Intuitive Dashboards and Deep Query Insights for Proactive Database Troubleshooting
What do you like best about the product?
Excellent query-level performance analysis that makes it easy to spot slow or inefficient SQL queries. It provides both real-time and historical visibility into wait times, locks, and overall resource usage, which helps when troubleshooting. Support for multiple database platforms is also a big plus, especially in hybrid environments. The dashboards are intuitive and help DBAs and platform teams quickly narrow down the root cause instead of guessing. Alerts feel meaningful as well, enabling proactive issue detection rather than reactive firefighting.
What do you dislike about the product?
Initial setup and fine-tuning can feel complex, especially in large or distributed database environments. Licensing can also be on the higher side compared to some alternatives. Additionally, advanced customization of dashboards and alerts may take extra time and require additional learning to get everything configured the way I want.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helps us quickly spot database performance issues—such as slow queries, blocking, and resource contention—before they start impacting our applications. As a result, we’ve reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR), improved overall database stability, and made collaboration smoother across our DBA, application, and platform teams.
Clear, Real-Time Database Visibility That Speeds Up Troubleshooting
What do you like best about the product?
What I like best about SolarWinds Database Observability is how clearly it shows what’s really happening inside the database. Instead of just alerting that something is slow, it helps pinpoint why it’s slow whether it’s a long-running query, blocking issue, or resource bottleneck. The dashboards are easy to understand and give real-time visibility, which makes troubleshooting much faster and less stressful. Another big plus is that it supports multiple database platforms in one place, so you don’t need separate tools for different environments. Overall, it saves time, reduces guesswork, and helps teams be more proactive with database performance.
What do you dislike about the product?
One downside is that the initial setup and configuration can feel a bit complex, especially for teams that are new to database monitoring tools. Some of the advanced features also have a learning curve, so it may take time to fully understand and use the platform to its full potential. Additionally, pricing can be on the higher side for smaller teams or organizations with limited budgets.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Database Observability solves one of the biggest challenges most teams face: not knowing why databases slow down or fail. Instead of guessing based on partial data, the tool gives real-time visibility into database health, query performance, resource usage, and bottlenecks. This means issues that used to take hours to diagnose like blocked processes, inefficient queries, or resource contention can now be uncovered quickly and accurately. For me, this has translated into less firefighting and faster resolution times. I can proactively spot trends before they become outages, reduce the number of repeated performance incidents, and spend more time optimizing the environment instead of chasing alerts. The unified view of different database engines also helps simplify monitoring across the whole stack, so teams stay coordinated and efficient.
Clear, Real-Time Database Visibility with Fast Setup and Reliable Alerts
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about SolarWinds database observability is that it gives clear visibility into base performance without too much setup. Once it is connected, it starts showing useful information quickly, which helps save time. It is very helpful in finding slow queries and performance bottlenecks. Instead of guessing what is wrong, I can directly see which query or process is causing issues. The database is well organized and easy to understand, even when monitoring multiple databases. I don't need to jump between different tools to get basic performance details. Another thing I like is the real-time monitoring. It helps me see what is happening in the database at the exact moment when a problem occurs. It also provides historical data. which is useful when comparing current performance with the previous day or weeks. This helps identify patterns and recurring issues. The tool supports multiple database types , which is very useful when working with different environments like development, staging, and production. I also like how it shows CPU, memory, I/O, and times together, which makes troubleshooting much easier. Alerts are another strong point. The alerting system is reliable and helps notify the team before users even notice a problem.