TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Sentry vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Sentry

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ASentry provides engineering teams with tools to detect and solve user-impacting bugs and other issues.

    $26

    per month

    SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

    Score5.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. What can you monitor with DPA? Oracle Oracle Exadata Oracle EBS Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance MySQL DB2 SAP ASE Aurora MariaDB DPA monitors physical, virtual,…N/A
    Pricing
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Editions & Modules
    Team
    $26
    per month
    Business
    $80
    per month
    Developer
    Free
    Enterprise
    Contact sales team
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Considered Both Products
    Sentry
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    DPA is a market leader and goes beyond what most products in the space can offer. It's a battle between SQL Sentry and DPA for the lead and everybody has their favorite. I personally prefer DPA for ease of install, management and better tuning and query advice options.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Overall DPA is the best tool that I have used because of its simple interface and ability to dig in within a few clicks to see the root of a performance issue, but Idera and SQL Sentry have some areas where they are better than DPA, such as blocking and deadlocks.
    I also feel …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Quest Spotlight had a 70-page installation manual - quite daunting. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward to install and use. I'm looking forward to exploring SQL Sentry but haven't gotten far into it yet.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    SolarWinds was chosen by our system administrator before I joined the company. It was what he found when he searched for SQL Monitoring tools. After a demo of SQL Sentry/Sentry One, he wants to pursue that tool instead of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA). We find …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    The main thing was their popularity for the products they are providing. Also, we had great customer support for other SolarWinds products also.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    I like the web-based interface and wait stats analysis of DPA. Some of the other tools have more features, but DPA feels like a more polished tool, and the features it has work well. It's been a while since I've looked at the competitors' products. DPA works well for us, and …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    DPA simply provides another angle over the performance of the server, plus it is very quiet and has little overhead. I also like how historical performance data is stored, and although it does not really let you decide how it is aggregated, it is good enough.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    I have done my comparison against SQL Sentry and I feel like Solarwinds Database Performance Analyzer for SQL Server is more of a graphical tool, so it lets you see wait time for a database instance. That's really nice when you're dealing with similar instances. We haven't …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    I haven't seen a better tool for analyzing and tuning queries based upon wait times. However, for operational monitoring, finding current blocking, and at times slow queries that aren't run frequently, it lacks true benefit. Best use is for long term production query tuning and …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    DPA was the best bang for the buck since we already had Orion monitoring. So being able to integrate was a huge factor.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    10 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Airbrake
    Score8 out of 10
    Redgate Monitor
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Foglight
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (15 ratings)
    9.1
    (114 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.2
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.3
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SentrySolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Sentry
    Great for standard web application performance monitoring, analytics and error reporting. Shows line level code errors, gives insight into performance issues (plugins, API issues, etc.). Automation and scheduled scanning in production gives client visibility into 'after deployment' value. Also lets a relatively small number of developers keep tabs on a handful of different site/applications without needing a bunch of tools. The UI is pretty complicated and can be overwhelming for new users. Documentation could be better for the learning curve,
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    This is an easy 10 because I actually have recommended this product to multiple clients and colleagues! Any shop that writes its own SQL queries will benefit from the insight provided by SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, so they know which of their queries is causing a bottleneck. Small shops or databases with only a few tables likely will see far fewer opportunities for optimization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Sentry
    • Great web interface. Lots of data available in a really clean format, with filtering options and more.
    • Per-user exception tracking. User is complaining about something being broken? Look up their account ID in Sentry and you can see if they've run into any exceptions (with device information included, of course).
    • Source map uploading. Took a little while to figure this out but now we have our deploy script upload sourcemaps to Sentry on each deployment, meaning we get to see stack traces that aren't obfuscated!
    • Very generous free tier – 10,000 events per month. We're nowhere near that yet.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Maintains historical SQL execution data, enabling forensic analysis
    • Has the ability to slice and dice the data so that you can drill down to the execution of a single SQL statement being executed by a stored procedure
    • Alerts to when the consumption pattern changes
    • Shows historical average run times against the current, illustrating problems when they arise
    • Provides tuning advice based on best practices
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Sentry
    • Alert Configuration. Would be really helpful to have multiple logical groupings within the "If" section of a single configurable alert.
    • Alert Copying. Being able to copy an alert from one project to another would be super beneficial.
    • Alert Tags. Better UI around how we select which tags are getting sent with each alert instead of a tiny text box.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Alerts seem to be lacking in DPA compared to competitor's tools. They can be setup but are not quite as easy or as helpful as some other tools I have used.
    • Grooming/pruning the repository database isn't very easy. We don't manage a lot of instances but our repo DB has grown pretty significantly.
    • At times when I am drilled-down to a chart, it can be difficult to navigate around from that point to another time range/query/metric.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Sentry
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Sentry
    Its incredibly versatile, but that leads to complexity for the uninitiated, which can be intimidating. Nevertheless its a well polished product, in our case leading to only using it for a focus on frontend is still more cost effective than buying a one-to-rule-them-all tool...
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Sentry
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Sentry
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Sentry
    It is cheaper and offers better support for front-end applications for enterprise large environments with more then 30 scrum teams and hundreds of micro frontend applications. The configuration options, both with the agent and from the user interface, are superior to other tools, and the documentation is also very easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA has to offer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Sentry
    • So it has helped us for quick error resolutions.
    • From dashboard we are able to assign errors to particular member and see when its resolved.
    • Without customer informing us about errors we know what happened in real time helps in customer service also.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • It has allowed us to progress as an organization with much less reliance on a direct DBA than would traditionally be required
    • Allowed us to be much more proactive in our performance monitoring and responding to issues that would affect users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

    Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoring