AppDynamics vs SQL Sentry

AppDynamics

We had slowness, but didn't know where. We quickly would find out if it was the network, database, app server, webserver, or otherwise. They don't like me saying this, but it's a great "finger-pointer".

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Non-Profit Organization Management Company, 501-1000 employees

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SQL Sentry

It’s great for a DBA to have a tool like SentryOne. To be able to troubleshoot our production environment and come up with a root cause to a performance issue in very little time is awesome. Being able to drill into an instance and see what happened yesterday when a user walks up to our desk and tells us the instance was slow yesterday and they want to know what was going on.

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Louis Fritz

Computer Software, 501-1000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

AppDynamics

7.9

SQL Sentry

—

Application monitoring

8.0

—

Database monitoring

7.5

—

Threshold alerts

8.3

—

Predictive capabilities

7.0

—

Application performance management console

8.3

—

Collaboration tools

8.0

—

AppDynamics

—

SQL Sentry

9.0

Performance dashboard

—

9.1

Intelligent alerting

—

9.5

Top SQL

—

9.9

Historical trend data

—

8.2

Virtualization support

—

8.2

Pros

AppDynamics provides an excellent overview of all the interactions between all of your various applications, providing a high-level view of the overall health of the whole application and any interactions or elements that are unhealthy can be seen from here.
AppDynamics focusses on Business Transactions, rather than overall application or server performance, meaning you can quickly see if one part of the system is not working as it should, meaning production issues are shown clearly as isolated problems (if they are) rather than overall application health problems.
AppDynamics provides excellent functionality with regards to tracing coding exceptions - errors can easily be drilled down to the method or line of code that is problematic.
AppDynamics is hugely flexible allowing very fine grained configuration and customisation.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Top running SQL - gives statistical information about long running queries as well the ability to customize filters.
Deadlock - provides detailed graphical analysis on deadlock chains and involving parties. It is very intuitive and easy to pin point the cause of deadlocks.
Baseline tuning - provides both sampling and historical trending information on SQL servers as well as detailed statistical information about resources utilization.
Calendar of events - a centralized place for reviewing SQL agent jobs.
Condition list - set of conditions that can be customized for business requirements.

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Jun Tang

Database Administrator

J. Spargo & AssociatesEvents Services, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Functionality on certain features such as reporting.
Features on alerts that are out of the box.
Lack of documentation regarding upgrades and new features.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Retail Company, 10,001+ employees

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It would be nice if the reports can be interactive like drill down, clickable content, etc.
Navigation could improve and become more intuitive.
Calendar of events could also improve - wish the date and time range could be specified instead of just by day or interval.

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Jun Tang

Database Administrator

J. Spargo & AssociatesEvents Services, 51-200 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

We are a reseller of appdynamics

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Networking Company, 11-50 employees

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SQL Sentry9.9

Based on 3 answers

Using SQL Sentry has become part of our daily routine, and it has played a big role for us to understand our database activities and make our lives easier to analyse issues and provide resolutions.

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Jian Fu

Applications and BI Specialist

KathmanduRetail, 1001-5000 employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

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SQL Sentry9.1

Based on 2 answers

Easy to use.
A complete tool to troubleshoot, monitor and fix SQL Server issues.

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Aron Feldman

Lead Engineer, Database Engineering | Data Sciences

TicketmasterEntertainment, 5001-10,000 employees

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Support

No score

No answers yet

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SQL Sentry10.0

Based on 3 answers

They usually respond within a few hours and will pull in needed resources without the need for me to escalate the issue. They take the initiative to follow up. They are open to suggestions for future enhancements and actually implement them. They give the impression they want to resolve your issues.

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Mark Lessard

Associate Director of Database Architecture

MerkleincMarketing and Advertising, 1001-5000 employees

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Implementation

No score

No answers yet

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SQL Sentry10.0

Based on 3 answers

Was suggested that we install the process monitors on a dev or qa database server, but we found it more useful to create an IT db server and put it there (along with a few other apps that we use for monitoring).

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Consumer Goods Company, 501-1000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Better capability set / there are more 3rd party integrations / appdynamics has a bigger profile

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Networking Company, 11-50 employees

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Redgate is what we historically used. It is a great simple tool. However, with our complex environment, we needed something more robust. I will miss the multiple baseline graph overlays that I have only seen in Redgate.Idera was a very close contender. We had it installed and running against our production environment. The suite of tools is very robust. But their monitoring tool hit our CPU. Their engineers and we were never able to identify the cause of the issue.

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Derek Knutsen

Database Administrator

American Health NetworkHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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