Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

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

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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

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

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

26 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is SolarWinds SQL Sentry?

SolarWinds SQL Sentry is designed to help data professionals optimize SQL Server database performance in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. SQL Sentry delivers metrics to help users find and fix database performance problems and provides scalability, boasting demonstrated success monitoring…

What is dbForge Studio (Edge)?

dbForge Studio is provided by Devart and is a universal front-end client for database management, administration and development. Devart's GUI tool provides utilities to compare, synchronize, and back up databases (e.g. MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc.) with scheduling, and includes the…

Return to navigation

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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

(1-25 of 113)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Stan York | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Identifies objects causing bottleneck by real wait time
  • Identifies specific section of a large query that needs attention
  • Lets you see what index is actually being used
  • Helps you see if CPU, RAM or DISK is the limiting resource
  • View Plan Details is actually a bit weaker than SSMS because all the lines are the same width
  • The "View SQL Text" viewer could be fancier - but it does clearly identify the problem section
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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).
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Nikhil Kumar Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Multi Vendor Databases Monitoring
  • Agentless Monitoring
  • Less Dependency on DB Admins
  • Less Resources consumption on target databases
  • API based integrations
  • Cloud Database Monitoring such as Google native SQL service
  • Modern (no SQL ) database monitoring
  • Dashboard Flexibility
  • Reporting Flexibility
Darryl Hawes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The alert configuration is very robust, allowing simple OOTB alerts as well as complex query-based alerts.
  • Blocking event tracking makes it easy to identify if a user's performance issue is a truly server-related performance problem.
  • Historical tracking of queries allows me to easily identify frequently used statements that might need tuning.
  • Some of the navigation leads to points that cannot be easily backed out of.
  • Some navigation points lead around in circles.
  • I would like to see index usage statistics as well as fragmentation.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The product is great at visualizing the data you need for administration and performance tuning, making it understandable in seconds. A database like Oracle has AWR reports - many pages long, all text, hard to read. SQL Server has dynamic management views - good stuff but not so easily accessible. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) lays it out so it is quickly comprehensible and actionable.
  • DPA tells us what's really going on. Example: the developer says this stored procedure is running super slowly in this RDBMS but runs like lightning on this other one. They've tried to tune it to no avail. So we spend just a few minutes with DPA investigating the situation and we find that the stored proc is running fine. Instead, it is the application's attempt to access the metadata about the proc that is slow. This led to caching the metadata and now the 'slow' proc is running great! Without DPA it would have been a long time before we got to looking at the right code to tweak.
  • It's great that we can use the built-in alerts functionality to create custom alerts. The custom alerts can gather information for the databases we are monitoring or from the data DPA collects which go beyond the database and into other relevant pieces like the OS, storage and the network.
  • It's a great product - they do most things right. Maybe I'll say keep working on the UI so I can get to the info I need with even fewer clicks.
  • One feature a competitor of DPA has that looks useful is mapping out when jobs are run and being able to map that time-wise against when problems occur.
Gus Gwynne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Anomaly detection powered by machine learning - new in version 12, greatly love that statistical analysis
  • Compare workload versus past on daily basis and total, it really helps us to see big picture of growth and make capacity considerations
  • Intuitive performance analysis - easyly examine the problems and find the root cause
  • In the last two versions 12.0 and 12.1 SolarWinds has made great enhancements. I do not have a thing that I currently want to be changed. There are some cosmetics in the user interface but do not think that they are problems.
March 22, 2022

DPA: FTW.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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).
Jennifer Aguilar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Anomaly Detection.
  • Optimizing Database Performance.
  • Tuning Advisors and Query Wait Time Improvements.
  • Integration with Orion Platform.
  • Product Cost is High.
  • Anomaly Detection is only available for certain Database attributes (Wait Time).
Mike Saedi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It allows us to have a gateway to the databases that the users would not normally have access to.
  • It allows the database admins to not have to provide analysis as users can do their own through the interface.
  • It's a quick place to do an initial view into performance issues for DBA.
  • Would be nice to have more granular permissions.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Tuning
  • Deadlock issues
  • Blocking
  • Alerts
  • Reports
  • Performance tuning
  • Graphical representation of SQL agent jobs
  • Easy to create any graphs by adding tables or columns
  • Change the home page for more options
  • Best possible recommendations
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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
  • Everything is displayed visually, if you need detailed metrics, you have to extract manually, it could use a report writer with export to Excel.
  • When a SQL statement is very long running, i.e. longer than the display interval, the display says that there are no statistics, it should on the other hand, show that the SQL statement is still running.
  • When you name a SQL statement, it should be by DB, rather than global
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Speed
  • Ease of Use
  • Appearance
  • Detail
  • Setting up alerts and blackouts could use improvement
  • Should be able to flip between SQL ID and hash plan for queries
  • Some queries that run on the database instances themselves could use tuning
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Immediate bottlenecks on the database tier.
  • Performance tuning.
  • Historical reports.
  • More details around the specific alerts which are raised on the console should be considered.
  • More information from a host layer monitoring could be handy as well.
  • A single layout for the report for all the different instances of DPA would be really handy. It is just tedious to go granular for all the instances across the landscape.
Return to navigation