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SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Overview

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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

User-Friendly Interface: Users appreciate the SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for its straightforward and easy-to-understand …
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DPA: FTW.

8 out of 10
March 22, 2022
Incentivized
We use DPA to manage a very large and somewhat cranky SQL environment for ambulatory healthcare end users (from providers and office …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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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…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

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
DPA monitors physical, virtual, and cloud-based databases (including Microsoft Azure and Amazon RDS)

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

Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoringScreenshot of Performance intelligenceScreenshot of Query performance analysisScreenshot of Real-time & historic monitoringScreenshot of Recommendations

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Videos

Azure Database Support Overview

Watch Product Overview

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, AWS Marketplace app
Mobile ApplicationNo

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(227)

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!

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

(76-100 of 113)
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March 15, 2019

SolarWinds DPA Review

Paul LaPosta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DPA to monitor our AWS SQL RDS Instance for performance. We use it to troubleshoot congestion and tune queries. We also use DPA on our development and staging SQL DBs to analyze performance before new code is released into production.

Over the years DPA has helped us to resolve a lot of issues with blocking, locking, and excessive CPU utilization. We have done this both in real-time, during outages, and as part of our development pipeline.
Les Robinson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have a hosted environment (in the cloud) and before we had this product if there was any type of blip, slowness/lockup we had zero insight as to what could have caused it. SolarWinds allows us to go back in Hx and see what happened and sometimes even offers up a suggestion on tuning about how best to handle it in the future.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am the sole user of DPA and use it to monitor our two primary Oracle SE production databases running on VM. I use it to monitor resource usage, blocks, waits and make good use of the tuning advisor. The databases are hybrid OLT/warehouse with automatic data loads happening 24x7 and heavy reporting processes during business hours. DPA helps me balance performance between these.
March 13, 2019

SolarWinds DPA review

Inna Ptushkina | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DPA is used for daily monitoring of the most offensive queries and hardware resource utilization. We also use historical charts to create a performance improvement matrix. DPA makes it very easy to drill down to the cause of delays, and the alerting system makes our response time a point of pride for us.
March 01, 2019

DPA is A-OK

Joshua Head | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DPA to locate issues within our application communicating with SQL. We also look for any long running queries that can be tuned to be more efficient. It has helped us narrow down several issues in our application code.
February 28, 2019

DPA Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Database Performance Analyzer as part of the monitoring tool kit for the Database Administrators. It has helped to reveal multiple SQL query issues by older programs running on the system and get them corrected. We also use it to notify us if jobs are failing and servers are going down, as well as many other checks on a multitude of servers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds is great at keeping track of the status of our servers and systems and capturing the performance metrics. All of these details help the administrators to keep the environment under control and make sure the performance of the server is at the top level. There are multiple options available with database monitoring on any platform or the whole network infrastructure. Single pane shows all the registered and monitored servers that make it easy for a system or database administrator to be aware of everything that is going on within environments. In case any of the serves encounter any issues during processing it will send a notification to the administrator's team and you can with ease drill down to the problem and find specific details on the errors or troubles you have to deal with. Also, the software captures everything that is currently running as well as historical data that makes a snap to get to the exact point in time and specific processes that were running and can find details on the issue to be looked at. The historical data accumulated overtime allows database administrators as well as development and testers to be proactive and learn the details on the processing and even suggestions on missing or improper indexing on the tables and stale statistics. All of the details are presented in an easy to read and drill down to the specific procedures and execution plan of each with details on the CPU, memory, storage and network throughput at that exact date and time. Great tool for monitoring and collecting data that would assist in resolving performance issues and suggesting the areas where the improvements would be required and keeping the SLA’s.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DPA is being used by certain departments in the organization. For performance testing team, it helps to investigate and triage the performance issues that we see in an application. DPA's ability to put a very little overhead (<1%) helps to reduce the performance latency compared to other tools. Also, one of the great features of DPA which helps us is its comparability for on-prem as well as cloud-based monitoring.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
There are three ways we use DPA -
- Daily review by one of our team members to see anomalies.
- Drilling down while troubleshooting ongoing issues.
- Setting up reports to keep the hard record of a baseline.

Since DPA is a wait time oriented monitoring tool, it perfectly completes other homemade SQL scripts used to monitor and troubleshoot performance.
Justin Wang, MBA, MSc, MMA (in progress) | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used SolarWinds DPA to monitor two of our main production MS SQL Servers. We are running our ERP, WMS, and several other key applications on these two main SQL Servers.

