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SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA)

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. The software is suitable for database administrators (DBAs), developers, system admins and DBA managers. Teams can collaborate in the system to monitor performance with read-only options to maintain security. Anomaly detection powered by machine learning gets smarter over time to help identify the bottlenecks slowing down the applications.

Database Performance Analyzer enables users to monitor databases irrespective of their environment including on-premises (Oracle, SQl server, DB2, MySQL, and SAP SE) and cloud (virtual machine offerings and Database-as-a-Service). Users can utilize SQL response time as a key metric for contrasting performance between platforms. The system uses multi-dimensional analysis for analyzing and tuning AWS, EC2® instance performance, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). Down-to-the-second data collection with both real-time and historical analysis allows you to pinpoint problems to find the root cause of performance issues.

Features

Database Anomaly Detection Powered by Machine Learning

Learn Wait Behavior Automatically

When you rely on tribal knowledge, it’s hard for someone new to acquire it and the sheer scale in larger environments prohibits in-depth, broad understanding. Remove the need for tribal knowledge and let our machine learning algorithm automate the “understanding” of normal behavior patterns. Don’t let knowledge walk out the door when a key resource moves on; automate and retain that knowledge so everyone on your team benefits.

Extend Anomaly Detection Beyond Spikes

There may be a tendency to focus on spikes in our database performance. While that is one good way to zero in on problem behavior, it’s not the only way. Performance variability is normal in most production databases—that’s to be expected. What’s needed is a way to account for the expected variations and call out when something happens that wasn’t expected. Database anomaly detection highlights such occurrences, so you have multiple ways to know when things deviate from the norm.

Alert on Significant Behavior Changes

Detecting anomalies is one thing, but since no one is staring at a dashboard 24/7, DPA provides the ability to alert when behavior changes are detected. Reduce noise by customizing the sensitivity to a level you are comfortable with and let DPA do the watching for you. DPA will let you know when workload shifts, maintenance jobs run into business hours, or when other unexpected changes occur that you’d like to investigate.

Database Monitoring Tools

Deliver critical metrics and automated alerts to better manage database management system (DBMS) performance

To fully understand DBMS, it’s important to understand the definition of a database management system. For data-driven companies, a DBMS is the preferred solution for mission-critical applications.

There are several types of DBMS software, each with their own way of structuring and using data:

    • Relational databases refer to data organized in tables in which there are relationships between tables. Querying occurs in Structured Query Language, or SQL. Examples of RDBMSs include Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL.
    • NoSQL databases are schema-free. This form of database allows more data variety than RDBMSs. Examples include Cassandra, MongoDB, and Oracle NoSQL.
    • Columnar databases are a useful form for data warehouses with vast amounts of similar data. This data can be highly compressed.
    • Cloud-based databases refers to either PaaS/DBaaS solutions such as Azure SQL Database, Amazon RDS, and Aurora. Cloud hosted or IaaS examples include SQL Server in Azure VM and Amazon EC2.

Popular DBMS types include:

    • MySQL
    • Oracle
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • SAP ASE
    • IBM DB2 LUW
    • Aurora
    • MariaDB
    • PostgreSQL

There are also three types of database architecture:

    1. One-tier architecture is where the client and server reside on the same machine as the database. This occurs when you install a database directly onto your system, typically for SQL query practice.
    2. Two-tier architecture is where data is stored on a server and clients (like PCs) run the presentation layer. The DBMS is not directly exposed to the end user but can be called by an API.
    3. Three-tier architecture is where the application layer exists between the database and the client, so a server controls the user requests and DBMS responses based on functional logic and rules. This is the most common architecture for web applications.

The type of DBMS and architecture of your database environment is important because they can affect your ability to scale up effectively, remove redundancies, allow multi-user access, and how you handle complicated transactions. Not every organization recognizes its DBMS—whether MySQL, Oracle, or another program—may require performance management. In fact, poor database performance and slow response times can lead to high costs for an organization. Manual troubleshooting can require hours or days of admin time to resolve an issue, while customers and employees may be affected by the failure in business function.

Database performance management software is designed to help admins more easily troubleshoot and resolve DBMS performance issues by monitoring performance and providing root-cause analysis of your database using multi-dimensional views to answer the who, what, when, where, and why of performance issues. These database monitoring tools can also help you use best practice methods to tune your databases and SQL queries to improve database performance.

Database Performance Tuning to Improve DBMS Performance

Use response time analysis to make database tuning more precise

Response time analysis is a pragmatic approach to tuning and optimizing database performance, allowing users to more easily identify issues and deliver measurable results. With response time analysis, you can optimize database tuning in your DBMS by identifying bottlenecks, pinpointing root causes, and prioritizing actions based on the impact poor database performance has on end users.

SolarWinds® Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is built to collate SQL statement data every second and can help you identify which SQL queries to focus on.

Isolate and remediate poor performing SQL statements with database tuning in SQL Server

SolarWinds DPA includes tools and features specially designed to handle database tuning in SQL Server and offer insights into critical metrics.

Intuitive graphs in DPA are built to display poor performing SQL statements, application wait times, and specific wait types/events that could be causing bottlenecks. You can also click on sections of the graph to drill down on specific issues to troubleshoot quickly.

Take database tuning to the next level with table tuning advisors

DPA’s table tuning advisor is designed to make it easier to jump into complex database tuning by collating historical data and presenting the information in bar graphs.

The tuning advisors in DPA can help point DBAs toward problems in need of immediate focus by providing clear, actionable advice. You can also leverage DPA’s alarms to drill down into detailed data surrounding an issue in real time.

Follow database performance tuning steps to beat roadblocks

The first step in database performance tuning is locating the problem. With SolarWinds DPA database anomaly detection feature powered by machine learning, you can analyze your instance wait behavior profile to more easily identify what needs fixing. You can then leverage the SQL tuning advisors to analyze existing SQL statements and gain recommendations on how to adjust queries.

By following the recommendations provided by DPA, you can better troubleshoot database performance tuning issues like bad SQL or poor connection management.

Monitor and Improve SQL Server Performance on Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines and SQL Databases

Find what’s bad in your database environment

Things can go bad in your database environment any time—let’s face it, none of us work in a static environment. With 24/7 monitoring, DPA can identify spikes in wait time behavior in a multi-dimensional way, making it easy to zero in on what’s causing the bottleneck and where it’s coming from. Database Performance Analyzer for SQL also watches for when behavior patterns change from what is expected, allowing you the ability to see the magnitude and alert based on sensitivities you can define.

Analyze performance for root cause

Once you find the biggest problems, drill into the analysis that DPA provides to determine what’s causing the issues. Correlated resource metrics allow for insight into any utilization issues. Detailed blocking and deadlock analysis quantifies blocking impacts to end users and visualizes the blocking tree to see what sessions and queries were involved—who the culprit was and who the victims were. Query-level performance analysis brings all the available data into one view to answer, “Why is this query slow now?” and much more.

Optimize your databases

Finding and analyzing are great starts, but the ultimate goal should be to tune or reduce the effects moving forward. But there’s not always a silver bullet for inefficiencies. That’s why Database Performance Analyzer watches real workloads to highlight queries going after more data than they need. Those queries are aggregated at the table level so you can see best tuning and indexing opportunities at a holistic level. Often, simple changes make the biggest performance impacts—you just have to know where to look.

Table tuning best practices

How do you know if your database tables are using best practices when you have multitudes of tables associated with your database? DPA’s table tuning best practices evaluate your table and indexes against a set of SQL Server performance tuning best practices. These include foreign key not indexed, overlapping indexes, wide index, table has no defined indexes, and table doesn’t have a primary key.

Database Maintenance Software for SQL and MySQL

SQL query optimization

For effective SQL Server and MySQL database maintenance, use Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) to optimize SQL queries before bigger issues arise. Database Performance Analyzer can help you investigate and identify inefficient queries that could lead to higher I/O, longer wait times, blocking, or resource contention. View query details including time ran, execution stats, and relevant metrics. It’s easy to label specific SQL statements and exclude long-running SQL statements as needed.

Response time analysis

Use the wait time analysis feature in DPA for effective database analysis. The tool pulls each instance once per second to determine active session performance and alert you to any delays. When an SQL statement wait time increases significantly, you can quickly drill down to find root causes. Help improve SQL and MySQL database maintenance results by correlating query execution delay with end-user impact. Additionally, the database anomaly detection algorithm identifies unexpected wait time increases as compared to normal historical data. Use the trend chart to easily view changes over time.

Unified dashboard

Use a straightforward dashboard to maintain Windows-specific SQL Server, open-source MySQL, Oracle, DB2, or SAP ASE. This database maintenance software pairs easy-to-read bar charts and color-coded graphical displays with in-depth diagnostics, custom alerts, and robust reporting. Use the dashboard-sharing features to explore query tuning impacts with others in the organization. The whole team can analyze performance changes across on-premises, virtualized, and cloud environments, and leverage the agentless architecture for safe SQL dev, testing, and production using DPA database performance monitoring software.

Actionable advice

With pinpointed insights, DPA is designed to help you formulate a database maintenance plan that helps prevent performance issues. This SQL database maintenance software is built to leverage historical trends and current data to generate SQL Server tuning advice. DPA runs table tuning analysis at the end of each day and displays table info, inefficient queries, and indexes. Catch both minor and widespread performance issues to better prioritize those that need immediate attention. View problem query details, and learn if you should tune the query, add an index or columns, address fragmentation, and more.

Database Maintenance Automation

With built-in database maintenance tools, you gain 24/7 monitoring—without a 24/7 workload. You can streamline basic database administration tasks and scalability with DPA REST API. Set Python or PowerShell scripts to automate key database maintenance tasks. Database admins can also create alerts to monitor SQL statement execution time and automatically flag significant changes. Database Performance Analyzer is designed to help database admins stay ahead of performance issues, with automatic anomaly detection within database operations using an artificial intelligence algorithm.

Benefits

  • Easy to install and quick time-to-value, low overhead of 1% or less
  • Goes beyond problem analysis with expert advice with table tuning and query advisors
  • Get the complete picture of all database instance resources spanning CPU to storage I/O
  • Granularity to drill down to even the SQL Text level
  • Create custom reports and automated email alerts
  • Integrate into your DevOps automation routine with RESTful API
  • Correlate resource metrics of hardware constraint impacts on end users
  • Scalability to support large and/or dynamic environments
  • End-to-end visibility with SolarWinds Orion® Platform, Perfstack™, and Appstack™ integration

New features and improvements in DPA

Release date: November 5, 2019

Last updated: April 1, 2020

DPA 2019.4 offers new features and improvements compared to previous releases of DPA.

Custom email templates for alert notifications

When an alert is triggered, DPA sends an email to notify the designated recipients. DPA 2019.4 introduces custom templates that you can use to tailor the contents of alert notification emails. You can create multiple custom email templates for different types of alerts.

Creating a custom email template requires no coding. Specify the email subject line and content by dragging and dropping variables and by entering static text.

After you create one or more custom email templates, you can designate one of your custom templates as the default template.

Additions to the REST API

The DPA REST API now includes additional endpoints that you can use to:

  • Retrieve, update, and reset values for DPA advanced options.
  • Retrieve and manage custom alert email templates.
  • Retrieve alert groups and assign or remove database instances.
  • Retrieve alerts and alert statuses, assign or remove database instances, and assign or remove an email template.
  • Create and manage custom properties that can be used in custom email templates.
  • Create and manage database groups.
  • Change the logging level for the DPA REST API.
  • Get information about vSphere servers and VMware events.

Table tuning best practices

When DPA generates a table tuning advisor, it evaluates the table and its indexes against a set of best practices. The table tuning advisor reports any violations, and DPA provides recommendations for resolving violations.

You can use DPA’s advanced configuration options to customize the best practice checks for your environment.

VM co-stop metrics

For database instances that run on a virtual machine (VM), the Resources tab includes two new CPU metrics to track co-stop wait time. Co-stop wait time occurs on VMs configured to use multiple virtual CPUs (vCPUs). It measures the time that the VM is ready to execute but has to wait on vCPU resources to be freed from other VMs contending for those vCPUs.

DPA collects VM metrics only if you register the VM for monitoring. Monitoring a VM requires a VM license.

DPA provides the following co-stop metric resources:

  • VM Total Co-Stop Time is the total amount of time (in milliseconds) that the VM was ready to execute but had to wait.
  • VM Co-Stop is the percentage of time that the VM was ready to execute but had to wait.

If SQL statements are experiencing high CPU/Memory waits, check the co-stop metrics. If they are not near 0, co-stop could be contributing to the CPU/Memory waits. To reduce co-stop, you can:

  • Decrease the number of vCPUs on the VM.
  • Add additional CPUs to the pool available to the VMs.
  • Use vMotion to migrate other VMs to a different host to reduce contention.

Additional VM information on the Query Details page

For database instances that run on a VM, resource metrics charts on the Query Details page now show the following additional information:

  • VMware events are shown as annotations. Hover over a dot at the top of the chart to see the events.
  • When a VM is migrated to another host, the chart lines distinguish between the hosts.

New version numbering system

DPA now uses same version numbering system that is used by SolarWinds Orion Platform products. The version number consists of the four-digit year of the release followed by the quarter of the release. If there is a service release, it appears after the quarter:

YYYY.Q.SR

Changes to system requirements

DPA 2019.4 adds support for the following versions:

Monitored database instances
  • Oracle 19
  • Oracle 18.4
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (Windows and Linux)
  • MySQL 8.0
  • Percona 8.0
  • Maria 10.3
  • Azure SQL Managed Instance (ASMI) V12
Repository database versions
  • Oracle 19 (on-premises only)
  • Oracle 18.4 (on-premises only)
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (Windows or Linux)

DPA 2019.4 removes support for the following versions:

Monitored database instances
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Repository database version
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2012

New features and improvements in DPAIM 2019.4

Release date: November 5, 2019

New version numbering for DPAIM and other Orion Platform products

All Orion Platform product version numbers now consist of the four-digit year in which they were released, followed by the quarter of release. If there is a service release, it appears after the quarter.

[YYYY.Q.SR]

It’s rather arbitrary that 6.9 is the Server & Application Monitor (SAM) version compatible with Network Performance Monitor (NPM) 12.5. Rather than require users have a Ph.D. in SolarWinds Orion Platform product module versioning, wouldn’t it be easier if those product modules compatible with each other all shared the same version number? Then it would be downright simple to identify IP Address Manager vX.XX wasn’t compatible with User Device Tracker vY.YY or Network Configuration Manager vZ.ZZ.

Simplifying and consolidating our product module versioning is precisely what we aim to do in our next Orion Platform module releases. As you can imagine, this might come as a big surprise to many, which is why we’ve decided to notify the community in advance.

New releases for every Orion Platform product module going forward will now use the same versioning as the Orion Platform itself. This means the next release of Network Performance Monitor will not be v12.6 or v13.0, nor will any of the other Orion Platform product modules bear a resemblance to their current versioning. Instead, Orion Platform product module versions will be the four-digit year in which they were released, followed by the quarter of release. If there is a Service Release for a given module, it will appear in the third position following the quarter.

[YYYY.Q.SR]

If this all seems a bit confusing, fret not. You’re probably already familiar with this versioning, as it’s been the basis of the Orion Platform version for nearly a decade. This is also the same versioning used for Network Automation Manager.

Orion Platform 2019.4 offers new features and improvements compared to previous releases of Orion Platform.

Native SolarWinds Service Desk Integration

Generate Service Desk incidents from Orion Alerts.

Orion Maps enhancements

Entity Library enhancements

  • Filter and refine your entity list based on any property.
  • Bulk-select entities to add them to the canvas.
  • Quickly identify contextual relationships through the entity library without leaving the editor.

Bulk Administration

  • Multi-select from the canvas to move or delete multiple objects in groups.
  • Undo and redo options within the Editor.

Custom Images

  • Add custom images and backgrounds to enhance the map.

Manual Topology Connections

  • Define topology between any two entities directly from the Map Editor.

Customizable map refresh rate

From the Advanced Configuration Settings, specify the map refresh rate – in minutes – for the Orion Maps Viewer and Widgets.

Installation improvements

In-Product evaluations

Add or evaluate additional Orion Platform products from within the Orion Web Console.

Install new products for evaluation even if you are not ready to upgrade your existing Orion Platform products to the latest version. Compatible versions of the new products are installed.

