Item: Spotlight
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Spotlight provides a variety of insights into our SQL server. Used primarily in the IT department, it notifies us of stress on the server and allows users to help target specific processes contributing to that stress. It also allows us to rewind to the time a problem occurs and see a snapshot of what was happening, which is useful when trying to identify the cause of off-hours issues.

Pros and Cons

Great SQL server monitoring
Rewind and playback of previous times

Some things like the "server health" ratings are tied to preset properties and are less useful if those are not important in your environment.
It can be challenging to adjust thresholds to try to make alerting and status more accurate.

Return on Investment

Spotlight is reasonably inexpensive, and any one of the multiple things we use it for more than justifies the cost.

Support Rating

Though our support needs have been minimal, we have gotten good responses when we have needed it.

Key Insights

Do you think Spotlight delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Spotlight's feature set?

Yes

Did Spotlight live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Spotlight go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Spotlight again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server)

Likelihood to Recommend

Spotlight is great when you need a tool to give a quick look at a SQL server as a whole. It gives you the ability to see a lot of things, which can be vital in diagnosing problems or identifying stressors. Less great is the open-end of some of the diagnoses it makes, and things it identifies as "problems" (unless you love users coming to you and saying something like "Spotlight says there's a problem with our page latch!!!").

Spotlight is a great tool for insight into SQL Server

Overall Satisfaction with Spotlight