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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Pentaho

    Score6 out of 10
    N/APentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.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
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Considered Both Products
    Hitachi Vantara
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    4 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    9.0
    20 Ratings
    10% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports8.618 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards9.918 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates8.718 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    8.7
    19 Ratings
    8% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis7.618 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.319 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages9.312 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration9.717 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    9.7
    20 Ratings
    17% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web9.618 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF9.819 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.713 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling9.917 Ratings00 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.310 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    8.1
    17 Ratings
    1% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.916 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.216 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics8.314 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    9.1
    20 Ratings
    7% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.320 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model9.619 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.918 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)7.610 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    8.3
    11 Ratings
    7% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access9.710 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.97 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.711 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    8.6
    10 Ratings
    10% above category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    REST API8.310 Ratings00 Ratings
    Javascript API9.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    iFrames7.39 Ratings00 Ratings
    Java API8.79 Ratings00 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)8.910 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
    SQL Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of Pentaho and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Pentaho
    -
    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
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (31 ratings)
    8.6
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.8
    (11 ratings)
    8.8
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    9.3
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.3
    (7 ratings)
    7.5
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.4
    (16 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.6
    (16 ratings)
    -
    (0 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
    PentahoSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Hitachi Vantara
    Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    • Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
    • Import data from any sources and different databases
    • Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
    • Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
    • Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
    • Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    • I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
    • Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
    • Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    The Pentaho tools are designed so you can start playing around on your own. Of course, you will need guidance at some point, but the training teams are good at guiding new users, and the online documentation is usually pretty up-to-date.
    Some of the tools, such as the Pentaho Data Integration tool and the Pentaho Server, are pretty self-explanatory. The other tools maybe are not so quickly and obvious to use, but again, with some documentation and some customer support, you can find your way around them.
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    They were responsive to our questions when we raised issues. They gave us workarounds when required. They were quite knowledgeable when it came to issue analysis and providing fixes. They were forthright in informing us if a bug was not due for release soon.
    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
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Hitachi Vantara
    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
    Online Training
    Hitachi Vantara
    Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Hitachi Vantara
    Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal department. It also supports many of our BI use cases as required by company management or the business user. Last but not least, the Pentaho license is cheaper than their competitor.
    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
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Hitachi Vantara
    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
    Hitachi Vantara
    • Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
    • Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
    • We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.
    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