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I dislike is that the initial learning curve can be a bit high. New users may need some time to fully understand all the metrics. The interface can feel busy at times because there is a lot of data on one screen, which may be confusing for beginners. Pricing can be a concern for small teams or startups. especially if they only need basic monitoring. Sometimes the alert configuration feels complex, and fine-tuning alerts takes extra effort to avoid unnecessary notifications. the setup process for custom dashboards could be more user-friendly. Occasionally, the tool may feel heavy on system resources, especially when monitoring many databases at once. Documentation is helpful, but in some advanced cases, examples could be clearer. It would also be nice to have more flexible role-based access controls for large teams.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds database observability solves the problem of not knowing why a database is slow or unstable. Instead of relying on assumptions, it gives clear and actionable insights. It helps identify performance issues before they impact users, which improves application reliability. For backend and database teams, it reduces manual troubleshooting time because the root cause is visible in the dashboard. It benefits the operations team by improving uptime and stability, which is critical for production systems. The tool helps teams optimize database performance by highlighting inefficient queries and resource usage. It also supports better capacity planning since historical trends show when resources need to be scaled. For teams working in fast-paced environments, it improves response time during incidents, making debugging quicker and less stressful. it helps bridge the gap between developers and DBAs, because both can look at the same data and understand the issue. it helps teams stop blaming the application first .Many times the issue is in the database, and this tool makes that clear with proof. It improves team communication during incidents; developers, DBAs, and ops teams can all look at the same data instead of arguing based on assumptions. It reduces late-night firefighting because many issues are caught early through alerts and trends. It helps junior team members learn database behavior faster since they can visually see what causes performance drops. It supports cleaner release cycles. After deployment, it's easy to confirm whether database performance stayed healthy or not. It helps avoid over-scaling the database unnecessarily, saving costs by showing whether the problem is really resource-related or query-related. It brings confidence during high-traffic events because database load and behavior are visible in real time. It helps avoid guesswork during outages. Instead of checking the log randomly, the data clearly points to what is wrong. It makes post-incident reviews easier because you can go back in time and see exactly when performance started dropping. It reduces pressure on senior engineers, since the tool explains a lot through visuals and trends. It helps teams trust their database health, especially after big changes like migration or schema updates. It supports multi-team ownership where different services use the same database and problems need shared visibility. It improves long-term database planning because growth patterns are visible instead of hidden. It helps backend developers focus more on features, not constant performance tuning. It helps catch small performance issues before they grow into big outages. It gives confidence during database upgrades because you can monitor behavior closely before and after changes. It reduces the need to constantly tail logs, since most useful insights are already visible in the UI. It helps identify hidden performance killers, like background jobs or scheduled tasks running at the wrong time. It supports better collaboration with the QA team, especially when performance issues appear only under load. It helps backend developers validate optimization by clearly showing if changes actually improved performance. It makes database behavior less mysterious, especially for complex queries and locks. It saves time during root cause analysis because historical metrics are already linked together. It helps maintain stable SLAs. since performance drops can be detected early. It gives teams more control and predictability instead of blindly reacting to issues. Overall, SolarWinds database observability turns complex database behavior into clear insights, helping teams build faster, more reliable systems with less effort.
SolarWinds Review
What do you like best about the product?
I am using SolarWinds to monitors networks, servers, applications and databases from the one platform also it will instantly detect slowdowns, outages, or unusual traffic. It's visual graphs and alerts make monitoring simple, even for a beginners. It is ease to implement and suitable for small businesses to large enterprises.
What do you dislike about the product?
It will give us detailed reporting, generate performance, uptime and compliance reports easily. also have great customer support. Nothing to dislike about it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It has strong troubleshooting tools and also help with other things like it reduces manual IT tasks and save time.
