IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs Quest Foglight for Databases comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and Quest Foglight for Databases based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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. It's basically the output of an sp_who2.""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.""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."

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"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.""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 PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact.""Its reporting capabilities are immense.""Foglight is also able to help the DBAs proactively fix problems before they become an issue. It provides them with real-time activity screens that help in this regard. The DBAs are able to go to these screens and look at what's happening in real time, and that buys them time. It helps them see problems ahead of time and find solutions to them.""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.""One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level.""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."

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Cons
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task.""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.""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'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.""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.""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.""It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."

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"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive.""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.""I get a lot of alerts that, while important, are not critical. Then I have to dig in and figure out how to turn alerts off, but not the logging. I want to be able to go back, once we get the other big issues out of the way, and start fine-tuning some of those other areas, but I don't necessarily want to receive an email for all of them.""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.""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.""One thing that I would like, and it's probably something that I could set up internally, is something other than a dashboard which I have to look at to know that a server is down. I'd like bells and whistles to go off... If I look at the dashboard I know there's a server down. But if I'm not looking at it, if I'm looking at some other problem, I want to know about it. You can do that, you can use SMSs and alerts to your phone, and I could set it up to handle that, but it would be nice if, out-of-the-box, Foglight did that.""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.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • More IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."
  • "Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • More Quest Foglight for Databases Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes.
    Top Answer:One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily… more »
    Top Answer:The licensing model is straightforward. From day one, we know about the charges and costs involved in a project. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is… more »
    Top Answer:Some customers have issues with the way the data gets read and accumulated. They are expecting a different way of data monitoring. After explanation, they understand what exactly they are doing. Quest… more »
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    7.0
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    8.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    Foglight identifies and resolves performance issues across your applications, databases and virtual environments. The Foglight family of products easily integrates with your existing tools, so you can monitor and analyze data from almost any source across your infrastructure and view it through a single interface with our customizable, unified monitoring platform

    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
    CommitDBA
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Government12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Healthcare Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer25%
    Sports Company13%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government9%
    Insurance Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise42%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Database Development and Management
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle, Quest Software, SolarWinds and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is ranked 9th in Database Development and Management with 1 review while Quest Foglight for Databases is ranked 2nd in Database Development and Management with 3 reviews. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is rated 8.0, while Quest Foglight for Databases is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server writes " Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Quest Foglight for Databases writes "Excels at displaying intensive database queries and enables me to address things before they become real problems". IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is most compared with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, Redgate SQL Toolbelt, Quest Spotlight, SQL Sentry and OpenText Operations Bridge, whereas Quest Foglight for Databases is most compared with Quest Spotlight, Oracle Enterprise Manager, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, Redgate SQL Toolbelt and Toad for Oracle.

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