Microsoft Azure

  • Deploy the Orion Platform in the cloud using Azure SQL Database managed instance as an alternative to MS SQL.
  • Deploy the Orion Platform directly from Azure Marketplace

.NET 4.8 support

  • All Orion Platform products now use .NET 4.8.
  • .NET 4.8 is deployed automatically to all Orion Agents for Windows after the upgrade.
  • All Windows Agent plugins for supported operating systems were migrated.

    Make sure that the operating system of your Orion Platform supports .NET 4.8. See .NET Framework system requirements (© 2019 Microsoft, available at https://dotnet.microsoft.com, obtained on October 3, 2019).

    If your Orion Platform runs on an operating system that does not support .NET 4.8, consider upgrading your environment to be able to use the new features provided by Orion Platform 2019.4.

Other improvements

  • Website performance improvements
  • Scalability Engines Installer download performance improvements
  • Legacy Syslog & Traps replacement: Log Viewer replaces legacy Syslog & Traps with an instant evaluation of Log Analyzer
  • Updated and improved localization of Orion Platform product UI for German and Japanese.
  • Versioning is now consistent across all Orion Platform products; products follow the Orion Platform versioning convention.
  • Orion Platform out-of-the-box reports were migrated to web-based Report Manager
  • Orion SDK enhancements: Automate ‘List Resources’ and import results
  • Review the list of newly supported devices

System Requirements

DPAIM compatibility

DPA 2019.4 is compatible with DPAIM 11.1 or later.

Port requirements

Review and open ports on the DPA server to support communication to and from DPA.

No additional ports are required for DPA Central.

Port Protocol Service or Process Direction Encryption Description
8123 HTTP Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Inbound
Outbound		 Default HTTP port for web server
8124 HTTPS Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Inbound
Outbound		 TLS 1.0
TLS 1.1
TLS 1.2		 Default HTTPS port for web server
8127 TCP Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Internal Internal Tomcat shutdown port
80 HTTP Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Inbound
Outbound		 Default HTTP port for web server (Amazon Machine Images only)
443 HTTPS Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Inbound
Outbound		 TLS 1.0
TLS 1.1
TLS 1.2		 Default HTTPS port for web server (Amazon Machine Images only)

DPA server requirements

You can install SolarWinds DPA on any physical or virtual Windows or Linux server that supports the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 11.

You can also launch DPA in the cloud:

  • In the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace from an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
    • The AMI contains a DPA server on Linux with no repository.
    • Subscription licensing is available.
  • In the Azure Marketplace.
    • The DPA virtual machine contains a DPA server on Windows and a built-in Microsoft SQL Server database instance configured as the DPA repository.
    • Individual licenses must be purchased.

Self-managed DPA server requirements

The CPU, RAM, and disk space requirements depend on the number of database instances you plan to monitor.

If you register VMware, increase the CPU and RAM requirements by 50%.

These are estimates. They are based on testing done with an average of 2-3 active sessions per monitored instance. If you are monitoring busy instances with an average of more than 2-3 active sessions, please adjust accordingly.

Hardware / Software 1 – 20 Monitored DB Instances 21 – 50 Monitored DB Instances 51 – 100 Monitored DB Instances 101 – 250 Monitored DB Instances*
CPUs 1 2 4 4
RAM dedicated to DPA 1 GB 2 GB 4 GB 8 GB
Disk space 2 GB minimum
4 GB recommended
Operating System
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows 10 (evaluation only)
  • Linux
Operating System Architecture 64-bit
Character sets To support a multibyte language, the DPA server, repository, and monitored instances must be configured with the same character set.

* If you plan to monitor more than 250 database instances, consider using more than one DPA server and linking the servers together.

Requirements for an AWS DPA server

The minimum required AWS instance type for the DPA server AMI is t2.medium. Smaller instance types are not supported.

A t2.medium size instance is typically powerful enough to monitor 20 database instances. You might need a larger instance type to reliably monitor more than 20 database instances.

Requirements for an Azure DPA server

SolarWinds recommends two or more database throughput units (DTUs) per monitored database instance. See the Azure SQL Database DTU Calculator for more information.

The minimum required Azure tier is standard s0. DPA repository database requirements

The repository database stores the data collected by DPA. A supported database instance must be installed on the database server.

