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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (15th)
SolarWinds Database Perform...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.2%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is 3.5%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer3.5%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.2%
Other93.3%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…
SufiyanAminu - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operation Center Engineer at Central Bank of Nigeria
Comprehensive monitoring has delivered accurate insights and supports reliable banking operations
In terms of technical support, there was a time we experienced issues, but that has been resolved. We encountered a downtime and attempted to contact technical support, which was quite challenging, but that has improved after we reported the issue and everything is now fine. Therefore, we do not have any issues with technical support currently. Regarding the AI functionality and observability, we tried to understand how the AI functionality works, and I believe there is a gap in our understanding. I do not know if a session can be organized for our team to gain more insight into the AI module or functionality. For now, the only two aspects that caused me some difficulties are support and AI. Aside from that, everything works flawlessly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"In IT, problems often occur in areas such as applications, web interfaces, or databases. The tool allows users to easily determine the root cause of these issues, whether they stem from the network layer, database layer, or elsewhere."
"The platform solves and prevents delays in receiving answers from databases."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support for older databases and the ability to manage them in a centralized dashboard."
"Real-time monitoring in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very useful for maintaining database performance, as many of our customers have been using multiple instances of this solution."
"What I like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is that it's a powerful solution that lets me advise customers about performance, and it also gives a lot of supporting information."
"DPA, for us, breaches that gap and it gives us a real nice, very concise graphical interface and visibility into the database performance itself."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer has positively impacted my organization by monitoring my critical systems serving millions of customers with a couple of hundred licenses of SQL SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is anomaly detection. It alerts you when things outside the norm are happening, and the feature that analyzes your indexes informs you if you have wide or overlapping indexes. It also helps identify SQL query bottlenecks, letting you know if something is taking longer than usual, if a query plan has changed, and if you need to update statistics. In terms of usage, it is straightforward to use, learn and understand. The patching process is smooth and explains each feature, including links to external resources for further reading."
 

Cons

"Scalability is what I mentioned earlier, regarding room for improvement. It doesn't seem to scale out to an environment as large as ours, with just a single monitoring server."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"Tech support has been okay, not that great, but they made sure that we got what we were looking for."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should include more details on how everything works."
"I would rate their technical support a little lower than expected, so there is room for improvement."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still lagging for monitoring the cloud instances of databases including Aurora DB and Cloud SQL DB."
"The solution should add little details on the server so that an independent team could easily do the implementation."
"There is room for improvement with the pricing of the platform."
"I do not think that SolarWinds support is very good because it just takes too long to solve the problem."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should be easy to implement and it should have more facilities to make it better."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should be easy to implement and it should have more facilities to make it better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"The pricing of the solution is average."
"I don't remember the exact licensing cost for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, but it's within the range of $2,000 to $3,000 a year."
"The pricing is fairly reasonable, and it becomes more cost-effective with larger volumes of instances."
"Customers need to pay for the subscription-based license annually."
"It could be less expensive."
"There are no extra costs for maintenance or using the solution's support."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a little bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
In IT, problems often occur in areas such as applications, web interfaces, or databases. The tool allows users to easily determine the root cause of these issues, whether they stem from the network...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer does not have an anomaly detection feature. To make SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer closer to a ten, I would like to see additional features. It is...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
I have experience with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, and I implemented it for a few customers. I have 11 years of experience and I work with the center of excellence team. Basically, wh...
 

Also Known As

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
Confio, SolarWinds DPA, Ignite8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
GSI Commerce, Liquid Digital Media, ProLogis, Indiana University
Find out what your peers are saying about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.