SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Reviews & Insights

Score5.5 out of 10

229 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

User-Friendly Interface: Users appreciate the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for its straightforward and easy-to-understand interface. They find it intuitive and user-friendly, even for new users with minimal training.

Real-Time Analysis and Support: The tool's real-time analysis capabilities and support services are highly valued by users. They mention that it helps them promptly identify and resolve performance issues in SQL databases, such as errors, long-running queries, or system-blocking problems.

Wide Range of Supported Databases: Users find the extensive range of supported databases to be a valuable feature of the tool. It allows them to monitor and analyze the performance of multiple databases from one centralized interface.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Reviews

17 Reviews

Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)

Small Teams use of DPA

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 2, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DPA is being used by the IT and CIM Developers team to monitor our production databases. IT will check the system daily for any signs of issues. Both teams will check when testing or rolling out new systems to ensure the Software is operating as intended. These testing checks are done at least once a week by either department.

Pros

Quickly identifies slow running queries.
Identifies which database is causing issues on a server.
Provides an easy to read way of seeing stats on all servers quickly.

Cons

No way to mark a query activity as normal, for example a slow running SPROC that has to be that way.
Not many options to restrict access.

Likelihood to Recommend

DPA is very useful for finding blockers or slow running queries and provided evidence of improvement after an issue with a new system, the graphs and ease of use meant that we where quickly able to resolve the issue and provide comprehensive updates to a customer who was concerned around the software's performance

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

DPA: Great web application for wait stats and trends. Not the tool for those needing actionable alerts.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 19, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use DPA on one team in our department. We have a team of 12 that has access to the tool, although it is mainly just three of us that use it. We do export reports and send to people outside of our team. The tool addresses anomalies that come up across the environment, and patterns before and after changes. We also use it a lot to see what was going on after-hours or when we had an issue come up when no one was available.

Pros

Capturing wait statistics is a great way to monitor performance on a SQL Server instance. This is the main source of info for DPA.
Web app: no client install required. Easy to login from a web browser, share info and manage everything from a browser tab.
Drill-downs from one time interval to seconds to see database activity is intuitive and easy to use.

Cons

Alerts seem to be lacking in DPA compared to competitor's tools. They can be setup but are not quite as easy or as helpful as some other tools I have used.
Grooming/pruning the repository database isn't very easy. We don't manage a lot of instances but our repo DB has grown pretty significantly.
At times when I am drilled-down to a chart, it can be difficult to navigate around from that point to another time range/query/metric.

Likelihood to Recommend

DPA is well suited for an environment where a web app is preferred. Especially if there are several users accessing the reports and data. I would also say it's suited for teams with a good amount of SQL knowledge pertaining to wait types. It would be less suited for teams that need a tool to recommend changes to SQL queries to improve performance, as well as those looking for a tool to send out actionable-alerts that can be turned on or off based on actions.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (Online Media company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Life saver!

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 17, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DPA is used to monitor the performance of Oracle and MSQL databases. We added a highly critical system in DPA, and DPA can suggest performance enhancement based on findings over the period, like missing indexes and statistics. Also, during ad-hoc performance issues, this helps to identify the current performance, because of easy access like running a session, blocking, and querying a program that is running.

Pros

Index recommendation.
Tuning advisor.
Wait events.

Cons

Always-on monitoring.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's an easy tool to know performance bottlenecks, though the DBA is not from a performance expert background.

Mohamed Shameer

Infrastructure Senior Specialist in Information Technology at Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legcy (Sports, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

13 years of experience

Happy customers, much time saved

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 28, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Even though I would consider myself as highly skilled in SQL Server, I found we were spending a lot of our time trying to detect and analyse database performance issues, with varied success. SolarWinds DPA allowed us to almost forget about that entirely, and let us concentrate on the more interesting day to day stuff, sending us emails when things went a bit crazy, and displaying graphs of current activity, which we put on large screens so we can keep half an eye on what's going on.

Pros

Detecting blocking
Showing missing index information
Highlighting the most expensive queries being run in your system
Giving a daily summary of issues
Showing performance history over a long period of time

Cons

The GUI is a little clunky, could do with updating and make it responsive
A mobile app would be great, to keep an eye on things on the go
Perhaps a cut-down version, as sometimes there's just TOO much information!

Likelihood to Recommend

For discovering performance bottlenecks, SolarWinds is absolutely invaluable. Once it's installed (which is a simple process) it completely looks after itself. Finding the blocking process can be a real headache in pure SQL, grabbing process IDs and checking manually up the chain until you find the root process - by which time it's often stopped blocking! SolarWinds does this for you without thinking.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (Retail company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

NCTradeToolReview

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 28, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The product best serves its purpose as it works in the background on databases that we have configured as licensed targets. Having almost 400 databases across many environments and platforms, it assists in allowing me to "watch" the customer databases that are needing to be watched with more than just casual monitoring. It allows me to watch wait-issues across releases of our product specific to that customer. It is an invaluable tool.

Pros

Ability to drill down to wait for the issue and have a clear path as to what may be causing the issue.
Ability to quickly add a new target and the ease of installation and upgrades.
Reporting features to group my most troublesome customers into a daily report in one email.
Excellent customer support on any issues I can't immediately solve.

Cons

At this time it solves all my needs, and it appears that your folks have the pulse of this tool as the releases always give me something better to use.

Likelihood to Recommend

A user jabbers to me that over the last week or so the EDI-messaging appears to be slowing down. My first step of course is to glance at the logs from the database to see if there are any database issues, and I rarely find anything there. My next step is to pull up that customer in DPA and look for trends in the time period the user has described. I have yet to not find a direct correlation to the time periods the user has described and the graphical output in DPA. From there it is a simple task to determine which queries are causing the issue, if it's a resource issue, can it be addressed in the short term or do I need to do further research for a longer term solution.

Verified User

Engineer (Logistics and Supply Chain company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Great tool for a DBA

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DPA is primarily being used as a monitoring tool for our main production Oracle database. It helps to pinpoint problems or potential problems without effort. It replaces different Oracle monitoring tools and operating system resource monitoring tools (these tools are still used later in the troubleshooting process). It is also being used as an SQL tuning advisor.

Pros

Shows the database status in a single page.
Enables simple drilling into different database problem areas (CPU, ram, disks, sessions, etc.).
Regularly finds top queries that can be improved.

Cons

It would be nice if it could work with Oracle's SQL Tuning Advisor.

Likelihood to Recommend

I first used this product as a demo version on a not well-optimized database. In two weeks of monitoring the database, SolarWinds DPA found several issues that we didn't notice before. It really helped us, as we would not have been able to find all that stuff in such a short time.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (Insurance company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

DPA was the perfect choice

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used in the whole company for analyzing problems or performance issues on all SQL Servers which hold in-house created DBS and commercial products. It is vital for reviewing what happened during weekends or spare days. Also vital, is the development of the wait time of some servers for future sizing.

Pros

Very easy to use user interface. Also very handy for new users with a short time of introduction.
Very good overview on all servers added. You can see in one sight which servers are busy.
Well created metrics, a good starting point for adapting them.
Alert system is very useful.

Cons

No possibility to create overview groups to bundle SQL servers in more than one group.
If an agent has an error there should be the possibility to send an alert.
No support for by-products.

Likelihood to Recommend

Can be used very well for performance analysis or depth analyzing of reported performance issues in the past. Not so well suited for a live problem as there is a time gap between the 'real' now and the analysis of DPA. But in a company with a SQL server activity tab, it is a great tool.

Alexander Veitschegger

dba in Information Technology at 3 Banken IT (Capital Markets, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

SolarWinds DPA Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use DPA to monitor our AWS SQL RDS Instance for performance. We use it to troubleshoot congestion and tune queries. We also use DPA on our development and staging SQL DBs to analyze performance before new code is released into production.

Over the years DPA has helped us to resolve a lot of issues with blocking, locking, and excessive CPU utilization. We have done this both in real-time, during outages, and as part of our development pipeline.

Pros

Real-time viewing into wait statistics, blocking and locking.
Valuable query and table tuning advice.
Historical tracking of wait times.

Cons

The drill down usability is cumbersome.
It's sometimes difficult to navigate exactly to where you want to be.
Could use more information around parameters.

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds DPA is a crucial part of our stability and performance monitoring strategy. At a glance, you can see what's going on - any blocking and/or excessive waits. It also alerts you in real-time based upon thresholds you define.

Paul LaPosta

Director Of Information Technology in Information Technology at Knowland (Hospitality, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

View profile

Great tool that works for you, not against you

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a hosted environment (in the cloud) and before we had this product if there was any type of blip, slowness/lockup we had zero insight as to what could have caused it. SolarWinds allows us to go back in Hx and see what happened and sometimes even offers up a suggestion on tuning about how best to handle it in the future.

Pros

Catches long-running queries that would normally have to sit and watch to catch.
Ensures the resources on the server are adequate if not gives you a birds-eye view on when it gets bad and returns to normal. For example, maybe in the middle of the night when you are asleep, knowing the CPU is maxing wouldn't be an issue, as you would see this in the Hx information.
If you have long-running queries and are aware of them, you can mark those with a name, either keep them on the Hx chart or set them aside to focus on new issues.

Cons

There is not a lot, but one thing I would suggest is when SolarWinds gives you reported information— for example, this query has run 1500 times, for a total of 56 million reads—It doesn't have a way to break it down and show me all queries that have read 500K or larger. Much like a SQL profiler would.

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds is dynamic. I have put this in our data center and monitored 5 servers at once. I have split it up between both data centers (2 here and 2 there), then installed it on a customers server to get insight into what is happening. I have run into this issue once or twice, but if you do not have a SQL environment running, Microsoft has a free version of SQL Express. The problem is SolarWinds is not the easiest when it comes to scaling back the information so that it fits on Express. if you only need 5 days or so, then it would be fine.

Les Robinson

Director of Support in Customer Service at Aprima Medical Software, Inc. (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

SolarWinds DPA review

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 13, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DPA is used for daily monitoring of the most offensive queries and hardware resource utilization. We also use historical charts to create a performance improvement matrix. DPA makes it very easy to drill down to the cause of delays, and the alerting system makes our response time a point of pride for us.

Pros

Alerting system.
Offending queries.
Historical performance.

Cons

Could improve the amount of servers and hardware resources dedicated to installation.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have 3 SQL clusters and find tremendous value in Solarwinds DPA, though we're not sure how scalable it is.

Inna Ptushkina

IT Infrastructure Manager in Information Technology at BrightStar Care (Health, Wellness and Fitness, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile