BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB) vs. Datadog vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BMC Helix CMDB
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
The BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB, formerly known as Atrium CMDB) is a configuration management database.N/A
Datadog
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Datadog is a monitoring service for IT, Dev and Ops teams who write and run applications at scale, and want to turn the massive amounts of data produced by their apps, tools and services into actionable insight.
$18
per month per host
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Score 5.6 out of 10
N/A
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,…N/A
Pricing
BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)DatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Log Management
$1.27
per month (billed annually) per host
Infrastructure
$15.00
per month (billed annually) per host
Standard
$18
per month per host
Enterprise
$27
per month per host
DevSecOps Pro
$27
per month per host
APM
$31.00
per month (billed annually) per host
DevSecOps Enterprise
$41
per month per host
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BMC Helix CMDBDatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Free Trial
NoYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing. Multi-Year/Volume discounts available (500+ hosts/mo).
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)DatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Considered Multiple Products
BMC Helix CMDB

No answer on this topic

Datadog

No answer on this topic

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
SolarWinds is simpler to implement and simpler for users to glean meaningful data. Much less expensive. DPA focuses on VM and DB SQL thruput while Datadog and Dynatrace are full-fledged deep dive application monitors that trace transaction execution across multiple servers and …
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
We have evaluated AppDynamics and Datadog along with Solarwinds DPA and definitely the winner is SolarWinds. We have been using it for the past 5 years. It has better alert functionality and is easy to use while providing great analytics.
Best Alternatives
BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)DatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

