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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
Watch Product Overview
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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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April 21, 2022
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a great addition to your DBA and Development toolkit
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is our primary monitoring and analysis tool for our SQL server instances. We leverage it for both production and non-production environments. It gives us visibility into system and query performance, alerts us to issues so they can be remediated, and allows us to dig into performance trends of queries and look for key opportunities to make our systems more performant. It is used both by our DBAs and our development team.
- Ease of configuring alerting
- Excellent tooltips and descriptions of issues
- Clear breakdown of multiple metrics and performance statistics
- A plethora of metrics are captured for analysis
- Being able to alert on blocked sessions over a time period, rather than a flat value threshold
We use DPA for database monitoring across the enter enterprise, dev/QA and production. We connect it to Oracle, SQL and MySQL Database Servers. We use DPA as a single source of monitoring for database performance issues. The historical and real-time query monitoring allows us to troubleshoot and quickly identify the root cause of a poorly performing server.
- Database performance monitoring.
- Database performance root cause analysis.
- Server performance monitoring.
- Licensing Model can be expensive on a per-instance basis, consider a per-host-based option.
- Limited ability to combine monitoring results for similar groups of servers.
- Different license types for different types of servers (Oracle Enterprise vs Standard).
March 28, 2022
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer - Recommended
It allows us to keep a close eye on our database. In the event we run into slowdowns, we can easily identify the issue using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer before larger issues pop up. Since we've implemented it, we are able to proactively keep our system running smoother with fewer service interruptions.
- Automatically emails me weekly reports so I can keep an eye on our database performance.
- Easily identify problem queries.
- Helps us optimized our code.
- The initial learning curve is a little steep.
- A better explanation of the features would be nice.
- Navigation is sometimes a little tough.
March 23, 2022
Awesome Tool for SQL Performance Tuning
It is used by the database team to monitor and tune database performance in both SQL Server and Azure Databases. Slow databases, timeouts on websites and in services and applications, can frequently be caused by the data layer, and this is the best tool I've ever used for troubleshooting that.
- Tells you which statements in which stored procedures need work or are catastrophic (if that applies).
- Helps you focus attention on what really needs work, very efficiently.
- The UI gets clunky if you have lots of servers to monitor.
- It doesn't really rank problems across multiple servers.
March 22, 2022
DPA: FTW.
We use DPA to manage a very large and somewhat cranky SQL environment for ambulatory healthcare end users (from providers and office managers to assistants and front desk personnel). The DB schema dates to the 1990s and requires regular supervision and management at a level the system vendor doesn't provide. Addressed problems include plan management, index addition and revision, partitioning and troubleshooting poor performance.
- Near-instantaneous feedback on problem queries
- Allows us to evaluate changes in the application or its stored procedures over time
- We can drill down to the end-user level to identify potential issues, important with > 2000 sessions daily
- Can't think of any feature or ops related issues. Prior complaints have all been addressed in newer updates.
- Only main complaint is cost -- we would adopt for other servers if the incremental cost wasn't so high for a few additional instances (we have 3 servers we would like to use DPA with, but can't justify the x3 pricing per instance).
March 22, 2022
SolarWinds DPA saves the day every time
We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to fine-tune SQL Server workloads and alert us to unexpected issues occurring on our database clusters. It helps us to see problems before they happen - long running queries or unexpected disk thrashing and to fix these problems before users become aware of a situation.
- Analyzing query performance
- Index recommendation
- Wait time categorization and explanation
- Navigation is generally good, but some items can be confusing to find again
February 04, 2022
SolarWinds Database Performanc Analyzer - DPA Saves The Day!
The tools you decide to use in your environment are only as good as the effort put in to make it a valuable asset to your organization. We run a Computer Aided Dispatch application that looks like a wagon wheel with interfaces. The application interfaces communicate to a database instance running in a cluster. Database Performance Analyzer has allowed our organization to fine-tune the database to the extent that we now know exactly when the database may be experiencing issues. The issues before used to be queries and users (machines). The database is running so efficiently now, we drill down to the machine that is causing the issue. It is generally a user that has kicked off a query that they should be running against the reporting server, not the live database. DPA is an amazing tool. I have a dashboard of off the "current" 10-minute slice in time. I can tell by a visual look if something is not right.
- Great Visual Display from Console - at a glance you can tell if there are issues
- Drill down on a single query to get recommendations on tuning the statement
- Automated Notifications, which can be customized / modified
- Live view on Storage I/O
- Resource Monitor is a plus - CPU Utilization - Instance and OS
- Recently addressed - protect the supply chain
- I can't keep up with all the improvements to tell you the truth ... Database Performance Analyzer is Awesome
- Demo Database Performance Analyzer - you will not be let down
- Join THWACK so you get the most out of your product. Great forum to get answers from colleges that may be experiencing the same issue!
As a consultant, I recommend and use SolarWinds across multiple clients currently at Nortek/Broan-Nutone, BlastMotion, and Hansen and Adkins. I use this on a daily basis to assist me with monitoring SQL servers and assisting me with troubleshooting performance issues as they arise. I have also used SolarWinds DPA to set up alerts for issues like low drive space and query plan changes.
- Excellent for trending SQL Performance over time.
- Excellent for monitoring deadlocks and blocking.
- Good for trending SQL query changes over time.
- It would be nice to have more built-in alerting capabilities.
- Indexing recommendations are also somewhat unclear. I have seen areas that say you could improve performance on a table for example but not giving any additional details beyond that.
- More in-depth recommendations, other tools like Idera Diagnostic Manager I feel are stronger in this area.
November 03, 2020
Solarwinds DPA - a DBA's MVP!
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is being used by IT in our organization. It allows us to have a better window into what the SQL servers are doing, especially with regards to applications that are using these SQL servers. It allows us to root cause problems and to find problems before they become bigger problems.
- Insight into query wait times
- Ability to view Disk IO
- Historical trending of wait times
- Dated UI
- Development servers are not free
- Dashboard visualization of stats requires Solarwinds Performance Monitor (Included with Orion)
August 14, 2020
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Review
We use it at the data warehousing and analytics group to monitor the load and set up alerts on the data warehouse server. We have set up alerts on long-running queries, blocking other queries, deadlocks, instance availability, unused indexes, etc. Some of them are very useful, but the deadlocks alert can be improved to show what queries were in the deadlock, so we can improve our solution.
- We have set up alerts on long-running queries, blocking other queries, deadlocks, instance availability, unused indexes, etc.
- The status summary is useful to see the load on the server.
- Deadlocks alert can be improved to show what queries were in the deadlock, so we can improve our solution.
- Deadlocks alert can be improved to show what queries were in the deadlock, so we can improve our solution.
- We never got to setup https using the documentation provided by solar winds. We still keep getting https error when we access our DPA site.
- A better technical customer service would help.
DPA is currently used by our development and support team to monitor our core database to keep an eye on performance day to day to avoid any rogue queries or new application causing issues for our business as a whole. In the early days of our business platform it was used to refine our queries to provide a better user experience.
- Highlights abnormal query performance
- Provides historical base line
- Gives detailed insight and these days recommendations on how to improve performance
- Not be written in JAVA and run on Apache
- Upgrades are always a problem for us
July 17, 2020
DPA: The Advance DBA Tool
Our SQL server performance monitoring is done by using DPA SolarWinds. It's used in our department only.
- Details query capture with the plan and resource utilization.
- DPA backend is an SQL server that you can control by performing some operations from the backend like change in retention, etc.
- Supports latest SQL features like AG.
- Report features are very good
- License management. DPA is not able to sync licenses and needs you to manually reconcile every time.
July 14, 2020
Key to knowing true DB performance
It is used in IT to monitor database performance and to assist with troubleshooting when there are performance issues with key applications. It is primarily used by our Database Administrators and has assisted in maintaining key performance metrics. It has allowed us to be proactive in our approach to performance monitoring and being able to resolve problems before they affect users.
- Monitoring DB performance
- Insight into hard hitting queries or jobs
- Visual representation
- Can be better in presentation of issues
- Would be good if it could provide possible causes or solutions
February 27, 2020
Real ROI that added a 9 to our uptime.
Our business lines span many industries and have a vast array of projects in production. Many of the environments we have must be segregated, and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers us a clear, detailed view of these environments through a single pane. Our DBAs can more quickly address issues and quickly settle the "hardware versus software" debate between engineers and developers.
- Alerts us of current issues affecting system performance
- Alerts us of potential issues that will affect system performance
- The licensing timeline needs improvement. Adding new instances becomes cost-prohibitive at some times of the year due to the locked-down renewal period.
February 27, 2020
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Review
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is used by our database and applications team to ensure the application code is working as expected, as well as to monitor database performance.
- Reliability
- Accuracy
- NA
- NA
February 07, 2020
SolarWinds DPA review
The SolarWinds DPA module is used mainly to monitor our MSSQL instances for performance. We had lots of issues related to DB performance and we were not sure about the root cause before implementing DPA. Now, we are getting proactive alerts when there is a deviation from the performance baseline configured in the tool and we are very happy with it.
- Easy to configure
- Real time data
- Notification email templates need improvement
- Needs a little training to go over/work with dashboards
January 24, 2020
DPA user
It is used for database performance monitoring. It has helped us in addressing slow queries and other resource issues.
- Highlights slow queries.
- Drill down options to the second for troubleshooting.
- Better suggestions for indexes.
January 15, 2020
One of the BEST at-a-glance database monitoring tools out there.
It is being used to monitor all production instances for the whole organization.
- Provides meaningful status at a glance.
- Highly configurable alerts (less spam/noise).
- Could allow better tuning for summary page information. Sometimes data is a bit stale.
- Could use better database level summary information in addition to server/instance level.
November 20, 2019
Solarwinds DPA gives your non-DBAs the ability to look inside and diagnose database problems!
We use Solarwinds Database Performance Analyser across several teams in and around the IT department. It's used to pinpoint issues with databases or SQL statements, generally on production databases. While Solarwinds Database Performance Analyser won't tell you anything that a real live DBA wouldn't be able to find out, it does allow non-DBAs like myself to get an initial problem diagnosis quite quickly and suggest to the relevant teams where they should be looking to resolve the problem.
- Pinpoints potential issues with databases.
- Suggests remediation for these problems.
- Allows you to narrow down to particular points in time where the problems were observed.
- It does take a while to gather enough data to suggest problems and fixes. Generally speaking, while you'll get some data back in an hour or two, you want at least 2 days of monitoring to get the best results.
- Licensing is a bit restrictive.
- Switching licenses between monitored nodes is a bit annoying.
July 27, 2019
Solar Winds DPA provides the best trend charts
To support performance monitoring for SQL servers across the organization.
- Monitors both SQL query performance and back end VM resources.
- Easy to read trend charts, bottlenecks or spikes show up immediately.
- East to drill-down into specific issues.
- Very good settings for alerts.
- Poor interface for managing alert times or blocking out alerts at times of the week. Very tedious process.
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.
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 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.
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.