Great tool - adds value to our monitoring
What do you like best about the product?
ease of use, email alerts are very helpful
What do you dislike about the product?
support is not what it was before solar winds purchase
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
server issues, db contention
Great tool for Database Optimization
What do you like best about the product?
Provides deep insights into our databases, allowing us to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimize queries, and enhance overall database efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
Licensing per server is a bit cumbersome.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Offers a robust query performance tuning feature. It helps us identify slow-running queries, suggests optimizations, and provides detailed execution plans.
Administration point of view
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is that it's a powerful tool that lets me advise customers about performance, and it also gives a lot of supporting information
What do you dislike about the product?
It should be easy to implement and it should have more facilities to make it better
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Helps us identify issues we cannot see manually
Excels in identifying various database performance issues, including long-running queries, wait times, deadlocks, and other performance-related issues.
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for more than 2 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a pretty stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We exclusively work with SolarWinds for database monitoring.
How was the initial setup?
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
What about the implementation team?
We mainly deploy the SolarWinds stack for our customers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
The best tool to monitor SQL servers
What do you like best about the product?
SQL Sentry is truly one centralized solution where you can monitor all SQL server performance, issues, logs, and reports.
The performance metrics SQL Sentry provide is not just bar graph like the other tools display, it is calculated value that shows the true status of the SQL server.
When there is an issue to troubleshoot such as deadlock, you don't need another tool to get the plan or script to analyze, all required information is on one screen.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes, when there is a WMI issue, it stops working and doesn't get refreshed even after WMI issue is fixed.
It would be better to add refresh button on the server level.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Most of SQL server issues can be solved in SQL sentry alone and UI and functions are designed for DBA.
You don't really need a manual to understand or use, you can easily find what you need if you think as DBA.
Real time and intelligent tool for DB monitoring
What do you like best about the product?
It is powerful and intelligent tool in monitoring log shopping in DC-DR scenario.
This tool keeps track of real time data sync in SQL DB between DC and DR locations.
Alert notifications are almost 100% accurate.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is nothing dislike about this software, rather it is very useful tool in alert monitoring.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Real time monitoring is easy for us with the use of this tool.
Real time alerts are received with highly accuracy.
Solarwinds Database
What do you like best about the product?
Database mapping is easy with Solarwindws about particular object with its Object id search very helpful to query a particular device with the ID tagging.
During the solarwindws upgrade process upgrade it's easy to update the version
What do you dislike about the product?
As of now no complaints received so far while working with solarwinds
During Database down it affect the entire infrastructure
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
No problems were received so far while working on solarwinds
Stable platform with a simple initial setup process
What is our primary use case?
We use the tool for sharing and monitoring Microsoft SQL server databases.
What is most valuable?
The platform solves and prevents delays in receiving answers from databases. We can view several factors and compare queries. We can monitor potential problems for delays from hardware resources as well. We can investigate and tell where the problem is or where the problem could be in the future.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement with the pricing of the platform. It could be cheaper.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working as a partner with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for five months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of this platform is a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, the platform is perfect.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is simple and agentless. It is deployed on-premises in our organization. As it is connected to the databases, we only need to let it work for two weeks or even a little more so it can understand the wait times, and later monitor the changes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the platform’s pricing a seven out of ten. It could be less expensive.
What other advice do I have?
If you buy the hybrid cloud severability license, you get several modules like network performance, the network traffic analyzer, etc. Additionally, DPA integrates very well with server and application monitoring solutions. There is a product called SAM, which is about monitoring the servers. You can have good integration between those two solutions.
I rate the platform a nine out of ten.
Very nice product for enhanced database performance monitoring
What do you like best about the product?
Deep dive monitoring and analytical capbilties for database monitoring.
It covers all type of databases starting from SQL,MYSQL,Cassandra
What do you dislike about the product?
DPA costing is a bit high. Not every customer would be able to invest in the same
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Solarwinds DPA helped us in fixing long term performance issues in SQL database. We managed to optimize the legacy application issues,
Easy to adopt and migrate
What do you like best about the product?
In SolarWinds database mapper is easy to learn and secure platform.
What do you dislike about the product?
SolarWinds Database Mapper's GUI interface is little bit slow compare than other softwares.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are working in large infrastructure project and need to manage 1200+ servers. So it is very easy to maintain DB of these servers as well as monitoring of those servers.
