TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor vs. SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.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
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds 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
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsSAM pricing starts at $2,995.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
    SolarWinds is more cost effective with all the features that it provides as compared to Datadog and SQL Sentry. configuration is simpler than the rest of the tools.
    Incentivized
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    In our opinion SQL Sentry Performance Advisor was a more complete mature tool with a great dashboard view where MANY critical elements of SQL Server performance are brought together in a single place. The historical view of data is immensely valuable. The visualization of …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    37 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    35 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    36 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    30 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
    7.1
    281 Ratings
    10% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Application monitoring7.0271 Ratings00 Ratings
    Database monitoring7.6235 Ratings00 Ratings
    Threshold alerts7.4276 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive capabilities6.6220 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application performance management console7.4244 Ratings00 Ratings
    Collaboration tools6.6152 Ratings00 Ratings
    Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications7.0261 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application dependency mapping and thresholding6.0221 Ratings00 Ratings
    Virtualization monitoring7.6239 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server availability and performance monitoring7.6274 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting7.4255 Ratings00 Ratings
    IT Asset Discovery6.3203 Ratings00 Ratings
    SQL Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
    -
    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
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score7.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Splunk AppDynamics
    Score8.5 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.8
    (282 ratings)
    8.6
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    8.8
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    8.8
    (33 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    6.0
    (3 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    7.5
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    4.5
    (3 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    1.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    It is a well-suited software for monitoring and surveillance of your deployed nodes. The error-readability and filter options for filtering out logs and errors could be improved. But overall, it has a good UI design, is user-friendly, and is very easy to learn and access for new users.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
    • Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
    • It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • Custom application monitors can be a little tricky to configure.
    • Logic in custom alerts can be a little hard to follow and figure out.
    • Inability to monitor certificates on custom applications or SQL Server.
    • Can be a little slow at times with on-prem SQL server.
    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
    SolarWinds
    We are heavily invested in Solarwinds products for a reason. They are generally easy to setup and run with, requiring only some interfacing with support or help articles on rare occasions. They do what we bought them to do and we can't ask for more.
    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
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is quite easy to use and super versatile. It allows you to do just about anything you can through premade templates or through scripting. You can use an agent on the servers if you want to, or you can monitor through WMI or SNMP credentials. You can customize thresholds for alerting quickly, and you can configure alerts to be as complex or as simple as you want.
    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
    SolarWinds
    The tool works and monitors items 24x7, it only requires maintenance a little more frequently due to security fixes in the Windows operating system.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    The graphical interface and the performance of the database leave a little to be desired, they could be better explored.Some functionality and screens do not work well depending on the browser used. The integrations never had any problems or caused crashes in other systems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    I think there was only a couple times I had to open a support case for SAM and one time they got multiple engineers on the phone to get a better idea what I was trying to monitor and was able to point me in the best direction to monitor that system.
    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
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    SolarWinds
    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
    SolarWinds
    It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    Make sure SNMP and WMI are configured ahead of time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    Nagios requires far more manual work to configure than SolarWinds does, though that also encourages customization and perfect-fit solutions. Nagios also requires far, far fewer resources to run than SolarWinds: SolarWinds wants great gobs of memory and disk, while Nagios is refreshingly humble. Nagios starts working from the first minute, too, whereas SolarWinds needs lots of set-up time.
    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
    SolarWinds
    It is hard to find the recommended SQL setup and convince others that is the way you should configure the server when you set it up
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    SolarWinds
    • Ability to sunset multiple legacy monitoring platforms.
    • A single pane of glass across global locations (Enterprise Operations Console) simplifies monitoring for junior staff.
    • A single toolset allows staff from across the global environment to share knowledge and quickly set up/modify monitoring.
    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 Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

    Screenshot of Multi-vendor application performance monitoringScreenshot of Multi-vendor server monitoringScreenshot of Application dependency mapping with AppStack™ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Server hardware health monitoring

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

    Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL