IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server Reviews

We use it to look at the overarching environment and, from there, we're able to pick and choose which servers and databases we want to view more closely. We manage over 300 servers, and 14,000 databases. We're constantly in the tool, utilizing it to drill down and determine what is going on with a specific database and query, or cache, etc.

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.

Our primary use case is monitoring. We use the solution to get an overview of our entire environment and then drill down to view details. We look for issues that have happened in the past, that have been reported by users. We can then see what was going on, on the server, at that time, to cause such issues.

The only people who are using it are eight DBAs.

We did increase usage for lower environments rather than just production environments.

It just allows us to respond quickly to any database issues. We have customized the alerts to be "critical." We will actually then send a PagerDuty alert which will then buzz us. Non-critical stuff will go into our inbox and we'll look at it.

We use it to look at performance.

With Diagnostic Manager what happens is that, when it reaches a certain threshold, it helps us diagnose the issue. For example, disk space: If it's going low on disk space, it alerts us saying, "Hey, this is the warning, and this is at this percent." It allows us to try to see, or remedy, the causes. It's more proactive.

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, in our opinion, we act on those alerts immediately.

We use SQL DM to monitor and alert on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis. SQL DM was also used to troubleshoot deadlocks, blocking, and slow query performance helping in faster resolution and consistent uptime. 

SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence. The default and custom alerting allowed for instance problem resolution by anyone on the IT team.

The capability to baseline the environment and define thresholds for alerting is definitely the most valuable feature in my opinion. As an operational DBA, I don't write code but need to make sure the SQL servers are healthy, performing scheduled jobs and made aware when issues arise.

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. The dashboard provides valuable health information at a glance and from there drilling in and finding the cause of issues is pretty straightforward. Our SQL server environment consists mainly of proprietary databases so it is vital that we are on top of performance, resources and job execution - SQL DM provides the view into all of this.

I love the customization of the alerts.

We created several stored procedures/functions that would query multiple DMV’s and alert if a certain threshold was reached. However, since new DMV’s are added, or older ones are adjusted, it caused too much headache to continue to support the home brew method.

Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact.

Ability to identify bottlenecks, deadlocks and slow running queries and run monthly and daily reports.

It was easier for DBA team to perform issue investigations, slowness of the servers and failures.