IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8.1 out of 10

Score

8.1 out of 10

Reviews

8 Reviews

Great Overall Performance and monitoring software suite.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 20, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager to help us monitor, manage and maintain our SQL Server environment. This helps us proactively instead of reactively deal with and manager our environment properly.

Pros

SQL Server Monitoring
Alerts
Diagnostics

Cons

Better alerting
More granular notifications
More customizable alerting and monitoring

Likelihood to Recommend

This tool is good is small to medium sql server footprint environments. Not sure if it is ideal for large scale environments

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server Smart Dashboard

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 7, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using the IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server in the Production department of the organization to detect erroneous or very heavy queries to the database. We are using this product to identify that consulting slowed down the performance of applications in the organization, achieving optimal performance after correcting said queries.

Pros

Database query optimization.
Monitoring of databases in real time.
Performance analysis and trends in the database.

Cons

Detection of heavy database queries.
Monitoring of database configuration changes.
Obtaining data from multiple database servers simultaneously.

Likelihood to Recommend

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server generates very visual graphs of the databases and servers that allow you to create a command me chart in an easy way, it is also capable of identifying the queries that penalize the database the most to correct it. It is not necessary to install any component in the databases to be monitored. As against, the installation of IDERA Dashboard can be complicated and does not detect database clusters well.

José Javier Dominguez Reina

Jefe de Proyecto in Information Technology at SANDETEL (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Monitoring solution for Microsoft Based Products

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 13, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager was used by our organization to track SQL Server Bi Platforms (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) and collect performance related data. It was being used by our IT and Business Intelligence Department to improve performance for end users.

Pros

It can be used to monitor SSIS, SSRS and SSAS
Provides Dashboards to view performance
Works well with Microsoft products

Cons

Training is needed to understand and use all the feature
Works well only with Microsoft products
Not enough Tutorials available
Features are more useful for larger organization

Likelihood to Recommend

SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager is useful for tracking performance across SSIS, SSRS and SSA and have the data represented in dashboards. It helps improve performance and helps end users. However, several features are redundant for smaller organization that can use the tools that comes with existing Microsoft products. These features also takes time to learn and use.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server fits the bill

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We rely on IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server to monitor all of our production SQL server environment. This includes our standalone instances as well as our always-on-availability groups. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server has allowed us to automate all of our monitoring as well as giving us a bonus of the predictive functionality to find issues before they cause problems.

Pros

Ease of setup--agentless
Flexible in terms of configuring alerts and thresholds
Cost effective

Cons

Windows client has some issues. When you have small time intervals for your data collection, it can cause the client to become unresponsive and require you to restart it.
It takes more time to get the web client running than it does to get the windows client running.
The visualizations have been the same for the last eight years--could use a little bit of a refresh.

Likelihood to Recommend

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is well suited for monitoring your SQL server instances, either standalone, clustered or always-on-availability groups. I believe the best scenario is on production servers. For development instances, perhaps it is not as cost effective. There may be more cost-effective solutions in those types of scenarios.

Steven Gockley, MBA, MCSA

DBA / Sr. Data Analyst in Information Technology at Boostability (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

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My experience with BIDS

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

July 7, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used BI Manager to develop and maintain all of our ETL packages.

Pros

Easy to use GUI
Integrates nicely with SQL Server
Simple single server deployment

Cons

Lacks versioning control.
Lacks support/native driver for alternative database.
Only plays well with other Microsoft products.

Likelihood to Recommend

BIDS works well if you're committed to using all MS products. It does take some serious consideration if you know you will end up working outside of that, such as working with AWS products.

Verified User

Director in Engineering (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Great monitoring and alerting for MS SSAS, SSRS and SSIS

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 5, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're using SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager to monitor our SQL Server BI platforms (analysis services, reporting services, and integration services). It's great at collecting metrics and KPIs regarding query execution and performance for SSAS in both standard and cube models, and also provides great insights for packages executed by SSIS.

Pros

Great monitoring capabilities for SSAS, SSRS, and SSIS.
Tuning features for SSAS cubes.
Configurable alerts.

Cons

Some advanced features are hard to get without proper training.
Usability has room for improvement.

Likelihood to Recommend

MS SQL Server provides nice monitoring tools for its core SQL engine, but that's not the case with the BI components (SSAS, SSRS and SSIS). SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager is great at filling this gap, providing valuable insights and alerts for these critical tools, and also great tuning capabilities for cubes.

Gedson Silva

Senior Production Engineer in Engineering at Carrilho Engineering (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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SQLdm is a very clear window into your SQL environment

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 27, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am the sole DBA of a company that has facilities in the US and in Europe. In order to effectively keep up with the health of our SQL servers (I manage about 20), I needed a tool that would let me quickly assess which servers needed my attention and which ones were behaving as expected. SQLdm provides me the information that I need to address any complaints about speed and connectivity from an interface that's easy to move around in.

