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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager vs. Paessler PRTG vs. SolarWinds SQL Sentry

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ASQL Diagnostic Manager for Microsoft SQL Server helps database administrators to find and fix Microsoft 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 Microsoft SQL Server and…

    $1,996

    per instance with first year maintenance included

    Paessler PRTG

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/APRTG Network Monitor is the flagship offering from German software company Paessler, for monitoring local and wide area networks (LANs & WANs), servers, websites, apps, and more.

    $2,149

    per year

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds SQL Sentry is designed to help data professionals optimize SQL Server database performance in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. SQL Sentry delivers metrics to help users find and fix database performance problems and provides scalability, boasting demonstrated success monitoring 800+ SQL Server instances with one monitoring database. With SQL Sentry, the user can monitor: SQL Server Azure SQL Database SQL Server Analysis…

    $0

    Free

    Pricing
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Editions & Modules
    Standard via eCommerce
    1,996.00
    per instance with first year maintenance included
    PRTG 500
    $2,149
    per year
    Hosted 500
    $2,149
    per year
    PRTG 1,000
    $3,899
    per year
    Hosted 1000
    $3,899
    per year
    PRTG 2,500
    $8,099
    per year
    Hosted 2500
    $8,099
    per year
    PRTG 5,000
    $14,199
    per year
    Hosted 5000
    $14,199
    per year
    PRTG 10000
    $17,899
    per year
    PRTG Enterprise
    Custom Pricing
    subscription license
    Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)
    $0
    Free
    SQL Sentry for Azure SQL Database
    $161
    Per year per database (annual subscription)
    SQL Sentry
    1,450
    Per year per instance (annual subscription)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Free Trial
    YesYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Considered Multiple Products
    Idera, Inc.
    Chose IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
    All the toolsets we looked at have the same basic feature sets. We felt like IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server had more features (SQL Doctor features) and better historical features. More toolsets now have a lot of these features, but for eight years, IDERA SQL …
    Incentivized
    Paessler
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    It provided a much better feature set
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    [SolarWinds] SQL Sentry was tested against multiple monitoring systems, but [it] topped them all as [it] was a monitoring tool that was created to pinpoint SQL Server and nothing else. It has features that a lot of other monitoring systems don't have and are not even developing …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Sentry has a LOT more information in it than the SolarWinds DPA product. Its reporting tool isn't as good either.

    The IDERA product isn't as reliable as SQL Sentry and its reporting isn't nearly as good. The IDERA UI is a resource hog and isn't as intuitive.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    We chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry because it met more of our requirements than any other single tool. Proactive monitoring, quick collection times (every few seconds vs minutes), flexible custom alerting as well as in-depth data for performance analysis (Top SQL is by far my …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    I have used tools from Idera, redgate, and also Solarwinds. SQL Sentry is one of the better tools out on the market in my opinion.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    I like SQL Sentry the best. Foglight was a long time ago and way more comprehensive tool than I needed at the time. Diagnostic Manager has some good features but I had some capacity and performance issues at times with it. SQL Sentry has been consistent and effective at …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    It has been a while now since using the Idera product, but SQL Sentry seems to provide greater configuration and alerting options. SQL Sentry offers 12 different options, all of which are configurable individually for each alert. It can be done at the global level as well as by …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Sentry provided 24/7 indepth visibility and on a feature to feature comparison, simply outweighted other options available. The expertise at SentryOne is incredible, and it is reflected in their passion for the product, and the development and constant engagement with the …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Both tools cover what you'd expect from an enterprise-grade SQL monitoring tool. Performance monitoring, alerting and diagnostics on both the tools are excellent and I cannot fault either on technical capabilities and feature offerings.

    For SQL Managed Services providers, SQL …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    I have tried SQL optimizer and Idera's diagnostic manager. Of the three, SQL Sentry is my favorite. I like the dashboard, the tab layout, the interface.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Sentry is more centralized and wide open. It has abilities to "dive" into deepest SQL aspects providing details that other products are just unable to do. It is not just a quick monitoring, alerting tool. It has the unique ability to "teach" or "remind" you (throughout policies …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    The former company I worked for had such an extremely large and high volume transaction volume. Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager just could not keep up with the pace of the transactions. The main SQL server cluster was running between 25,000 to 50,000 transactions per second (24 …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    We selected Performance Advisor primarily due to the intuitive primary display, drill-down ability, ease of use and low overhead.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Other tools in the SQL Sentry Suite helped determine the purchasing decision. In particular the SQL Sentry Event manager product allowed us to easily connect and visualize the overnight process. Previously the overnight process was schedule driven and prone to fail as a result …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    PA has the lightest monitoring footprint of any of the other third-party applications out there. The featureset of PA includes things such as virtualization monitoring, top SQL statements, and granular historical trending that other products miss or gloss over. The sheer amount …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Sentry was just a more slick application to use versus Idera. Visually it was easier to navigate and manage, and the ability to move licenses about to Instances was a benefit.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry

    The sheer amount of information, ability to tune almost all areas of alerting and thresholds, and the low impact of monitoring as well as transparency into how their monitoring processes may impact performance gives them the advantage over these others. In some cases their …

    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    We actually use both tools.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    For us, there were 3 big items that swung SQL Sentry.
    1) customization of alerts and notification
    2) polers in other domains allow for a more secure deployment. In addition, the polers allow for redundancy, ensuring we are spending time fighting fires, not fixing the fire …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Would buy again
    41 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    28 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager and Paessler PRTG and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
    8.0
    7 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Paessler PRTG
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    8.4
    102 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Performance dashboard9.07 Ratings00 Ratings9.1102 Ratings
    Intelligent alerting8.07 Ratings00 Ratings7.996 Ratings
    Top SQL9.07 Ratings00 Ratings8.6102 Ratings
    Historical trend data9.06 Ratings00 Ratings8.6100 Ratings
    Virtualization support5.06 Ratings00 Ratings8.764 Ratings
    Network Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager and Paessler PRTG and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Paessler PRTG
    7.3
    67 Ratings
    8% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Automated network device discovery00 Ratings7.260 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network monitoring00 Ratings9.666 Ratings00 Ratings
    Baseline threshold calculation00 Ratings8.557 Ratings00 Ratings
    Alerts00 Ratings8.867 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network capacity planning00 Ratings6.448 Ratings00 Ratings
    Packet capture analysis00 Ratings6.234 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network mapping00 Ratings5.547 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reports00 Ratings5.857 Ratings00 Ratings
    Wireless infrastructure monitoring00 Ratings6.249 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hardware health monitoring00 Ratings9.264 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Auvik
    Score8.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Score10 out of 10
    PingPlotter
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Score10 out of 10
    Nmap
    Score8.7 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.8
    (68 ratings)
    8.6
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.9
    (5 ratings)
    8.8
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.3
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (19 ratings)
    7.5
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic ManagerPaessler PRTGSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Idera, Inc.
    SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager is useful for tracking performance across SSIS, SSRS and SSA and have the data represented in dashboards. It helps improve performance and helps end users. However, several features are redundant for smaller organization that can use the tools that comes with existing Microsoft products. These features also takes time to learn and use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Paessler
    integrates seamlessly with Windows servers via WMI and PowerShell, providing deep insights into resource usage, performance metrics, and system health. It's excellent at tracking CPU, memory, disk space, and event logs, enabling rapid troubleshooting and proactive maintenance. PRTG Network Monitor also effectively monitors Fortigate devices, providing detailed data on firewall health, traffic patterns, bandwidth utilization, VPN status, and security alerts. This visibility helps detect and resolve network security issues promptly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    This solution is perfect for a team with a large server count and, at least, moderate experience supporting a SQL Server environment. If the environment is smaller or the team has less experience working with SQL Server performance tuning methodologies, then the tool may be overwhelming for the users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Idera, Inc.
    • SQLdm does a good job of providing information at a high level, but also allows me to drill down to specific queries and events if needed. I don't always need to sift through tons of details to get the information I need. It also gives a very wide range of information from SQL specific metrics, to OS metrics, to VM metrics, all the way up to host server metrics.
    • I like how the alert and notification system can be customized. For example, if you know a certain server regularly has long-running queries, you can adjust the alert to not fire unless a query has been running for 30 minutes while the rest of the servers fire after 30 seconds. That is very helpful in not being bombarded at dinner with alerts from a server similar to, "I've been at 90% cpu for 26 milliseconds!!!!!!!...and now it's back down to 30%" Good information to know, but not something you need to literally lose sleep over.
    • I like how you can configure different servers to be monitored differently. For example, you can have a group of servers called DEVELOPMENT that you can turn on heavier monitoring on so you can test how changes in applications might affect the SQL environment, but in the PRODUCTION group, you may only want to enable the heavier analysis and logging when performance issues are actively being reported.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Paessler
    • Switch monitoring and finding out if there are communication issues or throughput alerts are reached
    • Big picture view of the whole infrastructure and what is functioning and what is not
    • Uptime tracking is great and lets us know for how long a device is down or overall uptime
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The Top SQL functionality has been extremely useful for identifying poorly performing queries by resource consumption.
    • The flexibility of creating your own Advisory Conditions has allowed us to integrate our custom internal alerts into a centralized dashboard and alerting platform.
    • Being able to highlight any chart on the dashboard and then tool-matching that window across all the other charts makes it much easier to correlate the different performance metrics against each other.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Idera, Inc.
    • Windows client has some issues. When you have small time intervals for your data collection, it can cause the client to become unresponsive and require you to restart it.
    • It takes more time to get the web client running than it does to get the windows client running.
    • The visualizations have been the same for the last eight years--could use a little bit of a refresh.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Paessler
    • Licensing on a per entity basis can be cumbersome for devices which have a ton of monitoring points like network switches\routers. Each sensor may count against a license, which could be a lot of you were monitoring every TX\RX of an SFP for example
    • A better method to easily template\copy monitors across devices
    • The navigation in the web GUI could be a little more straightforward in terms of the hierarchy
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Tuning advice: With all the graphs and data available, it's not always easy to determine the best thing to do. I'd like to see SentryOne provide some best practice analysis based on the historical information collected for the server being looked at.
    • They could add help tips or links to help documents, when you select a graph on the dashboard. Inexperienced users tend to put blinders on and focus on one thing when they see a high counter or something out of the ordinary. It would be very useful to include a link that provides underlying help. The link would provide an explanation of the counter in detail and offer possible explanations as to why the counter is off.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    I would renew it because the platform has brought us many technical and economic benefits that make the cost-benefit ratio very good. Additionally, to do so does not require large investments in training, licensing or infrastructure, and at the administration level, extensive knowledge is not required to be able to bear it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Absolutely. SQL Sentry is an absolute must have for any company with a SQL Server estate. It provides a force multiplier to effectively manage SQL Server, and the feature sets are second to none. The support and expertise at SentryOne is incredible. They are very supportive of both the platform users and helping your business with the product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    The tool is very intuitive to use and it is Windows-based (everybody knows how to use Windows) so it's easy to get into. Every time is setup in a hierarchy so if you have a good initial hierarchy design, it will really reduce administrative effort down the road.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I accept that the flexibility of the alerting comes at a price. Other than the alerting SQL Sentry's interface is intuitive. Connecting to a new SQL instance, given that all the needed ports are open in your firewalls is straight forward. Reviewing the performance and queries for an instance is available in with a right click. As you dig in new tabs are created to present the detailed data. I find the ability to filter and rollup metrics on a query very helpful in dealing with the "it's running slow". You can easily compare the metrics of run times for the same query to let the user know, it's probably data your doing a billion reads instead of the usual 100 thousand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    The system is working perfectly in capturing data, but we do experience issues with SQL Timeout when viewing results in the remote clients. This may be due to the fact that our monitoring service is consuming most of the CPU, and it is the same server that is hosting the SQL Repository. We could probably fix the issue by separating the SQL instance from the monitoring service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    In most cases the pages load very quickly. In our particular case, we need to do some movement of services to separate our monitoring service to separate infrastructure from the repository. When we first started with SQL Sentry on 5 licenses, we did not have any issues. Since we have now grown that to 25, we are experiencing some challenges. We do not believe this to be a tool problem
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    PRTG does everything we need it to do and more. Ease of use, ease of management and maintenance and clarity of monitoring of hundreds of different types of device and service gives this a large advantage over other products on the market that I have tried. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a network monitoring product in their environment and even to people who don't know they need a solution yet!
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    From their infancy as a smaller company to now as a global player they have always kept focus on prioritising he customer. They know their product and the technology it supports and are easily accessible for both resolving problems with the product all the way to adding value through additional training and assisting with getting return on investment through utilisation of the many features the product provides.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    It's very important that de project's teams have different member of the TI. We have learned too late the importa of Security Analyst at the design architecture moment. We have to rebuild part of the implementation for made this big mistake.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    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).
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Idera, Inc.
    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL, Redgate SQL, and MonitorLogicMonitor are similar products to each other. We decided on IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL because our experience with locating heavy queries has been very good and it provides real-time monitoring of all servers and databases. It also allows you to have a large volume of historical data which allows you to analyze trends in the databases.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Paessler
    PRTG offers more versatility in monitoring when compared to the other solutions we tested. The other solutions were also limited as far as customization options, which made them less adaptable to our networks. When compared to Auvik, for instance, we prefer PRTG as it offers immediate notifications through the desktop client - not limited to email notifications as with Auvik. We also appreciate the fact that PRTG can be self/on-prem hosted vs Auvik's cloud model. This makes for an easier deployment and less firewall adjustments to allow traffic to cloud-hosted solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SQL Sentry offers more features and is customize-able to fit our business needs. It has more centralized management and support. The company's technical support is also top notch. It is also worth mentioning that SentryOne Team Blog is an excellent source. One can find lots of valuable troubleshooting skills on the blog site - very educational and informational.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Idera, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Paessler
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We are running 25 instances through a single monitoring service and it is able to keep up. We are finding that this many instances in our environment is about as many as can be handled. We will need to deploy additional monitoring services. Luckily, there is no additional licensing costs to deploy additional monitoring services. For us, it's just an additional Azure VM.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Idera, Inc.
    • Allows us to quickly set up ETL processes as soon as we installed SQL Server.
    • There's a lot of free/paid resources available online, decreasing development time.
    • A tool with plenty of experienced developers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Paessler
    • The ability to analyze multiple pieces of information in one place, especially with historical data, has saved our IT department time and headaches. It would be so much more difficult to trace an issue without PRTG, just relying on event logs and an open task manager window.
    • The cost is not cheap, so it's an expense that hits the bottom line like everything else. Figure in hardware costs as well, ideally a server outside of your main environment.
    • I keep saying this, but the historical data piece is worth so much. There's really no good way to collect all of that information in one place without something like PRTG. And that definitely saves time and money in the long run.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Better customer service as it alerts me automatically to loss of service issues so I can react and either get things fixed before it impacts the customers or to let my management know as soon as possible
    • It helps me find expensive SQL so our customers get better performance and we make better use of our resources
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager Screenshots

    Screenshot of SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

    Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL