SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds 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 SQL Sentry
Editions & Modules
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 SQL Sentry
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional Details—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Considered Both Products
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
It provided a much better feature set
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
[SolarWinds] SQL Sentry was tested against multiple monitoring systems, but [it] topped them all as [it] was a monitoring tool that was created to pinpoint SQL Server and nothing else. It has features that a lot of other monitoring systems don't have and are not even developing …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
I wasn't involved in the decision-making for SQL Sentry, but having previously used PlanExplorer, I felt confident that SQL Sentry would be a good fit to monitor our Microsoft SQL Instances. I would recommend this platform to others that have Microsoft SQL that is in need of …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
SQL Sentry has a LOT more information in it than the SolarWinds DPA product. Its reporting tool isn't as good either.

The IDERA product isn't as reliable as SQL Sentry and its reporting isn't nearly as good. The IDERA UI is a resource hog and isn't as intuitive.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
We chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry because it met more of our requirements than any other single tool. Proactive monitoring, quick collection times (every few seconds vs minutes), flexible custom alerting as well as in-depth data for performance analysis (Top SQL is by far my …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Detailed presentation of problems with details and graphs. This was lacking in the profiler. SQL Server has its canned reports, but not as useful as Sentry One. More variety of problem detection. For all Servers at one place. All affected servers in red are shown a one stop …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
SQL Sentry was just a more slick application to use versus Idera. Visually it was easier to navigate and manage, and the ability to move licenses about to Instances was a benefit.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
It has been a while now since using the Idera product, but SQL Sentry seems to provide greater configuration and alerting options. SQL Sentry offers 12 different options, all of which are configurable individually for each alert. It can be done at the global level as well as by …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Diagnostic Manager has a better interface to view waits. This is an issue for me. SQL Sentry does a better job with showing SQL statments, rolling up the metrics, providing the code and is able to show the SQL plans. The alerting in SQL Sentry is easier to use. We are having …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
For our use, SQL Sentry is just a better fit. It's faster to implement and easier to find the data we wanted to see.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
I have used tools from Idera, redgate, and also Solarwinds. SQL Sentry is one of the better tools out on the market in my opinion.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
I like SQL Sentry the best. Foglight was a long time ago and way more comprehensive tool than I needed at the time. Diagnostic Manager has some good features but I had some capacity and performance issues at times with it. SQL Sentry has been consistent and effective at …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Other tools in the SQL Sentry Suite helped determine the purchasing decision. In particular the SQL Sentry Event manager product allowed us to easily connect and visualize the overnight process. Previously the overnight process was schedule driven and prone to fail as a result …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
I use Toad and SolarWinds. Spotlight used too much of a server's resources. Sequel Pro was not as well-rounded for SQL reviews.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Both tools cover what you'd expect from an enterprise-grade SQL monitoring tool. Performance monitoring, alerting and diagnostics on both the tools are excellent and I cannot fault either on technical capabilities and feature offerings.

For SQL Managed Services providers, SQL …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
We went with demo and applicability and SQL Sentry was chosen based on our needs and reviews.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
None, I've used SQL Sentry at another job in the past and recommended it to be used at my current job.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
sql sentry is more expensive that some of its other competitors (red gate sql monitor for example) but you do get more for money. if you have experianced database adminstrators and database developers you will certainly get value for what SQL sentry gives you. but if you are …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Redgate is what we historically used. It is a great simple tool. However, with our complex environment, we needed something more robust. I will miss the multiple baseline graph overlays that I have only seen in Redgate.
Idera was a very close contender. We had it installed and …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
SQL Sentry provided 24/7 indepth visibility and on a feature to feature comparison, simply outweighted other options available. The expertise at SentryOne is incredible, and it is reflected in their passion for the product, and the development and constant engagement with the …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
AppDynamics strength lies in showing how the tiers of an application are performing. It shows some things that are good at a macro level for SQL, but it lacks the ability to dig into root cause as well as SQL Sentry. Spotlight and Foglight are also good tools in the space. …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Much better alerting and more comprehensive diagnostic tool set.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
I personally haven't looked at others although some other departments have used Idera solution and then switched to SQL Sentry.
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
With 100+ production servers to monitor, cost was the main reason we were able to switch from Idera to SentryOne. Both tools had comparable features but I was able to get more from SentryOne becasue sales reps were willing to work with us and make it a more cost effective …
Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Every resource has a different way of allowing users to access performance data and events, I simply think that SQL Sentry does it the best by displaying a dashboard that allows seeing the data in angles that no other has.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
SQL Performance Monitoring
Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
8.4
102 Ratings
1% above category average
Performance dashboard9.2102 Ratings
Intelligent alerting7.996 Ratings
Top SQL8.6102 Ratings
Historical trend data8.6100 Ratings
Virtualization support8.764 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Redgate SQL Monitor
Redgate SQL Monitor
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Redgate SQL Monitor
Redgate SQL Monitor
Score 8.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(102 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(16 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(12 ratings)
Availability
7.1
(2 ratings)
Performance
7.1
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(8 ratings)
Configurability
7.9
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.5
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.5
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
Pros
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.
Read full review
Cons
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.
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Likelihood to Renew
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
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Usability
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.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
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Performance
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
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Support Rating
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.
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In-Person Training
SolarWinds
sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool
Read full review
Implementation Rating
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).
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Scalability
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.
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Return on Investment
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
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL