Data Center Real-User Monitoring (DCRUM), discontinued vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Dynatrace Network Application Monitoring (NAM), formerly DCRUM, has improved greatly compared to when it was DCRUM; however, it still needs a lot of improvement in end-to-end flow capture with regards to network monitoring. Its alerting and integration capabilities are very good and easy to use. But it still needs a lot of tweaking in usability.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Dynatrace DCRUM can monitor legacy application protocols that are still used in a lot of organizations worldwide who still trust in those technologies.
• DCRUM monitors client-server architectures very well and can pinpoint issues along an infrastructure stack.
• Dynatrace DCRUM can analyze a wide spectre of protocols: Corba, DNS, DB2, Exchange, TCP, HTTP, IBM MQ, Citrix, ICMP, Informix, Tuxedo, SMB, LDAP, MSRPC, MySQL, NetFlow, Net8, Oracle Forms, RMI, SAP GUI, SAP HANA, SAP RFC, SMB, SOAP, XML.

• 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

Incentivized

• Major upgrades process is sometimes unpredictable.
• The use of SQL Server should be evaluated for something else.
• Easier SSL key handling.

• 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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Best of breed.

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.

Incentivized

The only thing missing for a 10, would be if they texted or called you back.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Nagios can't trace real user transactions from a front-end tier through a backend-tier,;with Nagios you only can monitor server availability and hardware issues. Riverbed is commonly used to determine networking issues without considering real user transactions impact on an application stack.

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.

Incentivized

• Dynatrace Network Application Monitoring (NAM), formerly DCRUM, helped us get a lot of info on an ongoing issue.
• It helped us figure out network bottlenecks in our environment.
• It is a very costly tool and a lot of other cheaper tools give same kind of info.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized