SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Score5.6 out of 10

229 Reviews and Ratings

What is SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning.

What can you monitor with DPA?

Oracle
Oracle Exadata
Oracle EBS
Microsoft SQL Server
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
MySQL
DB2
SAP ASE
Aurora
MariaDB

DPA monitors physical, virtual, and cloud-based databases (including Microsoft Azure and Amazon RDS)

What makes DPA stand out:

Quick, easy, and reliable performance troubleshooting available in real time and historically
Machine learning anomaly analysis to bring intelligence to go beyond traditional threshold based analysis

Find inefficient workloads, aggregated by table, for indexing opportunities—an “X marks the spot” tuning analysis

Cross-platform database support for a single-pane-of-glass view into your environment

Blocking analysis: what is blocking and a hierarchy of what is being blocked, plus overall impact

PerfStack™ integration with other SolarWinds products for more complete visibility (applications, servers, storage, hypervisor, network, and more)

Agent-less architecture with the ability to scale from a few instances to thousands, low 1% average overhead

Categories & Use Cases

Media

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Stan York View profile

VP of Development in Information Technology at Spitfire Management, LLC (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Spitfire deploys a software platform backed by a Microsoft SQL Database with over 140 tables and more than 650 procedures. The size of the database typically surpasses millions of records and several hundred GB. SQL creates query plans that differ for each client depending upon their unique distribution of data. Some have only a few dozen projects a year - others a couple of thousand. Clients create budgets with different levels of detail and then create material purchases - sometimes one line each, others 500 lines. So a one-size-fits-all query is a challenge. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer gives us real-time, ongoing visibility into the performance of our queries across a real-world deployment.

Pros

Identifies objects causing bottleneck by real wait time
Identifies specific section of a large query that needs attention
Lets you see what index is actually being used
Helps you see if CPU, RAM or DISK is the limiting resource

Cons

View Plan Details is actually a bit weaker than SSMS because all the lines are the same width
The "View SQL Text" viewer could be fancier - but it does clearly identify the problem section

Return on Investment

It is not uncommon to identify a query that is taking 70 seconds and reduce it to under a second. It sounds crazy, but it is true.
Improving a SQL bottleneck benefits more than just one specific use case! Overall responsiveness of the application improves.

Other Software Used

Microsoft SQL Server

Nikhil Kumar Sharma View profile

Associate Consultant in Engineering at HCL Technologies (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Solarwinds Database Performance Analyzer for few of our customers to help in monitoring their Database Environment which includes Microsoft SQL, Postgre SQL, Oracle etc. Solarwinds DPA is primarily used by Database Administrators, Application Engineers (Read Only) and Tools Administrators. There are few interaction with Key Management stakeholders for data analysis but its relatively less.

Pros

Multi Vendor Databases Monitoring
Agentless Monitoring
Less Dependency on DB Admins
Less Resources consumption on target databases
API based integrations

Cons

Cloud Database Monitoring such as Google native SQL service
Modern (no SQL ) database monitoring
Dashboard Flexibility
Reporting Flexibility

Return on Investment

Multi Vendor Database Monitoring
API Integration with Ticketing Tools
Rich Raw data for reporting
Flexibility to run DPA on relatively less configuration server

Other Software Used

System Center Operations Manager, LogicMonitor, Dynatrace

Paul Land

Director of Technology in Information Technology at WVP Health Authority (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use DPA to manage a very large and somewhat cranky SQL environment for ambulatory healthcare end users (from providers and office managers to assistants and front desk personnel). The DB schema dates to the 1990s and requires regular supervision and management at a level the system vendor doesn't provide. Addressed problems include plan management, index addition and revision, partitioning and troubleshooting poor performance.

Pros

Near-instantaneous feedback on problem queries
Allows us to evaluate changes in the application or its stored procedures over time
We can drill down to the end-user level to identify potential issues, important with > 2000 sessions daily

Cons

Can't think of any feature or ops related issues. Prior complaints have all been addressed in newer updates.
Only main complaint is cost -- we would adopt for other servers if the incremental cost wasn't so high for a few additional instances (we have 3 servers we would like to use DPA with, but can't justify the x3 pricing per instance).

Return on Investment

DPA allows our DBA to be more agile and find solutions to SQL problems faster. This results in better service to our end users, and better performance on the EHR system to our providers, allowing them to complete chart service for a patient much faster.

Michael P. O'Hara View profile

Head of Cyber Security in Information Technology at The Avon Company (now owned by LG H&H) (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our e-commerce platform = crown jewels (i.e. all revenue flows in via website). Knowing the in/outs of DB performance is a business requirement.

DPA is a *tremendous* tool. It provides a deep dive across all critical metrics on our ORA RDS & EC2. I find the table/query advisories to be of great use.

Would deploy across any DB if I could - the info is gold.

Pros

Drill-down into expensive queries.
Table/Query Advisor.
Easy to interpret graphing.

Return on Investment

ROI would be a good widget to add on. Agari has this baked in - figure you could figure that out.

Other Software Used

Agari Phishing Defense, Nessus

Darryl Hawes View profile

Database Administrator in Information Technology at Meduri Farms, Inc. (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used to monitor the ERP database, providing insights on performance and long-running queries. The alerts are used to notify of high license usage and deadlock events.

Pros

The alert configuration is very robust, allowing simple OOTB alerts as well as complex query-based alerts.
Blocking event tracking makes it easy to identify if a user's performance issue is a truly server-related performance problem.
Historical tracking of queries allows me to easily identify frequently used statements that might need tuning.

Cons

Some of the navigation leads to points that cannot be easily backed out of.
Some navigation points lead around in circles.
I would like to see index usage statistics as well as fragmentation.

Return on Investment

We have been able to leverage the data provided by DPA to convince our software provider to make some changes to help resolve costly deadlocks.

Alternatives Considered

SQL Diagnostic Manager

Foglight

Redgate Monitor

Spotlight

SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Idera Uptime Capacity Monitor

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer