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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Nagios Core

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ANagios provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components. Multiple APIs and community-build add-ons enable integration and monitoring with in-house and third-party applications for optimized scaling.N/A

    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
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Editions & Modules
    Single License
    Free
    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
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Considered Both Products
    Nagios Enterprises
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Sentry has a dashboard and tools that better suit our needs as a business. The tab based layout we found was easier to use and for the layman to understand. The top SQL feature has been invaluable to us for locating problems in real time.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    SQL Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of Nagios Core and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Nagios Core
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    8.4
    102 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Performance dashboard00 Ratings9.1102 Ratings
    Intelligent alerting00 Ratings7.996 Ratings
    Top SQL00 Ratings8.6102 Ratings
    Historical trend data00 Ratings8.6100 Ratings
    Virtualization support00 Ratings8.764 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Icinga
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    HPE OneView
    Score6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (44 ratings)
    8.6
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    8.8
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (9 ratings)
    7.5
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Nagios CoreSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Nagios Enterprises
    Nagios monitoring is well suited for any mission critical application that requires per/second (or minute) monitoring. This would probably include even a shuttle launch. As Nagios was built around Linux, most (85%) plugins are Linux based, therefore its more suitable for a Linux environment.
    As Nagios (and dependent components) requires complex configurations & compilations, an experienced Linux engineer would be needed to install all relevant components.
    Any company that has hundreds (or thousands) of servers & services to monitor would require a stable monitoring solution like Nagios. I have seen Nagios used in extremely mediocre ways, but the core power lies when its fully configured with all remaining open-source components (i.e. MySQL, Grafana, NRDP etc). Nagios in the hands of an experienced Linux engineer can transform the organizations monitoring by taking preventative measures before a disaster strikes.
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    • Monitoring of services is one of the biggest benefits for our company. Being able to respond in a timely fashion keeps business smooth.
    • Hardware and device monitoring are easy to set up with proper parameters.
    • Notification to key staff to be able to respond quickly makes issues go away faster.
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    • Nagios could use core improvements in HA, though, Nagios itself recommends monitoring itself with just another Nagios installation, which has worked fine for us. Given its stability, and this work-around, a minor need.
    • Nagios could also use improvements, feature wise, to the web gui. There is a lot in Nagios XI which I felt were almost excluded intentionally from the core project. Given the core functionality, a minor need. We have moved admin facing alerts to appear as though they originate from a different service to make interacting with alerts more practical.
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    We're currently looking to combine a bunch of our network montioring solutions into a single platform. Running multiple unique solutions for monitoring, data collection, compliance reporting etc has become a lot to manage.
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    The Nagios UI is in need of a complete overhaul. Nice graphics and trendy fonts are easy on the eyes, but the menu system is dated, the lack of built in graphing support is confusing, and the learning curve for a new user is too steep.
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    I haven't had to use support very often, but when I have, it has been effective in helping to accomplish our goals. Since Nagios has been very popular for a long time, there is also a very large user base from which to learn from and help you get your questions answered.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Nagios Enterprises
    Because we get all we required in Nagios [Core] and for npm, we have to do lots of configuration as it is not as easy as Comair to Nagios [Core]. On npm UI, there is lots of data, so we are not able to track exact data for analysis, which is why we use Nagios [Core].
    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
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Nagios Enterprises
    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
    Nagios Enterprises
    • With it being a free tool, there is no cost associated with it, so it's very valuable to an organization to get something that is so great and widely used for free.
    • You can set up as many alerts as you want without incurring any fees.
    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

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

    Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL