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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 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

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (15th)
SolarWinds Database Perform...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.2%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is 3.8%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer3.8%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.2%
Other93.0%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

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,…
reviewer2787105 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Deep query analysis has reduced MTTA and MTTR and now safeguards critical customer workloads
In addition to the features SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers, I wish it had more robust performance monitoring and analyzing features for PostgreSQL databases. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very strong when we come to SQL Server, but it is still lagging when it comes to PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is an upcoming enterprise-level database technology in the market. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still struggling to have a solid monitoring and performance analyzer in comparison to SQL Server. This is one of the features I am looking to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to develop as soon as possible. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer can be improved in two areas. One is more and robust performance monitoring and analyzing features for PostgreSQL databases. Second, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still lagging for monitoring the cloud instances of databases including Aurora DB and Cloud SQL DB. These two areas are where SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer needs to work extensively to make this monitoring and performance analyzing robust. From an operational perspective, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer still has a limitation of 250 licenses per instance. This is really a problem for someone with larger server sizes available and more instances running on the same SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer URL. SolarWinds should look at how they can increase that threshold because there should not be a limit of 250 instances.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"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."
"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 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."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's most valuable features include the notification of consuming the SQL queries, collecting data, and notifying about managing space and tables."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helped us locate the performance issues quickly."
"The platform solves and prevents delays in receiving answers from databases."
"Monitoring is most valuable, and being able to know that there is an issue or problem and I need to go look is also valuable. So, monitoring and learning are the most important features."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer has positively impacted my organization by monitoring my critical systems serving millions of customers with a couple of hundred licenses of SQL SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer."
"What I like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is that it's a powerful solution that lets me advise customers about performance, and it also gives a lot of supporting information."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer can help us identify issues we cannot see manually."
 

Cons

"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"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."
"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."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"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."
"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."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"One area where the tool could improve is by adding support for additional databases. For instance, supporting newer databases like Couchbase or MongoDB would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement with the pricing of the platform."
"The areas where it currently lags are in reporting and dashboarding. The reports and dashboards are somewhat static, and we cannot create custom dashboards for specific customer needs."
"Technical support for this solution needs to be improved."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still lagging for monitoring the cloud instances of databases including Aurora DB and Cloud SQL DB."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should include more details on how everything works."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should provide customization options allowing users to add different columns."
"It is capable, but I don't believe it has the right value matrix. It also depends on the budget of the company."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing of the solution is average."
"There are no extra costs for maintenance or using the solution's support."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a little bit expensive."
"The pricing is fairly reasonable, and it becomes more cost-effective with larger volumes of instances."
"I don't remember the exact licensing cost for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, but it's within the range of $2,000 to $3,000 a year."
"Customers need to pay for the subscription-based license annually."
"It could be less expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
In IT, problems often occur in areas such as applications, web interfaces, or databases. The tool allows users to easily determine the root cause of these issues, whether they stem from the network...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
In addition to the features SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers, I wish it had more robust performance monitoring and analyzing features for PostgreSQL databases. SolarWinds Database Pe...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
My main use case for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is as a database performance monitoring tool. My day-to-day purpose of utilizing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is for monito...
 

Also Known As

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
Confio, SolarWinds DPA, Ignite8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
GSI Commerce, Liquid Digital Media, ProLogis, Indiana University
Find out what your peers are saying about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.