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User-Friendly Interface: Users appreciate the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for its straightforward and easy-to-understand …
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What is SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
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? OracleOracle ExadataOracle EBSMicrosoft SQL Server Azure SQL DatabaseAzure SQL Database Managed InstanceMySQLDB2 SAP ASE AuroraMariaDBDPA monitors…
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What is SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
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…
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What is SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
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
What makes DPA stand out:
- Quick, easy, and reliable performance
troubleshooting available in real time and historically
- Machine learning anomaly analysis to bring intelligence to go beyond traditional threshold based analysis
- Find inefficient workloads, aggregated by table, for indexing opportunities—an “X marks the spot” tuning analysis
- Cross-platform database support for a single-pane-of-glass view into your environment
- Blocking analysis: what is blocking and a hierarchy of what is being blocked, plus overall impact
- PerfStack™ integration with other SolarWinds products for more complete visibility (applications, servers, storage, hypervisor, network, and more)
- Agent-less architecture with the ability to scale from a few instances to thousands, low 1% average overhead
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Features
- Supported: Database monitoring
- Supported: Tuning advisors for queries, workload, and indexes aggregated at the table level
- Supported: Correlated resource metrics for easy diagnosis of hardware constraint impacts on end-users
- Supported: Detailed blocking analysis for contention bottlenecks
- Supported: I/O activity tracking at the drive/mount and file level
- Supported: Alerts and reports
- Supported: DPA Central to manage large and/or distributed environments
- Supported: Always On Availability Group and RAC insights
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Videos
Azure Database Support Overview
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SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Integrations
- SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
- SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
- SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor (SRM)
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
- SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
- SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
- SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
- SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM)
- SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM)
- SolarWinds User Device Tracker
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Competitors
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, AWS Marketplace app |
| Mobile Application | No |
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Foglight, Spotlight, and Idera Uptime Capacity Monitor are common alternatives for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.
Reviewers rate Solarwinds Premier Support Rating highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
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.
Dated and Confusing User Interface: Several users have expressed frustration with the user interface, describing it as dated, confusing, and difficult to navigate. They suggest that the user interface could be more user-friendly and have a reduced learning curve. Some users also mentioned that the navigation can be unintuitive and sometimes tough, and that some items can be confusing to find again. Overall, improvements in the cosmetic aspects of the user interface are needed.
Lack of Reporting Flexibility: According to some users, there is a lack of flexibility in both dashboard customization and reporting capabilities. They feel that the reporting feature needs improvement to provide more options for customization and analysis. This limitation hinders users' ability to obtain meaningful insights from their data.
High Cost: The cost of the software has been a major complaint among some users, particularly when it comes to adding additional instances. These users mention that the licensing timeline needs improvement as adding new instances becomes cost-prohibitive during certain periods of the year. The high cost associated with using this software can limit its accessibility for businesses operating on tight budgets.
Users highly recommend trying the free trial and evaluating SolarWinds DPA before purchasing. They suggest taking advantage of the free demo and training resources provided by SolarWinds. Users advise implementing SolarWinds DPA for monitoring and analyzing databases, especially for those who are just learning. The software is also recommended for DBAs in small to medium businesses and for integrating with other SolarWinds products for better data analysis. Additionally, users suggest comparing it with Idera offerings for SQL performance monitoring and highlighting it to DBAs as they will likely find value in it.
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Reviews
(51-75 of 113)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 23, 2019
SolarWinds DPA review
It is used as our central database monitoring tool across the whole organization, used especially to improve query performance, resolve blocks and to analyze trends.
- Deep queries analyses, provides good advice for performance improvements.
- Allows us to create our own custom alerts and reports.
- Has a very intuitive and well-explained interface. It is split up for different objectives to analyse or monitor as trends, tunning, current activities and resources.
- None identified
July 19, 2019
DPA: Great web application for wait stats and trends. Not the tool for those needing actionable alerts.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
July 17, 2019
Life saver!
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.
- Index recommendation.
- Tuning advisor.
- Wait events.
- Always-on monitoring.
June 28, 2019
Happy customers, much time saved
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.
- 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
- 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!
June 28, 2019
NCTradeToolReview
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.
- 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.
- 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.
June 20, 2019
DPA -- The Wait stats king
DPA is a great tool if you are looking for a performance monitoring solution for your database servers. It's intuitive to use, and it can be used to pinpoint the root cause of a performance issue -- both during and after the event. It can highlight the specific statement within a stored procedure that is causing a performance issue, and capture the query plan to allow detailed analysis of the issue. It captures various useful performance counters, and you can add your own custom metrics, but it's the wait analysis where this tool really shines.
- The best tool for wait analysis.
- A simple, intuitive web interface.
- A quality product that is improving over time.
- The wait analysis at the statement level has it's pros/cons. I would like to see higher level stored procedure.
- It's a good performance monitoring tool, but not good for monitoring health -- backups, log shipping etc.
- The query plan viewer in the web is only good for simple query plans. It's easy to download the plan to view in SSMS, Plan Explorer, etc. though.
June 11, 2019
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
We use this product across the whole organization for multiple applications.
- Easy to use.
- Flexible.
- A good tool to analyze DB performance.
- Needs a more alert setup
- Needs 24/7 support.
June 10, 2019
Great alternative for Oracle Enterprise Manager
We're using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer on a daily basis for:
- monitoring our Oracle RAC performance
- searching for performance bottlenecks
- analyzing historical data and trends
- solving developers problems
- It's super helpful when hunting down problems with performance.
- It's easy to install and configure.
- It doesn't require crazy computation power or tons of memory.
- DBA-friendly.
- GUI/UI could be more modern.
- Pricing: it's reasonable but not cheap.
- Deep integration with AWS managed databases would be really nice.
June 07, 2019
My DPA-review
I am the only user of the department that uses SolarWids Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) almost every day. I use DPA for monitoring a single Oracle production database, and gets alerts when it does not perform or when it's unavailable to the users. The monitoring also pinpoints which SQL statements needs tuning, which I can correct before the problems get serious.
DPA makes it possible for me to be proactive. I find the DPA-GUI to be very user-friendly and easy to understand even without reading the manual.
DPA makes it possible for me to be proactive. I find the DPA-GUI to be very user-friendly and easy to understand even without reading the manual.
- SQL-tuning advice. It's easy to locate the most inefficient SQL-staements as they are all graded. You just click and drill-down to see both the SQL-statements and statistics. That info will most likely give you enough knowledge to solve the issue, for example by adding an extra index.
- The monitoring of the database by setting up your own alerts in all kind of categories. For example, alerts when tablespaces are running full or when disk/CPU load are too high or if the server becomes unavailable.
- The possibilty to browse the repository and see trends. You can see exactly when problems are starting and see if the changes you make has an effect in the time to come.
- The license-management seems difficult to use, and I always find that I need to contact SolarWinds when upgrading server, etc.
June 03, 2019
Useful database monitoring tool
The primary purpose that we use Database Performance Analyzer for is to monitor database instances. We also use it for Query performance analysis. We also use it for performance analysis. For our application, we monitor primarily the index advisory/recommendations.
- We use this software to identify real-time performance problems such as errors, long-running queries or problems that are blocking the system.
- We use this software to review previous SQL Server queries/performance.
- When there is an issue with any Server and I need to quickly narrow down to the right place of the root cause, this is a tool that allows me to focus on the right places and remove all sorts of noise from our data.
- Cannot easily find a query using a "text search" without detailed knowledge of the underlying SQL database "repository" that is used to display the data in each product.
- On the ad-hoc plan tab, for any given plan we have to drill down each SQL manually one by one. It would be goOd to have some kind of summary popup/tool-tip when we hover over the plan in DPA.
June 02, 2019
Great tool for a DBA
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.
- 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.
- It would be nice if it could work with Oracle's SQL Tuning Advisor.
May 31, 2019
Awesome Database Best Practice
DPA is one of the support tools used by our organization, deployed on some departments where legacy system databases still exist. It empowers our operations when it comes to response time and ability to provide good reporting presentation. I've been in IT Service Delivery and Operation for 10 years, from my experience with different infrastructure and application issues, most of the pain points we've had is the application performance related problems. One of the stories I can share is that it enables us easily detect what is causing bottlenecks and as such good collaboration has emerged with our developers whether the issue lies on our databases or on their codes.
- Maintainability and accommodating Support service and easy to follow Release Notes/Documentation.
- The relevance of the pre-defined Reports and Checks.
- Simplicity of the tool. Easy to use and understand.
- Resiliency of the Monitoring checks after the server underwent maintenance reboot. My experience is the monitor (Action) needs to be started manually. If possible it can automatically detect service/server then start to monitor again when system is back up.
- Much lighter UI.
- Granularity up to minutes.
May 28, 2019
Best product for tuning performance issues
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is being used by DevOps and MDO teams to troubleshoot issues and get an Idea on Load on the system, bottleneck and find culprit rogues queries and SQL to solve issues.
- Ease of use.
- Graphical presentation of load and system information.
- You can edit, rename, and customize the SQL queries that are run often to facilitate identifying them later.
- It would be great if it has a pulse page that summarizes the state of the environment as a whole.
- If it can be integrated with other applications like OEM.
- If it can monitor replication as well.
May 21, 2019
A must have for critical SQL workloads
We use SW DPA to monitor the most critical database servers in the company. It provides an interesting slicing and dicing of performance metrics which enables us to use to plan and react to the servers' needs.
- Very easy to deploy with a negligible performance overhead.
- Excellent perspective on overall performance metrics.
- Good alerting system for performance or events.
- API based alerting.
May 20, 2019
Network Sherlock Holmes
I use SolarWinds to monitor our ERP and other application's database health and load. It helps us fine-tune the performance issues.
- Detailed minute by minute performance data.
- It gives a detailed performance insight at the server and application-level.
- Analytics and problem alerting.
- None that I can think of at the moment. It has what I expected out of a monitoring tool.
Beyond day-to-day monitoring, the DPA (Database Performance Analyzer) is key to anyone who needs to look back in time to provide Trending and/or Root Cause Analysis, whether database related or not. There are suspects and culprits, and this product can help to identify them. DPA is very, very detailed, and you can zero in on an issue, all the way down to a minute timeframe if you are willing to do the cross analysis work. This product is A+ and can be used for Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server.
- Problem categorization.
- Problem identification.
- Serious trending analysis.
- When presenting possible sources of issues, it may be better to first give a list overview, and then proceed to drill down into the details.
May 15, 2019
DPA is a helpful monitoring and analytical tool
We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to predict the behavior of our campaigns and e-marketing. With SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, we can check the performance of our databases and how the behavior will be during high load works in the season and spikes that are associated with our day by day jobs.
- Predict performance across all databases
- Predict unexpected behavior
- Make a correct forecast about how much memory and CPU could be needed for a particular job
- The agent usually consumes a lot of memory
- High cost, since it is charged per instance.
- An efficient and intelligent search feature would be helpful.
Monitoring databases is always a critical topic for a database administrator, but SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer made is easy with real-time monitoring for DB status using query's hash, CPU time, programs, database query plans. Users, as well there other machines for correlation DB integration in multiple databases, query analyzer helps to display the historical graphs for understanding the behavior and provide reports complete for first glance understanding of abnormal or normal statuses.
- Multiple database real-time performance/status in single windows with an easy illustration using graphs.
- Query analyzer and identify plan text.
- Overall database status monitoring and reporting.
- Plan hash and plan adviser.
- DB color and grouping for interdependent query's relation.
- Point the users and identify single users for multiple DB Access Scenarios.
May 08, 2019
DPA was the perfect choice
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.
- 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.
- 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.
The DPA product has and continually assists in finding performance issues in stored procedures and queries that are occurring against the database. We recently had a significant issue with performance and being able to go back minute-by-minute is fantastic and allowed us to diagnose the issue much faster.
- Simple and intuitive to navigate.
- Provides Top queries and makes good recommendations that are accurate.
- Good reporting use for C-Level colleagues who don't understand the techincal side of Databases.
- Having a search bar to search for particular SQL code would be useful, Especically when attempting to find a new SQL Hash name on a fixed stored proc
May 02, 2019
SolarWinds - we understand the network better
We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer with the Orion. The team that uses it are the Development department. We monitor 5 of our SQL servers and check problems in the Database. We check the time that takes between req and response and see the impact on the DataBase and on the performance. Configuring daily and monthly reports.
- Monitor performance
- Check for errors
- Give a clear view of the DB
- Simple GUI
- No Support for SAP HANA
- Allow alerts to SMS
- Search feature
SolarWinds DPA was recommended by a colleague, when I reviewed the software with my team we were very pleased with the capability of this tool which surely improved the productivity of my team's day-to-day. One of the most important options I like is that it can generate not only on-demand reports but you can automate performance reports of your database server from a pretty good list of reports. This helps me to make timely decisions
- It helps to monitor the amount of wait time on the SQL instance.
- It helps to find poor performing queries.
- It provided a very good dashboard to monitor ourSQL box.
- There are not many issue I can find yet.
Nasdaq uses SolarWinds DPA for performance troubleshooting and MSSQL Job failure alerts. DPA allows us to quickly identify performance issues both during a crisis and proactively. It's also an easy way to monitor Job failures and other critical conditions across several hundred servers.
- Clear, Concise Performance Information
- Server Alerts are quick and easy to setup
- DPA could allow longer custom names, and reuse of names
- DPA could allow easier location of all executions of a query matching a certain pattern
We use it to monitor our complex solution that provides location and video feed for a fleet of connected vehicles. The solution is an extremely complex set of MSSQL Databases with constant data flow of around 5000 messages per minute. Each message required several different post-processing tasks that are developed as SPs Triggers and Jobs in the SQL server. We make a lot of changes to the solution constantly. Sometimes these can result in a massive slowdown speed in parsing of the incoming messages. We use the DPA to analyze the situation when this happens and to catch the piece of SQL code that is causing this to resolve real-time issues.
- Quickly points out what is slowing down our SQL server
- Provides daily statistics on most ran queries and their wait time
- Operates flawlessly with no maintenance
- Sometimes it cannot tell the SQL query text - I believe its when Entity Framework SQL is being ran
- Email notification when a SQL statement starts "killing" the whole server
- Full text search of specific SQL termS in all of the SQL code that it has captured
DPA is being used by DBAs at Incomm Digital Systems which is a department of Incomm. It allows the DBAs to monitor production SQL Server databases for IDS. We count on DPA to alert us in case certain database-related thresholds are exceeded as well as do analysis on troublesome queries.
- Excellent at being able to key in quickly on pain-point queries.
- Very clear and easy to understand user interface.
- Nice availability groups dashboard that shows how far behind each database is from synchronization.
- Email alerts are pretty much a DIY proposition. The canned email alerts are a mixed bag. Some work, while others don't.
- The usual Windows performance counters (CPU, Memory, etc.) are on the main dashboard. It would be nice to see IO counters there as well.
- Most drill-down query screens are displayed vertically, but a few are displayed horizontally. It would be nice if they were all displayed vertically.