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,…
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Spotlight
Score 7.1 out of 10
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Spotlight from Quest Software is a database performance monitoring option.
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SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Spotlight
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SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Spotlight
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Community Pulse
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Spotlight
Considered Both Products
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
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Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
DPA is a market leader and goes beyond what most products in the space can offer. It's a battle between SQL Sentry and DPA for the lead and everybody has their favorite. I personally prefer DPA for ease of install, management and better tuning and query advice options.
Our organization has not compared SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer with any other products. We selected SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for the simple fact that we use other SolarWinds products, and we wanted a solution that both compliments and integrates with …
We have evaluated AppDynamics and Datadog along with Solarwinds DPA and definitely the winner is SolarWinds. We have been using it for the past 5 years. It has better alert functionality and is easy to use while providing great analytics.
We were a long-time user of Database Analyzer even before it was acquired by SolarWinds. We did look at other applications in the past. As it has been a long period, its not beneficial to mention here. We have seen some other options like from Microsoft and Oracle which are …
We use both DPA and Red Gate SQL Monitor (SQM) as third-party tools, and Query Store within SSMS. SQM's alerting and reporting capabilities exceed those of DPA in terms of being able to present single-purpose tiles for a server, where excessive smoothing doesn't hide some …
Solarwinds DPA came with a 30-day trial. We used that to evaluate the product, and when a P1 incident occurred with no DBA available we installed another 30-day trial. Its performance was good enough that we bought it that day!
There are some overlaps, but DPA has a lot more historical information that allows us to analyze statements over time rather than just see what is going on at that moment.
I have used Spotlight (for Oracle on RAC) but it has been several years. The dashboard was crisp, clean, and intuitive, but the tool had a significant overhead. However, no competitor made a tool that met our needs at the time. I have also used Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager in …
At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA …
A couple of years ago I did research on a number of products to assist me in providing on-time accurate information about our customer databases. I had a couple in mind back then. I then attended our local Oracle Users Group Annual Conference, where a large number of vendors …
At the time of evaluation, this product was similar in terms of cost but DPA was far better to access query performance issues which were the most important aspect for us. Redgate at the time was heavier on resource monitoring which was less important at the time.
I like the web-based interface and wait stats analysis of DPA. Some of the other tools have more features, but DPA feels like a more polished tool, and the features it has work well. It's been a while since I've looked at the competitors' products. DPA works well for us, and …
The SolarWinds DPA dashboard provides an overview of all monitored instances with detailed response time data captured in the performance data warehouse for every interaction, Database Performance Analyzer helps to identify long-term trends, isolate recurring problems, and …
SolarWinds is much more intuitive and really helpful as a starting point for our monitoring purposes. Even the junior level colleagues can really make sense of the systems which could be facing any potential issues and act accordingly. It also provides some guidance towards what …
Spotlight is more usable, better at meeting requirements. Integration with Xero is one of the strengths (as others integrate too but Spotlight seems better connection). We also like the way group consolidation work in Spotlight. If your focus is on comprehensive, flexible, and …
I think Dell is better with its dashboard and ease of use, but SQL Sentry is better at customization. We used Spotlight at my previous company, and SQLSentry at my current company.
I believe that SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a great choice for an organization that does not have a specific DBA or one that is still growing into the role. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is filled with hints, tips, and explanations of the various readings and metrics. This is very useful to help understand what is happening and why, what it means, and what some potential solutions are towards remediating any issues. This is extremely valuable for our development team, allowing them to be more proactive with the queries they write in viewing how they perform and where bottlenecks might be.
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!!!").
Resiliency of the Monitoring checks after the server underwent maintenance reboot. My experience is the monitor (Action) needs to be started manually. If possible it can automatically detect service/server then start to monitor again when system is back up.
We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business
I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.
the platform offers a clean, easy to use interface. You can customize reports and dashboard. Integration is also pretty good, you can integrate to Xero, QBO and MYOB and excel spreadsheets. It also offers very broad supporting documents and webinars. There are only two downside of Spotlight; learning curve (it could be a bit difficult at the beginning to learn the system) and price point (For small businesses, Spotlight Reporting can be seen as relatively expensive compared to other reporting tools)
I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.
Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.
I have used Spotlight (for Oracle on RAC) but it has been several years. The dashboard was crisp, clean, and intuitive, but the tool had a significant overhead. However, no competitor made a tool that met our needs at the time. I have also used Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager in more than one company. That tool is helpful for a larger environment than we currently have. But I think it is better at alerting than DPA but worse at just about everything else. The good thing is you can flag an alert as acknowledged, so you stop getting emails. The bad thing is I don't think I could use it to troubleshoot issues like I do with DPA. I do not have enough experience to provide helpful feedback on the others selected.
Spotlight is more usable, better at meeting requirements. Integration with Xero is one of the strengths (as others integrate too but Spotlight seems better connection). We also like the way group consolidation work in Spotlight. If your focus is on comprehensive, flexible, and visually rich reports and dashboards for multiple clients or entities, Spotlight is a clear choice.
Paid for itself in days. We had a stored procedure that could not meet its SLA, DPA highlighted the issue and contributed to the resolution.
We had a stored procedure that we were able to calculate as running in 9 milliseconds, unfortunately, we had transactions coming in 7 milliseconds, resulting in duplicate transactions, indicating that a mutex function was needed.
It had a positive impact in two main areas. First, it was easy for the DBA team to configure it to watch and alert on the most important instances. And second, it was very easy to provide clients read-only access to the dashboard so they could watch their servers as well, i.e. they weren't always pestering us for current status.