InfluxDB
InfluxDB
Score 8.8 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Freshservice
Freshservice
Score 8.4 out of 10
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic
Score 8.8 out of 10
Redgate Monitor
Redgate Monitor
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ServiceNow IT Operations Management
ServiceNow IT Operations Management
Score 8.6 out of 10
NetBrain Technologies
NetBrain Technologies
Score 9.2 out of 10
Redgate Monitor
Redgate Monitor
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)DatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(5 ratings)
9.4
(55 ratings)
8.9
(113 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(34 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(6 ratings)
9.3
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BMC Helix Configuration Management Database (CMDB)DatadogSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
BMC Helix
Lets you run more effective CABs with accurate configuration and dependency data. Understand the impact of change on other assets applications and services. Detecting potential underlying issues [when multiple] changes are made. Provides very adaptable and highly reliable data quality and integrity engines configured through rules [to] ensure normalization, data source prioritization, and deduplication.
Read full review
Datadog
Datadog may be better suited for teams that have a more out-of-the-box infrastructure, on the primary platforms Datadog supports. You may also have better results if you have a bigger team dedicated to devops and/or a bigger budget. We found that trying to adapt it to our use case (small team, .NET on AWS Fargate) wasn't feasible. We continually ran into roadblocks that required us to dig through documentation (and at times, having to figure out some documentation was wrong), go back and forth with support, and in my opinion, waste money on excessive and unintended usages due to opaque pricing models and inaccurate usage reports, as well as broken/non-functional rate sampling controls.
Read full review
SolarWinds
This is an easy 10 because I actually have recommended this product to multiple clients and colleagues! Any shop that writes its own SQL queries will benefit from the insight provided by SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, so they know which of their queries is causing a bottleneck. Small shops or databases with only a few tables likely will see far fewer opportunities for optimization.
Read full review
Pros
BMC Helix
  • ITIL helps to meet customer expectations.
  • Beat competitors offerings
  • Allign with legal and regulatory requirements.
Read full review
Datadog
  • The thing which Datadog does really well, one of them are its broad range of services integrations and features which makes it one step observability solution for all. We can monitor all types of our application, infrastructure, hosts, databases etc with Datadog.
  • Its custom dashboard feature which helps us to visualize the data in a better way . It supports different types of charts through those charts we can create our dashboard more attractive.
  • Its AI powered alerting capability though that we can easily identify the root cause and also it has a low noise alerting capability which means it correlated the similar type of issues.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • Maintains historical SQL execution data, enabling forensic analysis
  • Has the ability to slice and dice the data so that you can drill down to the execution of a single SQL statement being executed by a stored procedure
  • Alerts to when the consumption pattern changes
  • Shows historical average run times against the current, illustrating problems when they arise
  • Provides tuning advice based on best practices
Read full review
Cons
BMC Helix
  • Speed and flexiability
Read full review
Datadog
  • Alert windows cause lag in notifications (e.g. if the alert window is X errors in 1 hour, we won't get alerted until the end of the 1 hour range)
  • I would appreciate more supportive examples for how to filter and view metrics in the explorer
  • I would like a more clear interface for metrics that are missing in a time frame, rather than only showing tags/etc. for metrics that were collected within the currently viewed time frame
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • 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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
BMC Helix
No answers on this topic
Datadog
Definitely will not revisit after our issues and, in my opinion, poor support.
Read full review
SolarWinds
We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business
Read full review
Usability
BMC Helix
Once you have an understanding of the many use cases that this software can meet, you will be able to tightly integrate this into a ticketing system which increases the ROI of the product tremendously.
Read full review
Datadog
There are so many features that it can be hard to figure out where you need to go for your own use case. For example, RUM monitoring us buried in a "Digital Experience" sidebar setting when this is one of our key use cases that I sometimes struggle to find in the application. It appears that ECS + Fargate monitoring was recently released which is great because we had to build a lambda reporting solution for ephemeral task monitoring. But this new feature was never on my radar until I starting clicking around the application.
Read full review
SolarWinds
I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.
Read full review
Support Rating
BMC Helix
No answers on this topic
Datadog
The support team usually gets it right. We did have a rather complicate issue setting up monitoring on a domain controller. However, they are usually responsive and helpful over chat. The downside would be I don’t think they have any phone support. If that is important to you this might not be a good fit.
Read full review
SolarWinds
I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
BMC Helix
No answers on this topic
Datadog
Documentation was difficult to work through, rollout was catastrophic (completely outage)
Read full review
SolarWinds
Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
BMC Helix
The number of workflows, escalations, processes built in the out of the box Remedy is outstanding. Trying to mimic/customize an open source, or even Remedyforce would cost more than implementing a vanilla Remedy. We reviewed ServiceNow but we felt that in terms of an end-to-end implementation tool, Remedy is still first in class.
Read full review
Datadog
Our logs are very important, and Datadog manages them exceptionally well. We frequently use Datadog services for our investigations. Use case: Monitor your apps, infrastructure, APIs, and user experience.


Key features:


Logs, metrics, and APM (Application Performance Monitoring)


Real-time alerting and dashboards


Supports Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, and other integrations


RUM (Real User Monitoring) and Synthetics





✅ Best for backend, server, and distributed systems monitoring.
Read full review
SolarWinds
At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA has to offer.
Read full review
Return on Investment
BMC Helix
  • Highly adaptable.
  • Provides relevant insights for your business.
  • Offers quality and reliable data.
Read full review
Datadog
  • Saved us (time & money) from developing our own monitoring utilities that would pale in comparison
  • Alerts allow us to remedy issues before our customers even know about them
  • Tracking resource usage over time allows us to better plan for future needs, before it becomes a pain-point.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • It has allowed us to progress as an organization with much less reliance on a direct DBA than would traditionally be required
  • Allowed us to be much more proactive in our performance monitoring and responding to issues that would affect users.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Datadog Screenshots

Screenshot of the out-of-the-box and customizable monitoring dashboards.Screenshot of Datadog's collaboration features, where users can discuss issues in-context with production data, annotate changes and notify their teams, see who responded to that alert before, and discover what was done to fix it.Screenshot of where Datadog unifies traces, metrics, and logs—the three pillars of observability.Screenshot of some of Datadog's 400+ built-in integrations.Screenshot of Datadog's Service Map, which decomposes an application into all its component services and draws the observed dependencies between these services in real timeScreenshot of centralized log data, pulled from any source.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoring