and for monitoring network throughput in a lot of particular instances. We're using lightweight protocols for pinging, for DNS, for LDAP."
"It is a stable solution."
"From an administrative standpoint, what stands out in TrueSight is the ability to implement quickly. When they have a requirement to monitor something, we're able to turn that on quickly in their environment. We're able to set up new apps within a day."
"It allows our operations team to have one single application to reference when investigating issues in our environment."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"Overall, it has allowed us to do more with database management and run more databases on a given server, because we're able to isolate issues quicker and take the proactive steps necessary to correct them."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"Ability to identify bottlenecks, deadlocks and slow running queries and run monthly and daily reports."
 

Cons

"Deployment requires lots of resources (servers). It has too many consoles."
"I would like to see a little more out-of-the-box event correlation and expanded AIOps type capabilities."
"I would like them to improve the deep-dive details, tracing, and data agents in this product."
"The knowledge modules could be more lightweight in size. At present, the installation packages can be quite large."
"There are some small limitations with this tool in terms of reporting dashboards that fit all of the requirements of the individual customer."
"We were somewhat limited in TrueSight due to some of the RBAC controls not quite being what we wanted as far as delegating out administrative privileges for implementation. But because we were able to turn requests around pretty well, that burden wasn't too heavy."
"In our company, we faced some issues with the solution’s application endpoint, IP, and the physical location of the transactions."
"Specifically around application performance monitoring, BMC is definitely not the market leader."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"With basic SQL training in my history, I've found at times I needed to Google SQL counters, for example, to understand what was occurring or how to configure SQL DM to be useful."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"Scalability is what I mentioned earlier, regarding room for improvement. It doesn't seem to scale out to an environment as large as ours, with just a single monitoring server."
"Reporting and overall analysis of data gathered from SQL Server."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Though I have no clue about the tool's actual price, I know that it is astronomical."
"They have changed the licensing fees."
"Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support."
"The solution is based on endpoints and knowledge models which can be costly."
"Use conservative figures. In terms of hardware, monitored servers and also effort. The product is not cheap. But as with other products, you get what you pay for."
"There is a big upfront cost when you buy the license, then there is annual maintenance. We look at, if I bought a license and paid for maintenance for five years, then average it out, what would be my monthly cost. We have had some of the competing tools come in around four dollars. This is coming in as a premium, which is why I don't have it deployed as I would like it. Therefore, we're in negotiations right now. If I can get it down to the four dollar range, I will triple my deployment in a year and a half."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"The only possible additional cost that I can mention, that you might not be aware of, is that it uses Oracle partitioning, if you use Oracle. There are Oracle partitioning fees that go with that."
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
There are some complexities with deployment that could be improved in BMC TrueSight.
What is your primary use case for BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
I work with BMC TrueSight and have been using it for eight-plus years.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.