SolarWinds Database Observability Reviews & Product Details

Ability to see current activities from multiple aspect/view is best thing for me.

When there is a an issue with any Server and need to quickly narrow down to the right place of root cause this is a tool allows me to focus on right places and remove all sorts of noise from data.

Tagging and Annotation is another great feature.

Ability to see the historical details/plan/ is very helpful while working on Query performance. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1) I can not search the specific text on any of the sub screen when drill down to session/sql/machine etc... tabs.

2) there is only one way to search the SQL by actual text is "SQL TEXT" and that is not complete. it would be good to have some place we can search specific sql I am looking for.

3) any adhoc sql/queries are not grouped to gather (like procedures) and hence its historical details can not be viewed. it will be good to have some way of connecting those adhoc sqls using same plan and being able to generate execution history.

4) on the same adhoc plan tab, for any given plan we have to drill down each sql manually one by one. it would be god to have some kind of summary popup/tool-tip when we hover over the plan in DPA. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best thing about DPA is it identifies the performance issue with in seconds and by focusing on wait stats identifying the root cause is very easy. We can see instantaneously if blocking was occurring at any specific time and what were the root blockers. The good thing is it gets down to minutes and even seconds of time in terms of granularity. It also allows to set up various custom alerts which is very beneficial Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The thing I found to be wanting in solarwinds DPA is the graphs for various metrics can capture time - value pair of only one metric. I can't capture multiple instances of a metric (for example - multiple replication distribution agents latency values ) from with in DPA Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The software is easy to upgrade and administer.

SolarWinds provides good support.

The main dashboard shows which database instances are experiencing the greatest wait times. It also shows those with the greatest upward wait times. There is a status summary with counts that are color coded for quickly finding issues. Below that, is a listing of all the instances with a color coded status across multiple categories. From there, you can start drilling down into specific instances and see top SQL statements, Waits, Programs, Users, etc. It is very easy to see trends or if it was just an abnormality. You can see across days or drill down into specific hours. It also provides advisors and quick resources (e.g. wait descriptions). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The cost for licensing Oracle RAC instances is expensive. Each instance costs $3,495 at list price which adds up quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can easily find the most expensive queries. we have found that DBA's and developers a like both like that application, I work in support so i can also see how the server is performing and then contact the DBA or Deve guys to say ... hay... look at what your latest software patch is doing to the DB. one of my favorite things is that you can pull data from Database Performance Analyzer into some of solarwinds other software like into Software Application module. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

SSAS .. when are we going to be able to monitor that? I'm sorry to say that the Price is the thing that is the thing I dislike the most. The amount of time i have to say well another license will cost £X that is when they normal leave my desk very quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the monitoring of access and commit times. The amount of I/O tracking is amazing. It helps to quickly drill down to the root cause, which helps in a more expedient determination of our issues. I have also noticed that we get a more heads-up on issues that have yet to be reported to us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have not found anything so far. I really like this feature all around. The main page is a little overwhelming at first for users, but once they learn where everything is located, the main page is perfect. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I personally love the real time aspect to troubleshooting. It is often something other products can deflect. It fully integrates into other Solarwinds products like NPM. Cross vendor support is also a great benefit, SQL, Oracle, MySQl, SAP, and cloud offerings.

The live charts are worth their weight in gold. being able to see and then go back in time to check before the issue happened is wonderful and one of its best features. I have used other products that over look this and the fact you can alter the granularity yourself is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

some of the features are needed to get the most out of the other solarwinds products. you often feel like you have to buy the set to get the most befit.The cost of the product can quickly rise. The start price is great but in reality its vastly higher when you factor in a larger environment. I know its cheaper then other solutions however when you factor in you really need other modules to make sure you're getting most out of it (SAM) it really does rack up the cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that I can very easy to identify performance issues and find the most of the time find the root cause in a single pane of glass. This is really helpful for example when users are complaining of slowness issues on a business critical application and this tool can potentially provide the answer in a short of amount of time if the issue lies on at the database level. There are many positives to the product, but being able to pinpoint an issue is huge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It would be nice to be able to create traces on the fly based on findings from DPA. It would also help be nice if the product were more customizable. More intuitive reporting would be nice, but I've found that Solarwinds reporting in general is sort of difficult and is not limited to just the Database Performance Analyzer module. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Even though SQL server has the information available to your DBA, it doesn't compile and present it the same way that DPA does. Not only that, but you can title specific sql actions to maintain a visual on the actions that are common and causing the highest wait times. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike that the trial was only 14 days... ` Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's very simple to deploy and starts collecting data as soon as we link it to a database. I like that we can drill down to one second interval. Plus it retains the data for 5 years. One of the greatest advantage is that it as minimal impact on the monitored SQL server.

There is the resource adviser which gives us an idea of where the issue probably is and where to start the investigation.

We use this in addition to SolarWinds Orion SAM - which as AppInsight for SQL template. This gives us additional metrics we can look for to see if it's more of a server issue (memory, CPU, storage, etc).

During the first usage we were immediately able to see the high wait times and that it was attributed to the NETWORK_IO. This is something we can investigate and is in our control. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would be nice to customize the views, similar to Orion. So different users have a customized view. The user administration is pretty basic and isn't built for multi tenancy. But this tool is primarily for the DBAs and I have not seen anyone else use it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DPA makes troubleshooting database problems easy for those that do not have a database background. Regardless of your knowledge of database, you will be able to find root cause in DPA. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The architecture limits a single poller to about 250 instances. Each poller has it's own corresponding database. I would prefer that there is a higher level parent / child relationship instead of breaking out each pair. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.