Unmatched Database Visibility and Real-Time Insights
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about SolarWinds database observability is that it gives stellar visibility into what is happening inside the database. not just surface-level metrics. It helps understand why a database is slow, not just that it is slow. I really appreciate how it shows query performance in a simpler way. Slow queries, long-running queries, and blocked queries are easy to identify without digging through logs manually. Another good thing is the real-time monitoring. When something goes wrong, I can see it happening live instead of finding out later from users or alerts. From a backend developer's point of view, it helps connect application behavior with database impact. When an API suddenly becomes slow, I can quickly check if the issue is coming from the database side. I also like that it supports multiple database engines, so I don't need separate tools for different environments.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I don't like is that the initial setup can feel heavy. It takes some time to configure everything properly, especially in larger environments. The interface can feel too detailed at first. There is a lot of data on the screen, which can be overwhelming for new users. Another downside is cost. For small teams or startups, pricing may feel high compared to lighter monitoring tools. Some advanced features require fine-tuning to get meaningful alerts. Without running, alerts can feel noisy. Also, learning how to fully use all features takes time; it's not something you master in one day.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Database Observability solves the problem of not knowing what is happening inside the database until users complain. Many issues stay hidden until performance drops badly. The biggest benefit for me is early detection. Instead of reacting after an outage, I can see warning signs early, like rising query time or resource pressure. It also solves the problem of guesswork. Without proper visibility, database tuning often becomes trial and error. With this tool, decisions are based on actual data. From a backend developer's perspective, it helps debug production issues faster. when something slows down. I don't want to blame the app or the database blindly; I can clearly see where the issue is. Another big benefit is reduced downtime. Since problems are caught early, fixes can be applied before users are affected. It also improves team collaboration. Database admins, backend developers, and DevOps teams can all look at the same data and talk using facts instead of assumptions. The tool helps with capacity planning. By understanding trends, it becomes easier to decide when to scale or optimize instead of overprovisioning. It also helps keep SLAs and performance expectations under control. Metrics are clear, measurable, and trackable. For long-term projects, it builds confidence in production stability. Knowing the database is being observed properly reduces stress during release and traffic spikes. Another benefit is faster root cause analysis. When performance drops, I don't have to jump between multiple tools. Most of the needed database details are already visible in one place. It also helps reduce blame games during incidents. Instead of backend teams blaming the database or DB teams blaming the application, everyone can clearly see the data and focus on fixing the issue. SolarWinds database observability also supports clearer release cycles. After deployments, I can quickly verify if new queries or changes are causing a load or slowdown in the database. One more useful point is better sleep during on-call rotations. Knowing alerts are meaningful and database health is monitored properly reduces anxiety during nights and weekends. Another helpful point is less manual database checking. I don't need to constantly log in to the database to run checks or queries just to see if something looks wrong; most of the important signals are already visible. It also helps with confidence during traffic spikes. When usage suddenly increases, I can quickly see how the database is reacting and whether I can handle the load, instead of guessing or waiting for something to break.
Deep query analysis has reduced MTTA and MTTR and now safeguards critical customer workloads
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is as a database performance monitoring tool. My day-to-day purpose of utilizing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is for monitoring my critical database systems for their performance issues, including any execution plan changes, any index recommendations, and what exactly is running at that time to identify which caused the performance challenges for my system, which cannot be tracked through other available logs or metrics-based monitoring because this is something beyond those capabilities. I need a tool that can deep dive into the database system and identify the problematic queries, problematic plans, load on system, and IO status for performance of the database.
In my daily work, I use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for additional scenarios where it has been particularly helpful. The other two things are the IO-related metrics, including disk IO and whether your disk IO performance is going down or up. When you go to the other monitoring tools, it captures the IO, memory, and CPU pressure at the server level. However, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a tool that divides this between the server and the SQL or the database level. This actually helps you to understand if your CPU is running at 100 percent on one particular server because of SQL Server or because of some other OS issues. This bifurcation really helps you to decide. Another thing is the alerting and monitoring and reporting feature available in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer add-ons, which actually helps you to create some daily performance reports or some basic alerts if you do not have other tools available in the system.
What is most valuable?
The best features SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers include duplicate plan or multiple plan identification, anomaly detection, and daily reports.
The duplicate plan identification and anomaly detection features in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer help me in my work by addressing queries that are running fine for days or a month and suddenly start causing problems. When you go to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, it will show you that this particular query is having five duplicate plans. For one particular plan running fine for a month, suddenly one or two plans are created which are the bad plans and causing issues. You can just go to the system and flush those plans and your system starts recovering itself. Anomaly detection detects if there are some anomalies in the performance or configurations in the system, or something abnormally comes to the system and is causing performance issues. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer detects that and highlights it over the dashboard for your intervention or for your quick action.
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. Each performance issue identification and resolution through SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is actually resolving my MTTA and MTTR, which directly or indirectly is impacting my CSAT.
About the outcomes from using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, those metrics are not available, but we clearly see a downtrend when we put systems in SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and the same issue reoccurred. The MTTA and MTTR actually reduced a lot because it gives you a smart tool, a DBA smart tool to deep down and drill down the issues quickly.
What needs improvement?
In addition to the features SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer offers, I wish it had more robust performance monitoring and analyzing features for PostgreSQL databases. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is very strong when we come to SQL Server, but it is still lagging when it comes to PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is an upcoming enterprise-level database technology in the market. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still struggling to have a solid monitoring and performance analyzer in comparison to SQL Server. This is one of the features I am looking to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to develop as soon as possible.
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer can be improved in two areas. One is more and robust performance monitoring and analyzing features for PostgreSQL databases. Second, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is still lagging for monitoring the cloud instances of databases including Aurora DB and Cloud SQL DB. These two areas are where SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer needs to work extensively to make this monitoring and performance analyzing robust. From an operational perspective, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer still has a limitation of 250 licenses per instance. This is really a problem for someone with larger server sizes available and more instances running on the same SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer URL. SolarWinds should look at how they can increase that threshold because there should not be a limit of 250 instances.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for the last nine years for SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and Oracle databases.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's scalability is easy to scale. The only limitation is that one installation can support 250 instances to be monitored. If you have more than that, you need to create two setups for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer. Otherwise, scalability has no issues. You can keep installing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer on different servers and start monitoring the instances.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is average. Sometimes I need to chase them for the updates. They are not too prompt, but it is average support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used a different solution including AppDynamics. Those solutions are not database-specific. Those are a mixed bag, as they can monitor synthetics, they can monitor applications, and they can also do a bit of everything. After a long series of technical evaluation and POCs, I found that SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is one of the best options if you consider only the database.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer as I mentioned that when we start using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, my MTTA and MTTR reduced and my customer satisfaction goes up. Those metrics or exact numbers are something not available right now for me to share.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been great. The team is great, very collaborative, very informative, and flexible about meetings and discussions. It is overall a very good experience procuring licenses and having support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, I evaluated other options including AppDynamics and Datadog.
What other advice do I have?
A quick specific example of a time when SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helped me solve a tricky database issue is when a query is running fine for a whole week or month and suddenly it starts creating noise. It is very difficult for a DBA to identify what exactly got changed, but when you reach out to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, it can give you a useful insight indicating there may be a situation where suddenly the count of execution of those queries suddenly increased, which caused the system issues. The execution plan of those queries is just shuffled to the bad plan because of the parameter sniffing. These two are the most common issues I am usually able to track through SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer in my day-to-day life.
My advice for others looking into using SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is to appreciate the simplicity and direct awareness or the pointed issues that help you to identify the performance challenges of your system. I have rated this product a ten.
Unified Monitoring Made Easy with Real-Time Insights
What do you like best about the product?
What I like best about SolarWinds observability is that it gives a clear and unified view of the entire system in one place. Instead of checking multiple tools for servers, applications logs, and performance metrics, I can see everything together. This saves time and reduces confusion when monitoring complex environments. Another thing I really like is how easy it is to start using. The setup process is straightforward, and once it's running, the dashboard already provides useful insights without needing heavy customization. This is very helpful when you want quick visibility rather than spending days configuring monitoring. The real-time monitoring and alerts are also strong. If something goes wrong like high CPU usage, slow response time, or service downtime, I get notified quickly. This helps me act before small issues turn into bigger problems. I also like that it supports hybrid and cloud environments well. Whether resources are on-prem, in the cloud, or spread across multiple services, SolarWinds observability can monitor them together, which fits modern infrastructure needs.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I dislike about SolarWinds Observability is that pricing can feel high, especially for small teams or startups. As usage grows, costs can increase, which requires careful planning. Another drawback is that the UI can feel dense at times. While it's powerful, new users may feel overwhelmed by the number of metrics, graphs, and options available. it takes some time to understand what really matters and what can be ignored. Customization can also be a bit limited in some areas. While default dashboards are useful, creating very specific or highly customized views sometimes requires extra effort or workarounds. Sometimes alert tuning needs manual adjustment; if not configured properly, alerts can become noisy, which reduces their effectiveness. And also, learning advanced features like deep tracing or complex correlations takes time, especially for teams new to observability tools.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds observability solves the major problem of lack of visibility across modern systems. In today's environment, applications are distributed across servers, containers, cloud services, and networks. Without proper observability, it's very hard to understand what is happening when performance drops or errors occur. SolarWinds brings all this data together into one platform, which helps me see the full picture. It also solves the problem of slow issue detection and troubleshooting. Earlier, identifying the root cause of an issue meant checking logs, metrics, and dashboards separately. With SolarWinds observability metrics, logs, traces, and events are connected. This helps me quickly trace the problem from the user impact down to the exact service or resource causing the issue. Another big benefit is reduced downtime. Since the system provides real-time monitoring and proactive alerts, I can respond faster to anomalies. This prevents outages or minimizes their impact, which is critical for production systems and customer-facing applications. SolarWinds observability also helps solve the issue of tool sprawl. Instead of maintaining multiple monitoring tools for infrastructure, applications, and logs, I can rely on one platform. This simplifies operations, reduces overhead, and makes monitoring easier to manage. It improves team collaboration and communication as well. When everyone looks at the same dashboards and metrics, discussions become more focused and data-driven. There is less guesswork and fewer arguments about what went wrong. Another important benefit is capacity and performance planning. By analyzing historical data, I can understand usage patterns, predict growth, and plan scaling decisions more confidently. This helps avoid overprovisioning or sudden performance issues. SolarWinds Observability also supports hybrid and cloud-native environments, which is very useful for modern architectures. Whether services are running on VMs, containers, or cloud platforms, I can monitor them together without changing tools. It also helps reduce operational stress. Instead of reacting blindly to incidents, I have visibility, context, and data to make informed decisions. This improves confidence and efficiency in day-to-day operations. So SolarWinds observability benefits me by providing clear visibility, faster troubleshooting, reduced downtime, better collaboration, and smarter decision-making. It turns complex systems into something understandable and manageable, which is extremely valuable for production and business-critical environments.
Comprehensive and Intuitive Database Monitoring with Room for Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I like how SolarWinds Database Observability offers real-time insights and easy-to-understand dashboards. It helps identify performance issues quickly and provides actionable recommendations, making database management more efficient and proactive.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I dislike is that it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming for new users due to the amount of data it presents. The sheer volume of metrics and alerts might take some time to fully grasp, especially for teams without a lot of experience in database monitoring.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Database Observability helps identify performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot issues in real-time, which saves time and prevents disruptions. It gives clear insights into database health and query performance, making it easier to optimize and maintain smooth operations. This has significantly improved our ability to proactively manage databases and reduce downtime.
SolarWinds database
What do you like best about the product?
We can moniter multiple database record in single interface.it is easy to implement in any organisations to moniter multiple real time data in single frame .It can save man power in organisations.Also it leads to more occuracacy to make table and daigram in our oganisation.
What do you dislike about the product?
to handle it in organisation it require trannied person to mange it . Some time it is costly then other software.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
By implementing solarwind database into our organisation we can save our time to make different reports in different formate .Also manager has difficult to analyse all report in defferent formate.its make our work easier and also save company time and money and increase proffit .
Solar Databases for high performance
What do you like best about the product?
optimized performance with this product.
What do you dislike about the product?
lot of alerts for unnecessary minor events
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Slow Query Identification & Troubleshooting
