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What a tool !
January 29, 2019

What a tool !

Natasa Stojsic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

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.
  • DPA tells you if there are missing indexes.
  • DPA gives you predicate warnings for SQL queries.
  • DPA monitors main resource performance counters for the VM and host and also read and write latencies for data partitions.
  • We DBAs often don't have enough insight into the type of hardware being used. For example I'd like to know if our SAN presents new pages as pre-initialized or the operating system re-initialize the pages.
  • I'd like to be able to see in DPA if our infrastructure performs physical file fragmentation on our SAN.
  • I would like to see IO blocks size that was used for SQL Server and other internals from infrastructure side that we DBAs don't have visibility.
  • We are very satisfied with the product. SolarWinds DPA has had a positive impact on our business objectives.
It is easy with SolarWinds DPA to see the database block chains and drill into what is the root blocker process. DPA is less detail oriented when it comes to the infrastructure side of data stores. When infrastructure provisions the SQL server I would like to be able to see for example if the partitions used for transaction log and main data drives are on separate devices/different volumes to reduce IO contention.