BMC Helix Monitor vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

BMC Helix Monitor vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

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Helped 846,617 peers since 2012

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

BMC Helix Monitor

Ranking in Event Monitoring

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...

Ranking in Event Monitoring

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Monitor is 10.6%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Event Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Jijil GHosh

ITSM Solution Architect at CyberMAK Information Systems W.L.L.

An agentless tool that offers great scalability and a straightforward setup phase

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that BMC Helix Monitor is an agentless tool, because of which you don't need to deploy agents on each and every system in your IT environment. If you want to install an agent on each and every system, manpower is needed, while there is no such need when one uses BMC Helix Monitor. BMC Helix Monitor provides you with details on asset relationships. If a particular printer is connected to a core network printer or a particular desktop is connected to the servers, the product scans and gives you a free structure of relationship, which doesn't need any human intervention, making it an automated process. BMC Helix Monitor gives you the entire information about your assets, because of which you can sit in one place and keep track of whether a particular asset is online or offline.

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SeniorDB3550

Senior DBA Lead at a government with 10,001+ employees

Proactively alerts us on a wide variety of issues, but it has not scaled out well with our large environment

We get hundreds of alerts per day, because we manage so many different servers and databases, that alert us to disk space issues, query issues, a wide variety of things. We take that information and we're able to make proactive decisions as to what we need to do. In terms of the solution helping us with performance monitoring and diagnostics, sticking with the alerting feature, we're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action. Overall, it has allowed us to do more with database management and run more databases on a given server, because we're able to isolate issues quicker and take the proactive steps necessary to correct them. We were spread out with many servers running databases. We've consolidated some 80 servers down to just a handful. We're getting more bang for the buck out of the equipment that we have.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is easy."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that BMC Helix Monitor is an agentless tool, because of which you don't need to deploy agents on each and every system in your IT environment."

"It is evolving more and more into artificial intelligence."

"The service operations monitoring features are valuable."

"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."

"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."

"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."

"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."

"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."

"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."

"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. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."

Cons

"The solution's GUI and some patching-related information are areas with shortcomings where enhancements are needed, though I believe they are areas that fall under BMC's roadmap for the future."

"I feel that the tool's stability has some scope for improvement."

"The initial setup of the solution is complex."

"The product must provide more information and dashboards."

"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."

"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."

"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."

"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."

"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s price could be improved."

"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix Monitor?

The service operations monitoring features are valuable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Monitor?

The product’s price could be improved. The company is quite flexible with pricing. Legacy products need to revise their pricing strategy without losing their position in the market. The legacy mode...

What needs improvement with BMC Helix Monitor?

I feel that the tool's stability has some scope for improvement.

What do you like most about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement with IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

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. In future releases, I w...

What is your primary use case for IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes.

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Product Reports

Event Monitoring

Download BMC Helix Monitor product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

Download IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server report

Also Known As

Helix Monitor

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager

Overview

BMC Helix Monitor is a SaaS solution that combines broad monitoring and event management capabilities with a containerized microservices architecture. Improve performance across complex environments while supporting the agility and speed required by digital businesses.

BMC

SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server helps database administrators to find and fix SQL Server performance problems in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Unlike its competition, it provides effective scalability, advanced SQL query analysis and optimization, prescriptive analysis with corrective SQL scripts, powerful automated alert responses, broad PowerShell integration, complete customization, and extensive support for current and legacy SQL Server and Windows.

IDERA

Sample Customers

Grupo Moura, Goodman, Aspect, Telefónica Colombia, Fujitsu

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

BMC Helix Monitor vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server