Pros

SQLdm does a good job of providing information at a high level, but also allows me to drill down to specific queries and events if needed. I don't always need to sift through tons of details to get the information I need. It also gives a very wide range of information from SQL specific metrics, to OS metrics, to VM metrics, all the way up to host server metrics.
I like how the alert and notification system can be customized. For example, if you know a certain server regularly has long-running queries, you can adjust the alert to not fire unless a query has been running for 30 minutes while the rest of the servers fire after 30 seconds. That is very helpful in not being bombarded at dinner with alerts from a server similar to, "I've been at 90% cpu for 26 milliseconds!!!!!!!...and now it's back down to 30%" Good information to know, but not something you need to literally lose sleep over.
I like how you can configure different servers to be monitored differently. For example, you can have a group of servers called DEVELOPMENT that you can turn on heavier monitoring on so you can test how changes in applications might affect the SQL environment, but in the PRODUCTION group, you may only want to enable the heavier analysis and logging when performance issues are actively being reported.

Cons

While there is reporting present in the app, I don't find it to be very configurable. I eventually pointed our reporting software at the SQLdm database so I could craft my own reporting. The reporting that's there is sufficient for a lot of things, but for more detailed analysis and trending, it's a little light
The config right out of the box feels a little heavy to me. It leans towards the side of over monitoring and over notifying. For example, I view "critical" alerts as those that I'd want to be woken up at 3am for. After a fresh install, I felt like I was getting so many "critical" alerts that I was starting to ignore them. I had to spend a good bit of time tweaking.
Sometimes the interface seems laggy. Switching between individual servers and switching screens can take what feels like a long time. I'm not sure if it's the way I have the client configured or something up with my machine, but this app in particular feels slower than it should.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have several SQL servers and don't have a lot of time or resources to constantly monitor them, SQLdm will be very helpful. For one or two servers, it might be overkill. All of our servers are virtual, so having a tool that can monitor host metrics as well as guest metrics is a plus as well.

Greg Goss

SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager in Information Technology at Ten Cate (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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The new way to monitor BI - SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

November 9, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We were using SQL Server BI Manager to monitor the health and availability of our entire SQL Server BI environment. This includes SSIS, SSRS and SSAS. The business problems that this addresses are all related to ensuring our customers get the best BI solutions available. Currently it is being used by our reporting department, but we assume it might spread shortly.

Pros

Shows an excellent dashboard
Allows easy monitoring of multiple instances
Created an environment that can be self healing

Cons

Drill down can kind of be cumbersome
Deep knowledge is needed to understand metrics
Some light training is needed to take advantage of all features

Likelihood to Recommend

SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager is well suited for organizations with large scale BI deployments. When tracking all of your SSIS, SSAS and SSRS processes that are spread out and disjointed, this tool will enable one user to get a holistic view of the whole environment. If you want to be proactive in handling performance issues before they happen, then this tool is good too.

Samir Patel, PMP

SQL Development Team Lead in Information Technology at Allianz Asset Management (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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SQLdm is a very clear window into your SQL environment

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 27, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

SQLdm does a good job of providing information at a high level, but also allows me to drill down to specific queries and events if needed. I don't always need to sift through tons of details to get the information I need. It also gives a very wide range of information from SQL specific metrics, to OS metrics, to VM metrics, all the way up to host server metrics.
I like how the alert and notification system can be customized. For example, if you know a certain server regularly has long-running queries, you can adjust the alert to not fire unless a query has been running for 30 minutes while the rest of the servers fire after 30 seconds. That is very helpful in not being bombarded at dinner with alerts from a server similar to, "I've been at 90% cpu for 26 milliseconds!!!!!!!...and now it's back down to 30%" Good information to know, but not something you need to literally lose sleep over.
I like how you can configure different servers to be monitored differently. For example, you can have a group of servers called DEVELOPMENT that you can turn on heavier monitoring on so you can test how changes in applications might affect the SQL environment, but in the PRODUCTION group, you may only want to enable the heavier analysis and logging when performance issues are actively being reported.

Cons

While there is reporting present in the app, I don't find it to be very configurable. I eventually pointed our reporting software at the SQLdm database so I could craft my own reporting. The reporting that's there is sufficient for a lot of things, but for more detailed analysis and trending, it's a little light
The config right out of the box feels a little heavy to me. It leans towards the side of over monitoring and over notifying. For example, I view "critical" alerts as those that I'd want to be woken up at 3am for. After a fresh install, I felt like I was getting so many "critical" alerts that I was starting to ignore them. I had to spend a good bit of time tweaking.
Sometimes the interface seems laggy. Switching between individual servers and switching screens can take what feels like a long time. I'm not sure if it's the way I have the client configured or something up with my machine, but this app in particular feels slower than it should.

Likelihood to Recommend

Greg Goss

SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager in Information Technology at Ten Cate (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile