Evaluate your different options and choose what you think is the best fit. Every one has its pros and cons. I always equate software to my experience - and I'm dating myself - back in the 80s, with radar detectors for cars. The radar detector companies would come out with a product that would pick up radar much better, so you wouldn't get stopped for speeding, and then one would come out with something better, and it would just go back and forth. It's the same thing with databases. Ultimately, you pick a platform, be it Oracle or SQL or whatever, you stick with it and go with it. You re-evaluate as time goes on, but as time goes on, it becomes more entrenched and more ingrained. So do your research up front and make sure you can live with it. Think about all the different options and where you're going to be in five or ten years.

In terms of our implementation, we have not used the solution to create any custom dashboards, charts, or counters. We have 12 DBAs using the system. I'm the only one in our organization who deploys this product. At this time we don't have any plans for increased usage. We're already monitoring the vast majority of our SQL Servers.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten, primarily because of the scalability issue we've seen. It has a lot of really nice features in it, but the scalability, from our standpoint, is what's holding it back right now.

I would recommend it. It's a great starting point if they don't have any other tools for SQL monitoring.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

If possible do training, or work with the tech support to make sure that you have considered everything and see what the product does before you try it on your own. Doing that would be very helpful and will save time and will help you get the best out of the product.

I would rate it at eight out of 10. There are a couple of good features but it's not really intuitive and easy to use. Overall, the product is pretty good, just a little bit less user-friendly than I would like.

Work on configuration and take the time to configure alerts.

I rate it at seven out of ten because it does not handle performance-tweaking that well, but it does a good job on monitoring.

I would recommend this product - I liked it!

I would definitely recommend it. There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.