Do not host the repository on a database instance that you plan to monitor, because this affects the performance of that instance.

Supported database versions

Database Edition Version
Microsoft SQL Server
  • Standard
  • Enterprise
  • 2019 (Windows or Linux)
  • 2017 (Windows or Linux)
  • 2016
  • 2014

The latest Service Pack is supported unless otherwise noted.
Azure SQL Standard Service Tier or higher V12
MySQL
  • Community
  • Enterprise
  • 5.7
  • 5.6
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.7
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6
  • Aurora 2.03 (compatible with MySQL 5.7)

Note: MySQL 8.0 is not supported for use as a DPA repository.
Oracle
  • Standard
  • Enterprise
  • 19 (single tenant and multitenant)
  • 18.4 (single tenant and multitenant)
  • 12.2 (single tenant and multitenant)
  • 12.1 (single tenant and multitenant)
  • 11.2

Notes:

  • Although DPA will work with the Express editions of Oracle and SQL Server, SolarWinds does not officially support these editions for the repository because of the database size limits. If you need a free database for an evaluation, SolarWinds recommends using a MySQL database.
  • You can host a self-managed Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL database on Amazon EC2 to use as your repository.
  • If you choose Azure SQL as your repository, SolarWinds recommends two or more database throughput units (DTU) per monitored database instance.

Self-managed repository database server requirements

If you install DPA on the same server as the repository database, the server must meet these requirements in addition to the DPA server requirements. If you register VMware, increase the CPU and RAM requirements by 50%.

These are estimates. They are based on testing done with an average of 2-3 active sessions per monitored instance. If you are monitoring busy instances with an average of more than 2-3 active sessions, please adjust accordingly.

Hardware / Software 1 – 20 Monitored DB Instances 21 – 50 Monitored DB Instances 51 – 100 Monitored DB Instances 101 – 250 Monitored DB Instances
CPUs 2 2 4 4
Database cache available for DPA 4 GB 8 GB 8 GB 16 GB
Disk space The amount of disk space your repository uses is determined by the number of database instances you are monitoring and the activity level of each instance:

  • Low: 1 GB
  • Medium: 3 GB
  • High: 5 GB

Example: You are monitoring five low, three medium, and two high activity database instances.

(5 × 1 GB) + (3 × 3 GB) + (2 × 5 GB) = 24 GB

Reserve at least 24 GB to provide adequate disk space for this repository database.

Repository scalability depends on many things, including the database vendor and configuration, the specifications of the repository server, other activity on the repository server, and the activity levels of the monitored database instances.

Requirements for an AWS DPA repository database server

The following RDS instance types are recommended for AWS deployments.

Hardware / Software 1 – 20 Monitored DB Instances 21 – 50 Monitored DB Instances 51 – 100 Monitored DB Instances 101 – 250 Monitored DB Instances
RDS instance type db.m5.large db.m5.large db.m5.xlarge db.m5.xlarge
CPUs 2 2 4 4
Database cache available for DPA 8 GB 8 GB 16 GB 16 GB

Required administrator credentials

You must know the following credentials for the database instance hosting your DPA repository.

Repository database type Credentials
SQL Server SYSADMIN
Oracle database administrator (DBA)
MySQL repository administrator

Alternatively, you can:

  • Provide the credentials of a user with privileges to create the repository user. The privileged user requires the Create, Drop, and Create User permissions and must be able to grant the following permissions:GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on <databaseName>Where <databaseName> is the repository database you create or select when you set up the MySQL repository storage.
  • Run a script to create the repository user.
Azure SQL Database repository administrator

Alternatively, you can:

  • Provide the credentials of a user with privileges to create the repository user. This user must be a member of the db_owner role.
  • Run a script to create the repository user.

Virtual environment requirements

In a virtual environment, DPA can remotely connect to the following to monitor the virtual environment that virtualized database instances are running on. The virtualized database instances must be registered separately from the virtual environment.

Software Version
VMware vCenter Server
  • 6.7
  • 6.5
  • 6
VMware ESX/ESXi Host
  • 6.7
  • 6.5
  • 6

Web browsers

You can use the following browsers to access the DPA web interface:

You can use the following browsers to access the DPA web interface:

  • Microsoft Edge
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

    Do not use IE compatibility view. It can cause DPA to function incorrectly.

  • Mozilla Firefox: latest stable version
  • Google Chrome: latest stable version

MySQL requirements

SolarWinds recommends the following settings to optimize reporting capabilities for a MySQL database instance.

MySQL Performance Schema

The Performance Schema monitors server events and collects performance data. If the Performance Schema is not enabled, DPA provides limited data. Monitoring with the Performance Schema disabled excludes the following data:

  • All instrumented wait events
  • All wait operations
  • All file wait time, broken out by file
  • All object wait time, broken out by index and table
  • SQL statistics
  • Performance-schema dependent alerts

The Performance Schema must be enabled at server startup. In MySQL versions 5.6.6 and later, the Performance Schema is enabled by default.

Global Instrumentation and Thread Instrumentation

Global Instrumentation and Thread Instrumentation must be enabled in the Performance Schema configuration. Disabling these instruments has the same effect as disabling the Performance Schema.

By default, DPA enables these instruments in the configuration. However, if you select the Leave As Is option for Performance Schema setup, you must verify that Global Instrumentation and Thread Instrumentation are enabled in the existing Performance Schema configuration.

show_compatibility_56 system variable

If the monitored database instance is MySQL 5.7.6 or later, SolarWinds recommends turning on the show_compatibility_56 system variable. If this variable is on, DPA can collect data for all metrics.

If this variable is off and the Performance Schema is enabled, DPA cannot collect data for the following metrics:

  • Selects
  • Inserts
  • Updates
  • Deletes

Java requirements

DPA requires JDK 13 on the DPA server, and DPA ships with this version of Java for Windows and Linux. If you are installing DPA on a supported operating system, no action is required.

For unsupported operating systems, you must ensure that JDK 13 is installed on the DPA server. If you need to upgrade the JDK:

  1. Download and install JDK 13.
  2. Remove old Java information by deleting the cat.txt and cat.end files from the following directory:<DPA_Home>/iwc/tomcat/ignite_config/
  3. At a command line, go to the DPA installation directory.
  4. Enter the following command:./startup.sh

SolarWinds DPA and Orion Platform integration requires DPA 11.1 or later to be installed.

DPAIM can be installed alone or with other Orion Platform products.

  • DPAIM is installed automatically when you install SolarWinds SAM.
  • To install DPAIM without SolarWinds SAM, use the SolarWinds Orion Installer.

SolarWinds does not recommend installing an additional polling engine on the DPA server.

If you are installing DPAIM as a standalone module, you can install it on the same server as DPA. However, if you plan to install DPAIM with other Orion Platform product (such as NPM or SAM), we recommend that you install DPAIM and other Orion Platform products on a different server than the DPA server.

While SolarWinds SAM and SolarWinds DPA can integrate without extra configuration, you can take steps to relate SolarWinds DPA database instances to SolarWinds SAM applications more easily.

Port and browser requirements are listed below.

Port requirement

In addition to the port requirements necessary for SolarWinds DPA and any other Orion Platform products, integration requires the following ports:

DPA server

Port Protocol Service or Process Direction Encryption Description
443 (cloud) or

8124 (on-premises)

 TCP (HTTPS) Windows: Ignite PI Service

Linux: java/tomcat

 Inbound

Outbound

 TLS 1.0

TLS 1.1

TLS 1.2

 This is the default port number of your DPA website and jSWIS proxy.

This port must be open to receive data from the SolarWinds Orion server.

Orion server

Port Protocol Service or Process Direction Description
17776 TCP SolarWinds Information Service Inbound

Outbound

 This port must be open to access the SolarWinds Information Service API (notifications).
17777 TCP SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Orion Module Engine

 Inbound

Outbound

 This port must be open for all Orion Platform product traffic.
17778 TCP SolarWinds Information Service Inbound

Outbound

 This port must be open to access the SolarWinds Information Service API.

Browser requirements

  • Microsoft Edge
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

    Do not use IE compatibility view. It may cause SolarWinds DPA to function incorrectly.

  • Mozilla Firefox: latest stable version
  • Google Chrome: latest stable version
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