Redgate Monitor vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

With mission-critical SQL Server instances at multiple physical locations and in the cloud, it's critical for us to know immediately when there are performance issues or outages. The Redgate SQL Monitor provides an intuitive dashboard that allows for detailed resource monitoring. Perhaps not as useful in a 100% managed SQL environment.

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

• It is easy to use and provides very good reporting on the SQL servers being monitored. These reports are used in our monthly customer reports.
• Redgate does a very good job at improving the product, fixing bugs and adding new features compared to other products I have researched.
• The insights provided makes it an ideal tool for database administrators and software developers.

Incentivized

• 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

• Openness - They are too attached to their Intellectual Property to the detriment of usability, stability and reliability. So once its is installed and working leave it alone. Best run it on a VM as that can be restored quickly for when it breaks.
• If they exposed an API/SDK that allowed you to leaver their products life would be far sweeter, it would feel less of a battle.
• Add WebHooks to SQL Monitor to enhance integration to other subsystems.
• Make it easy to install in default mode. So you are not forced to use TomCat Use as ASP.Core Selfl Hosting options.

Incentivized

• 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

In general, the Redgate dashboard is one of the most thorough yet intuitive products I've had the pleasure of using. Compared to other vendors in different verticals, the Redgate dashboard's deployment, configuration, monitoring, and reporting is second to none

Incentivized

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

Fast support responses from Redgate

Incentivized

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

I personally prefer SQL Sentry due to the flexibility in the custom metrics/monitoring but this is still a great product!!

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

• Allows us to proactively fix issues before they happen
• Allows us to quickly react to issues without having to wait for someone else to notice
• Cuts down on the amount of time spent doing daily checks

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