SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Reviews

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's WPM and SAM modules are what I personally prefer. I am satisfied with the overall performance and how the dashboards are arranged. We are currently using about eleven modules, and I believe all of them are valuable. We are receiving significant value from them, especially the NetFlow Site Analyzer and NetFlow Analyzer, which analyze inflow and network traffic.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's WPM and SAM modules are what I personally prefer. I am satisfied with the overall performance and how the dashboards are arranged. We are currently using about eleven modules, and I believe all of them are valuable. We are receiving significant value from them, especially the NetFlow Site Analyzer and NetFlow Analyzer, which analyze inflow and network traffic.

In terms of technical support, there was a time we experienced issues, but that has been resolved. We encountered a downtime and attempted to contact technical support, which was quite challenging, but that has improved after we reported the issue and everything is now fine. Therefore, we do not have any issues with technical support currently.

Regarding the AI functionality and observability, we tried to understand how the AI functionality works, and I believe there is a gap in our understanding. I do not know if a session can be organized for our team to gain more insight into the AI module or functionality.

For now, the only two aspects that caused me some difficulties are support and AI. Aside from that, everything works flawlessly.

I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for three years.

For accuracy, I always try to compare our insight with our data, and whenever we do that comparison, it is always 100 percent accurate. We are not experiencing any issue of data mismatch or anything of that nature. SolarWinds is reporting accurately.

It is not challenging to use resource queue monitoring as it is straightforward, and there are no concerns. The team is using it and has not reported any issues with it.

Based on my experience, I rate the technical support of SolarWinds a 9.8.

The installation and deployment of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer were straightforward.

It did not take much time; it took just a few hours, specifically about two to three hours.

About three people took part in the deployment. However, only one person was directly involved, and the other two provided support staff to ensure they understood the entire process.

There was a time we compared SolarWinds and Dynatrace. After the POC, we discovered SolarWinds is slightly ahead, and we chose to stick with SolarWinds due to better pricing.

For database performance, we have the module, but I would say we are not really consuming it because we are currently using PostgreSQL. We are exploring this module, but we have not yet started consuming it.

We use historical data analysis with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, and it is excellent. We get up to one or two years of historical data, and it is working very well. We are consuming it effectively.

What I use to evaluate the effectiveness of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer performance is the high availability option, which is very key to our business operations in the banking industry. We have a main SolarWinds installation on our production site and a backup site, so whenever the production site is down, the backup site picks up immediately. We do not experience issues with SolarWinds picking up during downtimes. Based on our evaluation with other vendors, SolarWinds is better in terms of efficiency and cost. I rate this solution a 9.8 overall.

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 monitoring my critical database systems for their performance issues, including any execution plan changes, any index recommendations, and what exactly is running at that time to identify which caused the performance challenges for my system, which cannot be tracked through other available logs or metrics-based monitoring because this is something beyond those capabilities. I need a tool that can deep dive into the database system and identify the problematic queries, problematic plans, load on system, and IO status for performance of the database.

In my daily work, I use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for additional scenarios where it has been particularly helpful. The other two things are the IO-related metrics, including disk IO and whether your disk IO performance is going down or up. When you go to the other monitoring tools, it captures the IO, memory, and CPU pressure at the server level. However, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a tool that divides this between the server and the SQL or the database level. This actually helps you to understand if your CPU is running at 100 percent on one particular server because of SQL Server or because of some other OS issues. This bifurcation really helps you to decide. Another thing is the alerting and monitoring and reporting feature available in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer add-ons, which actually helps you to create some daily performance reports or some basic alerts if you do not have other tools available in the system.

The best features SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers include duplicate plan or multiple plan identification, anomaly detection, and daily reports.

The duplicate plan identification and anomaly detection features in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer help me in my work by addressing queries that are running fine for days or a month and suddenly start causing problems. When you go to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, it will show you that this particular query is having five duplicate plans. For one particular plan running fine for a month, suddenly one or two plans are created which are the bad plans and causing issues. You can just go to the system and flush those plans and your system starts recovering itself. Anomaly detection detects if there are some anomalies in the performance or configurations in the system, or something abnormally comes to the system and is causing performance issues. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer detects that and highlights it over the dashboard for your intervention or for your quick action.

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. Each performance issue identification and resolution through SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is actually resolving my MTTA and MTTR, which directly or indirectly is impacting my CSAT.

About the outcomes from using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, those metrics are not available, but we clearly see a downtrend when we put systems in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and the same issue reoccurred. The MTTA and MTTR actually reduced a lot because it gives you a smart tool, a DBA smart tool to deep down and drill down the issues quickly.

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.

I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for the last nine years for SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and Oracle databases.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is stable.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's scalability is easy to scale. The only limitation is that one installation can support 250 instances to be monitored. If you have more than that, you need to create two setups for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer. Otherwise, scalability has no issues. You can keep installing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer on different servers and start monitoring the instances.

The customer support for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is average. Sometimes I need to chase them for the updates. They are not too prompt, but it is average support.

I previously used a different solution including AppDynamics. Those solutions are not database-specific. Those are a mixed bag, as they can monitor synthetics, they can monitor applications, and they can also do a bit of everything. After a long series of technical evaluation and POCs, I found that SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is one of the best options if you consider only the database.

I have seen a return on investment with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer as I mentioned that when we start using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, my MTTA and MTTR reduced and my customer satisfaction goes up. Those metrics or exact numbers are something not available right now for me to share.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been great. The team is great, very collaborative, very informative, and flexible about meetings and discussions. It is overall a very good experience procuring licenses and having support.

Before choosing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, I evaluated other options including AppDynamics and Datadog.

A quick specific example of a time when SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helped me solve a tricky database issue is when a query is running fine for a whole week or month and suddenly it starts creating noise. It is very difficult for a DBA to identify what exactly got changed, but when you reach out to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, it can give you a useful insight indicating there may be a situation where suddenly the count of execution of those queries suddenly increased, which caused the system issues. The execution plan of those queries is just shuffled to the bad plan because of the parameter sniffing. These two are the most common issues I am usually able to track through SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer in my day-to-day life.

My advice for others looking into using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is to appreciate the simplicity and direct awareness or the pointed issues that help you to identify the performance challenges of your system. I have rated this product a ten.

I have experience with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, and I implemented it for a few customers. I have 11 years of experience and I work with the center of excellence team. Basically, what we do is go to the client environment, implement, deploy, and configure it, then support teams provide support on SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and all SolarWinds modules. That is how I work.

With SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, we have used historical data analysis for checking blockings on the database, such as when blockings occurred or when the database failed because of blockings.

The most valuable features I find in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer are the granular level of details about database performance and other aspects such as queries—what queries are running and what queries are taking a long time. It provides a very granular level of details.

Real-time monitoring for maintaining database performance is very useful. For a database, real-time monitoring is essential because when a database fails, many applications fail as a result. We get notifications and alerts from SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer which can be used to take proactive actions when the database goes down or when some query is not running properly.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer does not have an anomaly detection feature.

To make SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer closer to a ten, I would like to see additional features. It is user friendly and all the necessary components are there. A few monitoring parameters that I wanted to be monitored through SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer were not available. I do not remember those specific points, so that is why I rated it eight out of ten. If you want to know what features I would like to see, I would need to check and come back with details.

I have 11 years of experience and I work with the center of excellence team.

I would rate the technical support by SolarWinds as pretty good—eight out of ten. I will not give ten out of ten because they are still working on improving their technical support.

It was easy to implement SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.

Regarding their pricing, I think it is competitive. It is a little expensive. I will not say it is too expensive, but it is a little more expensive in comparison to a few other products in the market.

Instead of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, I usually recommend solutions depending on whether the customer is ready to invest. When customers want complete coverage and do not have budget issues, we provide SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer. When a customer wants to invest less, we have to go for some other solution.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer monitors the performance of the database.

The impact of historical data analysis on performance trend tracking is that when blockings happen, the transactions on the database go into deadlock and the database fails. You will not be able to connect to the database. You have to clear the blockings and kill the threads, then the database starts working again.

Resource queue monitoring has helped identify and resolve deadlocks. When you have a large number of queues stuck with queries or transactions, killing those queries or the deadlocks in the database will allow you to connect with the database and retrieve the data.

The metrics I use to evaluate the effectiveness of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's performance optimizations are database-specific. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer does not have metrics such as CPU, memory, or disk utilization. In database performance, we monitor the services, top running queries on the database, and queries which are taking more time. We monitor the slowness of those queries and how much time they are taking.

There is room for improvement in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer because I had a feature request for it some time ago, but I do not remember what all the points were. I would need to check again on those points.

When it fits the budget, I think SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer would be the best option. Overall, I would rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer as good and give it eight out of ten.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's Anomaly Detection feature is applicable for customers who have cloud connect enabled. Most of our customers in the finance space have an internal regulatory requirement that cloud presence must be within the country's borders. Due to this constraint, we have not enabled many of these features, but we have deployed anomaly detection in a couple of customers where regulatory requirements are not as stringent.

Real-time monitoring in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very useful for maintaining database performance, as many of our customers have been using multiple instances of this solution. Fintech companies and stock market companies have been using this very effectively.

Customers do not necessarily use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's historical data analysis, but predominantly use it to take care of present issues. There might be indexation issues on databases which get resolved in real-time, focusing on current issues.

Resource queue monitoring in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helps identify and resolve deadlocks. We have been using the SolarWinds Observability platform to take care of resource monitoring. For database administrators who want to look at resource consumption, they look at SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, but typically, the server teams and infrastructure teams are looking at SolarWinds Observability platform. We always sell both these solutions in pairs, with SolarWinds Observability stack along with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, where the database teams are mainly looking at SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer while the infrastructure teams are looking at the Observability stack.

There are a whole lot of features in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer that are useful, and the three main ones I find most valuable are the table tuning advisories, index advisories, and query advisory.

Anomaly Detection feature has helped address performance issues, and there is a very recent addition to the feature set of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, which is an AI Query Assist. This is an artificial intelligence-based feature that has been introduced and is a very good feature.

Real-time monitoring in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very useful for maintaining database performance, as many of our customers have been using multiple instances of this solution. Fintech companies and stock market companies have been using this very effectively.

In my opinion, there is room for improvement for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, and one thing is the creation of custom dashboards. For large customers with many databases, they would like to see dashboards for their set of databases. For example, a bank could have a credit card team, and we should have the ability to create a dashboard only for the credit card team, allowing them to look at only their set of databases and not everybody's. Although this can be done at a high level through user assignment or rights assignment, there is a lack of creation of custom dashboards which is an issue.

In addition to custom dashboard creation, I would like to see other additional features in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer in the future.

I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for almost four to five years now.

Regarding the product's scalability, my impression is that it is easy to scale it up or scale it out.

I would rate their technical support a little lower than expected, so there is room for improvement.

When it comes to competition for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, I wonder about their initial setup and whether it is straightforward or if you might need some help.

Regarding the pricing of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, I find it reasonable.

Metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's performance optimizations is an important consideration that I take into account.

The primary use cases involve identifying database performance issues, such as long-running queries, wait times, deadlocks, and other read-and-write performance-related issues.

Long-running queries are particularly common, and customers find the tool useful for pinpointing such issues.

DPA has been helpful in providing recommendations to improve DB performance. The Table tuning advisories, causes for long-running queries, reasons for wait-times & deadlocks have helped tune the databases to give optimal performance.

Index Advisories, Query Advisories & Table Advisories are the most valuable features of DPA. They provide valuable insights into the issues that cause performance degradation on our databases. Identifying indexation issues, long running queries & tuning tables.

There's room for improvement on the dashboarding side. Specifically, the health dashboard of the database instances. Some of my customers deal with a large number of monitored database instances. 

It would be beneficial if they could have a single dashboard for instances, for example, from number one to thirty. This way, I could monitor all these 30 instances and quickly identify any performance issues on any of them. The dashboarding capability definitely needs improvement.

In future releases, there should be custom reports and dashboards are crucial. Not everyone needs to see the same page every time. For example, if I'm interested in MYSQL databases, I should have a view that focuses only on MYSQL databases. Customization like this, where users can tailor their dashboards to specific needs, is essential for improving the product.

I have been using this solution for more than 2 years. 

It is a pretty stable product. 

It is scalable. In my current environment, I haven't faced challenges in adding more instances for monitoring.

The solution is usually highly recommended for larger enterprises. Large companies often face challenges with database administrators struggling to manage a large number of database instances. So, they could benefit from using this product. 

For smaller setups, a tool may still be valuable, especially if they have a few database instances to monitor. They might manage with native tools like MSSQL Management Studio, which can provide indications if not detailed, performance statistics. However, the significant benefit of this tool is realized more by larger organizations

The initial support (Level 1) might struggle with DPA issues, but escalated cases receive proper support. There is room for improvement in Level 1 support.

Neutral

We exclusively work with SolarWinds for database monitoring.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The best part is that SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) can be used as a standalone tool or integrated seamlessly with other SolarWinds tools. For instance, it can integrate with server and application monitoring. 

DPA is a specialized tool for databases, while server and application monitoring is a generic tool for all applications, including databases

We mainly deploy the SolarWinds stack for our customers.

The pricing is fairly reasonable, and it becomes more cost-effective with larger volumes of instances.

Maintenance support is included for the first year, and subsequent years require payment for software and subscriptions.

I would suggest carefully charting out critical database instances and figuring out if the user is facing application slowness issues. If yes, they should first use simple server and application monitoring to determine whether the issues lie outside the database or within. It could be an underlying storage, server, or network-related problem.

To pinpoint network or server-related issues it can get complex. There could be physical server issues, virtual server issues, host layer problems, or underlying storage or SAN environment concerns, if they have any.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 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.

We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for performance monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting performance issues. It's mainly related to performance and the database community. Database administrators handle queries and system impacts.

The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is anomaly detection. It alerts you when things outside the norm are happening, and the feature that analyzes your indexes informs you if you have wide or overlapping indexes. It also helps identify SQL query bottlenecks, letting you know if something is taking longer than usual if a query plan has changed, and if you need to update statistics.

In terms of usage, it is straightforward to use, learn and understand. The patching process is smooth and explains each feature, including links to external resources for further reading. 

I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for the past four years.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very stable. It's well-maintained, and I haven't experienced any unplanned outages.

The solution's scalability can be increased through the number of nodes in the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer. It isn’t tricky and majorly requires payment.

The support team is excellent, very responsive, and quick to address issues based on severity.

Positive

Maintenance requires minimal effort; usually, just one person is enough to check for new packages andupgrades.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer has significantly improved our efficiency. It makes managing database servers 90% easier. It pinpoints issues without a deep dive, identifying bottlenecks and suggesting fixes.

The pricing of the solution is average. 

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's AI-driven analytics have enhanced our data management strategies through anomaly detection. It establishes a baseline of what is expected and alerts us to anything outside that norm, allowing for preventative monitoring and maintenance. Instead of customers reporting issues, the AI alerts us to performance-related problems in advance.

I would recommend the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to others. It makes management more accessible and improved my skills thanks to the extensive knowledge available in the application. It helps distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviour and has a large user community. 

Overall, I would rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer a nine out of ten.

I use the solution to monitor database and manual activity and to generate reports. It is also a monitoring tool that we use for a little bit of monitoring.

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. The solution also gives some information or details regarding decision taking.

I used SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer as a customer one or two weeks ago.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a stable product.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.

I use the solution alone, but I think it will still work well even if more people use it. I rate the solution ten out of ten for scalability.

The solution should add little details on the server so that an independent team could easily do the implementation.

The initial setup was not really easy.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a little bit expensive.

I advise users to continue with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer because it is a nice tool to help implement your IT tools. I am a DBA person, and the solution can help us in special monitoring in DBA.

Overall, I rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer a nine out of ten.

We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer as a monitoring service for customers, particularly in the banking industry. The solution is part of the service we provide for our customers.

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.

I don't remember what problems I had with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, but it's a good solution right now.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should be easy to implement and it should have more facilities to make it better.

I've been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for at least two years.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a stable solution.

We don't need to scale SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer currently, but it's a scalable solution.

I found the technical support for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer very good.

The initial setup for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer was not easy. We set it up almost two years ago, but we had a little problem, though we had the right support from our provider.

I have not calculated how much the ROI is from SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.

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.

I don't remember the exact version of the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer I'm using, but it's the most recent.

Four operators and three administrators currently use the solution in my company, but only administrators see everything, while the rest only see the dashboard.

The advice I would give to others who want to implement SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is that support is needed to successfully implement the solution.

I would rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer nine out of ten.

My company is a customer of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.

Our customers' main use cases revolve around database monitoring. While many existing tools can handle basic monitoring tasks, more complex scenarios arise in enterprises. In these cases, customers need to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance. This is where a database performance tool like SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer comes into play.

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 layer, database layer, or elsewhere.

According to our clients, one of the standout features of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is its advanced anomaly detection capabilities. While the tool may not heavily emphasize AI or ML, its advanced analytics and machine learning functionalities monitor extremely well. 

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. 

I have been using the product for four years. 

I would rate the tool's stability as eight or nine out of ten. 

While the tool performs exceptionally well for small and medium-sized enterprises, there may be scalability issues for very large enterprises. Scalability could be improved, particularly in accommodating more servers and databases. Currently, there may be challenges with scalability, requiring the addition of multiple instances to address these limitations. My company has six to eight customers. 

The technical support has been excellent. We've had a great relationship with the support team; they've been very proactive. Whenever we needed assistance, they responded within 24 hours. 

The solution's deployment is of medium complexity. It can be completed in a few weeks. 

Customers need to pay for the subscription-based license annually.

My recommendation would be to explore SolarWinds SAM for database monitoring. SolarWinds SAM can handle alerts and cover various aspects like server, application, and database monitoring. However, if there are specific metrics or use cases that SolarWinds SAM cannot address, consider looking into SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. Databases are critical for large enterprises, and customer satisfaction is paramount, particularly for such businesses. Implementing tools like the product is essential to mitigate any potential dissatisfaction. It allows database administrators to address issues before customers even notice problems such as lag.

When something pops up, the solution helps us define the right area to find whatever solution we need.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helped us locate the performance issues quickly.

The solution’s performance could be improved.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should include more details on how everything works.

I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for six years.

I rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer ten out of ten for stability.

I rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s technical support is good.

Positive

We previously used SQL manager.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

We are using the latest version of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.

The solution is deployed on-cloud in our organization.

I would recommend users compare SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer with other software before choosing it.

Overall, I rate SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer a nine out of ten.