SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer vs SQL Sentry | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.7 out of 10

Based on 209 reviews and ratings

Score 9.2 out of 10

Based on 149 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

Performance dashboard

Intelligent alerting

Top SQL

Historical trend data

Virtualization support

Pros

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

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Provides a fantastic review capability for historic data, collating data in a far more efficient, presentable way than you can with default tools. You know that if a customer experienced even the slightest performance dip overnight, you can review that to the finest detail later.
A highly customisable monitoring system, providing rock solid information which you can drill down to the smallest detail.
An outstanding Support Team, which continues to go above and beyond any expectations.
The perfect SQL Server monitoring platform.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Cons

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.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Online Media Company, 501-1000 employees

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The presentation of SQL server waits needs work. A large value on a throw away wait like cxpacket will change the scale such that an important wait like sos_schedular _yield is not readable. I have been told this is being addressed in the next release.
Installation of the client requires sysadmin access on the repository server for the initial install. Once the install is complete sysadmin can be removed.
There is a web interface but this does not have much of the functionality yet.
I have not found a way to view page splits over time.

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Associate Director of Database Architecture

MerkleincMarketing and Advertising, 1001-5000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 8.7

Based on 4 answers

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

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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SQL Sentry 9.0

Based on 16 answers

This tool is invaluable within our organization. With the recent financial impacts to businesses across the globe related to Covid-19, we were asked if we could reduce licenses to cut costs. When we pointed out the business value that the tool brings and the risks that would be taken by not having the tool, the decision was clear. We looked elsewhere to makes cuts.

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Senior application architect

AonInsurance, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 9.2

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Database Engineer

Life.ChurchReligious Institutions, 501-1000 employees

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SQL Sentry 8.9

Based on 11 answers

I don't know how we survived before without this tool, the added value that you get from it to do deep dive performance analysis, reactive problem solving and proactive monitoring and alerting is limitless. We have only scratched the surface of what we can do with this tool at my company. The support and ROI that SentryOne provide is exceptional and one of my favourite vendors to deal with.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Legal Services Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Reliability and Availability

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 9.1

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

SQL Sentry 7.1

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Senior application architect

AonInsurance, 10,001+ employees

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Performance

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 9.1

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

SQL Sentry 7.1

Based on 2 answers

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

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Senior application architect

AonInsurance, 10,001+ employees

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Support Rating

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 9.5

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Retail Company, 201-500 employees

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SQL Sentry 10.0

Based on 16 answers

The main platform is very well supported. Requests for help with customizing alerts and monitors have been rapidly and thoroughly responded to. Our use of the chain feature seems to be out of the ordinary and our defect reports there while understood and taken seriously, tend to be lower priority than defects in the main platform. They will work diligently to give us a workaround but correction in the standard release is a little slower in the chain feature.

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Kevin Dickover, PMP

Manager Application Development and Database Services

Breakthru Beverage GroupWine and Spirits, 5001-10,000 employees

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In-Person Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

SQL Sentry 8.0

Based on 1 answer

sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Implementation Rating

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 9.1

Based on 1 answer

Very satisfied

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Verified User

Program Manager in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 501-1000 employees

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SQL Sentry 8.5

Based on 11 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

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Retail Company, 51-200 employees

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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.

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Database Administrator

J. Spargo & AssociatesEvents Services, 51-200 employees

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Scalability

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer 8.2

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

SQL Sentry 7.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Senior application architect

AonInsurance, 10,001+ employees

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Return on Investment

I cannot provide quantitative data, but can give you some real positive impact example .
We had several points in the Internet banking applications which do not work as well as desired. Using DPA we identified the heaviest SQL queries and initiate a change request to the vendor. After implementing the received changes we are able to reduce response time by an order of magnitude.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Banking Company, 201-500 employees

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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

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Senior Database Administrator

EJ WardOil & Energy, 51-200 employees

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Screenshots

See All (10) SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

See All (5) SQL Sentry Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

SQL Sentry Editions & Modules

Edition

SQL Sentry Premium	$1,500¹
SQL Sentry Essentials	$600¹
Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)	$0²
SQL Sentry Premium for Azure SQL Database	$325³

per year per instance (annual subscription)
free
per year per database (annual subscription)

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SQL Sentry

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