Since we don't have a full-time DBA, we are not using DPA to its fullest, we mainly use it as a troubleshooting tool when needed.

There were a number of incidences when we had serious performance issues on the SQL Server, and DPA was able to help us to narrow down the type of issue, and the process that was causing the issue, which helped us to get the issue resolved quickly (by killing the process causing the deadlocks, etc.)

At the beginning of our DPA deployment, it also helped us to identify a number of expensive queries that will need to be optimized so that we can focus on improving these queries, and as the result of this, we improved the overall system performance.
Craig Solinski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We run six separate DPA servers covering three different database software vendors. Coverage includes TEST Databases where developers can instantly observe metrics from their most recent changes. Production coverage, of course, is crucial to rapidly identify SQL and VM performance matters and observe changes based on the volume of transactions. This tool is the first place hundreds of developers, admins, and managers use to check app performance.
February 05, 2019

SolarWinds FTW!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using DPA to check the reliability and speed of our databases and use the reporting to streamline our queries. We have had issues in the past due to slow response times from SQL servers and didn't know what was causing the issues. Using DPA allowed us to determine if it was hardware limitations or an issue in the query that was making the responses slow down.
John Gonzalez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the performance analyzer to check the reliability and speed of our databases. We have had issues in the past due to slow response times from SQL servers and were unaware of the source. Using DPA, we were able to determine if it was hardware or an issue in the query that was making the responses slow down.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Database Performance Analyzer is used across our organization for performance analysis and alert notification. It provides a very useful supplement to Oracle Enterprise Edition Diagnostics and Tuning Packs. The DBAs use it predominantly for both reactive and proactive performance tuning. The custom alert function is used to notify DBAs of potential issues which require investigation. We use the Reports feature on occasion for presentations and data-sharing with management.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by our IT department to watch for database issues on oOraclecle and MSSQL environments. We use the info to determine if changes need to be made in the application code for our developers or support calls to the third party products we use. When issues arise we are able to give them info to find and fix any bugs.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for daily and forensic reporting of our production SQL database performance. It is currently being used by our data services and operations department to report performance and availability to the business. It provides a consistent dashboard that both teams utilize to agree on the same performance impact on our application.
Jason Brokaw | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is primarily used by the Business Intelligence department and now and then by the IT department. Currently, we use it to monitor our database systems, most especially our EHR system. DPA allows me to monitor day to day operations, the health of the database systems, and any special issues that arise in our EHR vendor's code. As a BETA client for our EHR vendor, I've used it to monitor new code that may be having an increased impact on the database and use DPA's reports to start the conversation with the developers.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) to check for reliability and speed of our databases and use the reporting to streamline our queries. We have had issues in the past due to slow response times from SQL servers and didn't know what was causing the issues. Using DPA allowed us to determine if it was hardware limitations or an issue in the query that was making the responses slow down.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is a powerful database performance analyzer tool that is vital to our business. It is utilized by the organization to monitor hundreds of SQL Server instances that support customer businesses. The graphs and dashboards provided by the tool grant us the quick visibility into potential performance culprits that could be impacting our customers.
January 29, 2019

What a tool !

Natasa Stojsic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DPA at Reliance is used within the IT department only. We monitor the performance of SQL queries as well as to see if we have any issues with the resources. I use the information provided by DPA to optimize the worst performing queries. I concentrate on instances with highest wait time and SQL with the highest percentage of instance execution time. We also use DPA to check for blocking and deadlocks.
John Kaba | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize the Trends Analysis to identify the most time intensive queries, as well as to see if we have a pattern of usage that would show us performance issues. We use the Current Tab to show us a real-time analysis of the queries that are currently running so that we can catch problem queries before they impact performance, and then we use the Resources Tab to monitor our Buffer Pool, Package Cache, and Catalog hit ratios as well as our memory and CPU utilization.
January 25, 2019

Database Administrator

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is primarily used to monitor the performance of critical databases in the environment. It has been very helpful in assisting the team in identifying performance bottlenecks and helping our DBAs to be proactive with potential performance issues before it reaches the end-users.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is currently used by the IT Department to monitor select SQL Server instances. It is used to help find and fix issues that affect those instances. Things like high memory, CPU, and blocking transactions are the most frequent use cases. I also use it to help find issues with query performance from in-house ETL, reporting, and ad hoc queries.
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