Nutanix Database Service vs Quest Foglight for Databases comparison

"What I like about this solution is that it's more reliable compared to other solutions."

"It has wizards that are very helpful in the installation, and it handles automation as well as virtualization once deployed."

"We have an enterprise-level backup product that we're required to use, so we don't rely on Era's version. [But] it could be an awesome first-line backup. It's very elegant the way they designed it. It's quick and it doesn't take up nearly as much storage space as traditional backups. It would definitely help to save on tier-one storage."

"The solution allows quick setting up of new development environments and ensures the use of the storage more efficiently. It manages to create new clients to be utilized for development or reporting."

"With Oracle, it took around one hour to refresh the database and now, with Nutanix, it takes a quarter of that time."

"Overall, the solution is very good. It's easy to use and simple to handle many actions, such as VM cloning, testing, and prediction."

"The patching is the most valuable feature. We spent a lot of time and effort on the patching of our SQL instances after hours. With Nutanix Era, you can schedule and automate them during your normal operational hours (during the day). You schedule all the patching, then everything happens automatically with minor tickets from the engineer. So, our patching, which took four hours, went down to an hour for the engineer. This is much better for us from a return on investment perspective."

"The solution enables us to speed up the creation of new instances."

"Its reporting capabilities are immense."

"The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact."

"The ability to monitor multiple database platforms streamlines our database operations. The single pane of glass is what we were really after when we picked Foglight. We knew we wanted something that could monitor cross-platform because it does save a lot of time to use the same tool. The one thing that I like with Foglight is that we don't have to install anything locally, like agents, directly on the database servers. That was also a big seller because it simplifies things."

"The alarms alert proactively if there are any potential or ongoing issues with the databases that we support. That means we can take preventive or corrective action before the issue becomes a big issue. And the SQL PI features enable us to drill down into performance issues in our databases so that we can improve performance, which is important."

"Foglight's Change Tracking capabilities are another huge feature. It is wonderful to be able to do that. People don't realize the amount of information that Foglight gathers from a given server or instance. It gets down to the version of SQL, the disk array, everything that's there. Any change that's made, any upgrade to SQL, shows up on the dashboard almost immediately. You don't know how much time you save just having a tool in your back pocket that does that for you."

"The most valuable feature is the in-depth capability SQL Performance Investigator provides. It allows you to drill down to the smallest detail that occurs on our platform. It does a highly detailed and atomic follow-up of what one wants to look for in relation to time and our different instances."

"We can visualize all the different types of DB servers that we are monitoring in a single pane of glass. It uses a 360-degree overview of the database, for each of those databases that we are monitoring. That includes what kind of resource utilization is happening and what kind of DB parameters are getting monitored, as well as the different types of DB parameters that are being offered for each database type."

"The real-time activity screens are also helpful... if there is something that is running slowly, we can eliminate the database as being an issue and perhaps look at the server, network activity, or something outside of the realm of the database as being the issue."

"The solution should provide more integration with more databases."

"It would be helpful if Nutanix added a billing system for databases. We need to automate this with a separate solution. We are service providers, so it would be easier for our customers if there were a built-in system that we could use for billing."

"The solution needs to improve compatibility with other back-ups and products."

"The initial setup was a little tedious and complex. If they could make the setup slightly more user-friendly, then that would definitely be beneficial. If they could give a clear indication of what ports are required across the business and multiple VLANs, then your prep work can be done beforehand and before you do the actual installation. Because the documentation that was provided was not 100 percent accurate, so we had to do a lot of custom firewall rules after we deployed Nutanix Era."

"It should be able to be consumed by other customers because only the enterprise cloud customers are able to buy this software."

"The downside of this solution is that it's more expensive than its competitors."

"I would like to see the SQL compatibility enhanced."

"We faced some performance issues with Nutanix."

"The system is not that stable. We have been facing a lot of issues. We built a new store environment of Foglight, an environment for monitoring the Lowe's store servers, which are all Db2 servers. The objective is to monitor 800 Db2 servers in each Foglight instance. Up to 150 Db2 servers, the environment was working fine. The moment it crossed 150 or 160, we started having a lot of stability issues."

"Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department."

"When we decided to go with Foglight, a lot of people stopped using the diagnostics part because it was very intimidating... They still won't use it because they feel it's too intimidating. They will open something up and not know what to do. It's not very user-friendly. You have to click on a lot of stuff to find the information."

"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive."

"I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around."

"Quest must release a Spanish version. That's critical because not everyone speaks English in Latin America. It's an excellent product, so it's super important that they offer the application and customer service in Spanish."

"The version that I'm using is not the latest version, so there might have been some improvement, but the OS monitoring is a bit lacking, and the high-availability option is a bit complicated to set up and it doesn't work all the time."

"The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"Not everyone can afford it. It's a bit expensive, so the price has to be improved."

"It's priced fairly... It's a good value. When you go looking for something from Oracle that automates things and makes your life easier, it's always going to be a minimum of $500,000. Era's nothing like that."

"The licensed-based pricing is confusing and too high."

"The tool is expensive."

"This solution is reasonably priced."

"Era is quite expensive. The thing that will be a showstopper for them in the long run is if you look at it from a technical perspective on what it provides and weigh it up against consolidation of multiple other software suites."

"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."

"This is like the "Cadillac" of performance monitoring software. It's not cheap... I am currently with a company that I was able to convince that the product is worth the cost."

"The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."

"The price of Foglight could be a little more competitive in Chile, and it should be lowered for long-time customers— at least by 20 percent. Sometimes the price is a limitation. We have seven instances and nearly 5 million users. If Quest Foglight could reduce its prices for the clients that have been with it for a long time, we would be able to have more instances."

"It is cost-effective. With our EA, it is really based on the scale of our database environment. We found the Quest team to be reasonable and flexible when it comes to pricing and scaling of licenses."