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CA IDMS vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

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

CA IDMS
Ranking in Database Development and Management
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA IDMS is 1.3%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.0%
CA IDMS1.3%
Other95.7%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

AS
ALiBS Solutions at ALiBS Solutions
Helps us to manage user profiles very quickly and in an assertive way
I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. I would advise that they should evaluate other possibilities because this is a very quickly changing environment and there are other possible providers that have good solutions. I would do some kind of test. I would test other possible solutions too and compare them.
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

"The most valuable feature is the performance of the database; it's very efficient at what it does, quite reliable, and provides us with a very stable platform that we've been running for many years."
"Stability is perfect! It is a really stable platform; it has been around for many years, and we trust it implicitly."
"The most useful feature is the governance feature, because it can show us and help us to manage user profiles very quickly and using it in assertive way."
"Technical support is very good. They are very knowledgeable, very quick to respond, and very nice people, too.​"
"We've been able to fine tune it over the years to get really good performance out of it, and maintain some database network support."
"The solution is the community - a tightly knit group of experts who have been working on the product set for many years."
"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"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."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
 

Cons

"We have to use DB2 when we need more relational constructs, expanded inquiry and reporting; so it's not perfect in that regards."
"We need to make it much easier to support and maintain, because the skills required are quite specialized and we're not going to have people in the future who've got the necessary experience and knowledge."
"​I would like to see it made simpler to operate and maintain."
"I'd like to see some of the installation, maintenance, and support functions simplified so that some of our younger, newer members can take advantage of the product and maintain it to the same standard that the older members have in the past."
"Right now, it's not easy to start using this solution. You have to take long course and train people. It's not an easy path."
"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."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"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."
"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."
"Some more granularity in alerting."
"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."
"Tech support has been okay, not that great, but they made sure that we got what we were looking for."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Do not hold back on asking questions about the maintenance and continued support of the product."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Also Known As

IDMS
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
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 CA IDMS vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.