Sentry One - the good and the bad
To alert us of any issues with our SQL Server estate and to identify bottlenecks such as slow running queries so we can tune them for …
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What is SolarWinds SQL Sentry?
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…
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Popular Features
- Performance dashboard (102)9.292%
- Top SQL (102)8.686%
- Historical trend data (100)8.686%
- Intelligent alerting (96)7.979%
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Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)
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SQL Sentry for Azure SQL Database
$161
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Per year per database (annual subscription)
SQL Sentry
1,450
On Premise
Per year per instance (annual subscription)
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What is SolarWinds SQL Sentry?
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 Services (SSAS)
- SQL Server on Hyper-V or VMware VMs (including host)
- SQL Server on Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
- SQL Server on Amazon RDS
- SQL Server on Amazon EC2
- SQL Server on Linux
Although a SQL Sentry license can be used to monitor Azure SQL Database in a hybrid environment, dedicated licensing is available for large Azure SQL Database environments.
SolarWinds SQL Sentry Features
SQL Performance Monitoring Features
- Supported: Performance dashboard
- Supported: Intelligent alerting
- Supported: Top SQL
- Supported: Historical trend data
- Supported: Virtualization support
Additional Features
- Supported: Query plan analysis
- Supported: Blocking and deadlock analysis
- Supported: Event Calendar
- Supported: Advisory Conditions
- Supported: AlwaysOn Availability Groups monitoring
- Supported: Index analysis
- Supported: Storage Forecasting
- Supported: SQL Sentry Portal (installed SQL Sentry web interface)
- Supported: Environment Health Overview
- Supported: Tempdb analysis
- Supported: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) monitoring
SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots
SolarWinds SQL Sentry Integrations
SolarWinds SQL Sentry Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
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September 29, 2022
Sentry One - the good and the bad
To alert us of any issues with our SQL Server estate and to identify bottlenecks such as slow running queries so we can tune them for improved performance.
- Alerting of critical issues
- Identify slow running queries
- Emailing when a SQL Server is down
- The client version is tightly bound to the server version so all have to be upgraded at the same time.
- The client is quite slow at times
- The windows metrics is hard to get working
January 19, 2022
SolarWinds SQL Sentry to monitor, identify the blocker, and fix the problem in no time
It helps to monitor SQL server performance monitoring with the help of graphs. ]The software] helps to identify the performance problems like long running quries on the database. [It] helps you to create best index for the given query. Daily running queries on [the] database can be easily viewed and its wait time can also be monitored.
- Query analysis
- More ways to monitor database performance
- Graphical representation of different factors
- Customized dashboards are good, but can be improved further.
- More details can be shown to optimize query plan.
- CPU and memory usage , availability can be shown in more different ways with additional details.
April 22, 2021
Sentry One a comprehensive monitoring tool
Sentry one is used to profile anomalies in the SQL Server like blockings, deadlocks and high CPU usage.
- Problem detection
- Alerts
- Graphs
- High resource usage
- Calendar take time to load
- incomplete execution plan
April 07, 2021
Great Performance Monitoring Tool
We have used SQL Sentry primarily for helping us monitor and proactively deal with performance issues with SQL Server. When we have a performance problem this tool has been quite helpful at reviewing past history and allow us to see patterns that may be causing us issues and helps us identify areas we can make changes to improve performance.
- Performance tuning.
- Monitoring.
- History tracking.
- User interface could use some improvement.
- Make it easier to drill down.
- Add ability to set up more alerting.
June 25, 2020
SQL Sentry Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SQL Sentry to monitor and alert on our SQL Server Environment. It helps us troubleshoot live issues as they occur using the dashboard and Top SQL. The history allows us to look back and investigate issues that have already happened. The built in baselines help us compare current metrics with historical norms. The dashboard gives us the a great view to analyze CPU, waits, disk latency and many other metrics on a single screen. There are some good out of the box reports. It is a powerful and flexible tool.
- The performance dashboard makes it easy to get a quick overview of the current state of the DB server.
- All monitoring tools have overhead. SQL Sentry does a good job of making the data collection as efficient as possible. I have seen performance issues with another 3rd party monitoring tool. I have not seen any with SQL Sentry.
- Highlighting a significant period on the dashboard (like high CPU, large waits etc) and jumping to Top SQL is very handy.
- There is a bit of a learning curve when setting up advisory conditions (ie alerts on specific metrics).
- The Top SQL tab does a great job at big resource hogs. However the small, frequently executed queries are not as easy to analyze with this tool.
We use SQL Sentry to provide an agreeable set of monitoring metrics and results which we use as part of our consulting toolset for MS SQL server.
It also forms the basis of our alerting and monitoring framework that we deploy for our clients.
- Easy to implement
- Great knowledge base
- Excellent support
- I'd like some customisable branding for reports
- Having a customisable time allocation table to map alerts to an estimated, predefined chunk of time allotted to resolve the alert
We are using it to monitor our SQL Server instance with customer data on it. It enables me to review the load on our server and also monitor high cost SQL Statements.
- Capture costly SQL Statements
- Alert the Database Administration Staff to deadlocks, blocking and other important issues
- Able to provide management with performance statistics on the database and server
- Some issues monitored to generate a health score I find to be misleading. One example would be % of free space when you have the data files set for autogrowth.
May 01, 2020
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor
Monitor production and development instances for benchmarking, baselining and troubleshooting. we shared access with devs, dbas and ops team to give full insight to the sql server performance. gave everyone a single view of issues and way to share issues or concerns across all teams. with enough rbac controls to keep things simple and secure
- In-depth monitoring
- Vast array of customisation
- support
- Documentation of customization
- Configuration
- explain what is being monitored and default alert values
April 28, 2020
Pandemonium Control
We use SQL Sentry within the IT department to help monitor and isolate issues associated with all production level database servers. SQL Sentry provides our IT department and DBA with the tools to quickly identify performance issues with our SQL Server databases. SQL Sentry offers us a centralized portal and a snapshot of our database servers health.
- A centralized location to troubleshoot database server issues.
- Quick access to pin in time snapshots database performance.
- Capabilities to drill into problem areas.
- Provide a query interface embedded into the application, so there is no need to bounce back between SSMS and SQL Sentry.
April 28, 2020
Essential for any production server
Performance Advisory allows you to quickly know what the overall performance of the servers looks like. From the dashboard you can deep dive right away to any specific area that may require attention. It contains the KPIS and data of almost all aspects of the SQL Server.
- Excellent presentation of KPIs
- Allows you to deep dive on counters with a click of a button
- Lets you easily move from one time frame to another
- To allow users to configure raw data retention before it is aggregated
- Reporting
- To use algorithms that alert when a relevant or critical KPI is behaving abnormally
December 11, 2019
SQL Sentry Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
SQL Sentry is being utilized to monitor our current SQL environment. The product has provided insight and a new form of analytics to help push maintenance in a positive direction. The department is the only current user for this monitoring software. It helps prevent failure across the whole organization. Some business problems that are addressed is the new form of communication. Having a solid reporting platform has pushed the standard for other monitoring software in our environment.
- The reporting features and amounts of diversified emails are astonishing.
- The program is able to drill down on granular issues that plague DB's.
- The software does have some issues with false positives.
- The alerting for build updates could be more detailed.
November 22, 2019
Sentry One: Performance monitoring with much bang for the buck
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
SQL Sentry is being used by our IT department to monitor our SQL Servers. It lets us know when there is a performance problem or if there are issues with certain batch jobs.
- It gives real-time updates to performance issues.
- It monitors batch jobs and lets you know when a job completion time falls out of the minimum/maximum range for that job.
- Helps you identify the culprit when blocking or a deadlock is detected.
- It is not easy to figure out disk activity problems when red marching ants point to a particular database.
- It is not easy to analyze and re-assign licenses for SQL Monitoring vs. Windows Performance monitoring. It should be more intuitive and easier to transfer a license from a SQL Server or Windows machine that I know longer want to monitor.
- It is not always easy to drill into the Health Score details and find the pertinent server, database, SQL object, etc.
November 21, 2019
Complete monitoring of SQL server
We use the product to identify performance issues as they occur, with the goal of improving our processes and software to eliminate these issues going forward. We also use the product to monitor the health of our servers and to identify developing issues well before they actually make an impact on the environment.
- Monitors running processes and reports when they exceed runtimes well beyond those that are considered normal.
- Tracks resource utilization on the SQL Servers and makes recommendations on reconfigurations that would improve performance.
- Tracks troublesome and long-running SQL queries and provides insights into improvements that could be made.
- The user interface is intimidating, and not very friendly. You really have to study and work with the product in order to find what you're looking for.
- The product is SO feature-rich that it is hard to get started simply.
- The warning messages for various server conditions are great, but the "as shipped" values don't work very well with our environment, so there's a tremendous amount of setup necessary.
May 08, 2019
Why I love SQL Sentry
SQL Sentry is one of my favorite tools. In a single dashboard I can see the state of most metrics I care about for daily operations and well being of the SQL instances. The most useful feature is having the ability to trace back performance issues, days and even weeks after they have occurred. You can establish a baseline and detect unusual activity in real-time.
- Troubleshooting performance issues and bottlenecks.
- Historical review of spikes and root causes.
- Visualizations.
- Better reports.
- Customizing the dashboard.
- Storing more historical data.
April 26, 2019
SQL Sentry
We currently use SQL Sentry to monitor and alert on production SQL Server systems.
- Easy to see everything on one screen
- Awesome customer service
- Alerting is confusing at first, but they are willing to help.
October 09, 2018
SentryOne is an Awesome Product
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SentryOne in our production (over 120 Instance worldwide and growing). It gives us an easy way to navigate the dashboard to quickly identify a performance problem and the ability to drill into the issue quickly and come up with a game plan to address the performance problem.
- Alerting is very flexible and configurable to our needs
- Linking alerting into third party alerting tools via PowerShell was easy
- Collecting and rolling up SQL statements make it much easier to troubleshoot performance problems
- Drilling into PLE and what’s happening when it drops out
- Ease of drilling into time-frame to figure out what was the issue at that time
- Being able to query the SentryOne database for management reports is awesome (Deadlocks and Blocking)
- Navigation could be improved. It can be hard to follow if you are new to the tool
- Calendar of events could use some work. Display can be confusing at times
May 21, 2018
SQL Sentry is a Great Product
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SQL Sentry to monitor our production ERP databases. It allows easy tuning checkup, configurable emails to alert you to conditions that require attention, and offers insights into SQL that are difficult and time consuming to duplicate with SQL Management Studio.
- Alerts me quickly to SQL Blocking and record locks via email, providing offending SQL and users involved.
- Provides an easy to monitor performance index and common issues that affect it.
- Alerts me to missed tasks, malfunctioning tasks, etc., via email. Really comes in handy when doing MS/Windows updates as I know exactly what was missed when the server was involved in the updates.
- Don't fix too much, it works very well as delivered. Changes made for the sake of change often make a great product into a good product.
- Tech support is great and easy to get to, but a little more development on the help screens in the product could save you some work.
- I'd like to see licensing modified to allow you to monitor one production environment and one test environment. That would be tricky from your perspective, but you are a crafty lot and I'm thinking you could come up with a way to tell if I was monitoring duplicate databases or two entirely different data environments.
- Repeat, do not change too much, this product is great and a good value.
November 28, 2017
SentryOne Brief Review
We have been using SQL Sentry exclusively in our database department. Occasionally our technical leads join our analysis and troubleshooting sessions. We run screen shares in those sessions to solve application performance related issues. We have used SQL Sentry analyzing and researching long running SQL queries and deadlock issues, which have become major bottlenecks in our application development processes. The software has helped us address missing index issues and optimize query performances. In the past, we were also able to make a few important design decisions based on the analysis and statistics that were provided by SQL Sentry monitoring service. Decisions that include when and where to use application or database caching mechanism, as well as the benefit of implementing ad-hoc queries versus stored procedures. It has also helped our QA department to identify most key issues in our load tests.
- Top running SQL - gives statistical information about long running queries as well the ability to customize filters.
- Deadlock - provides detailed graphical analysis on deadlock chains and involving parties. It is very intuitive and easy to pin point the cause of deadlocks.
- Baseline tuning - provides both sampling and historical trending information on SQL servers as well as detailed statistical information about resources utilization.
- Calendar of events - a centralized place for reviewing SQL agent jobs.
- Condition list - set of conditions that can be customized for business requirements.
- It would be nice if the reports can be interactive like drill down, clickable content, etc.
- Navigation could improve and become more intuitive.
- Calendar of events could also improve - wish the date and time range could be specified instead of just by day or interval.
November 14, 2017
SQL Sentry is the best performance monitoring tool on the market!!!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
SQL Sentry is used currently on our live platform to mange SQL performance which makes debugging issues much easier. We are looking to also implement this into our test environments so we can see the effect caused by releases at a more granular level.
- Easy and simple use of the performance dashboard to see issues straight away.
- TOP SQL viewer to see current blocking and long running queries.
- HADR graph to see if there are any latency between primary and secondaries.
- All changes are addressed by sentryone and in the past we have had these added into a new version.
August 01, 2016
SQL Sentry Business Use Case
We use SQL Sentry Performance Advisor for real time monitoring of our production systems. It has been extremely useful at providing an at-a-glance summary of current and historical activity. Additionally, the report feature has been invaluable to us for monitoring metrics over time. Performance Advisor has been instrumental in identifying non-SQL related waits that are impacting SQL performance.
- Dashboard tick
- Reports
- Blocking and Deadlocks
- Make interface less complex
- Use simple terminology for menu items
May 20, 2016
SQL Sentry Review
It is being used across the whole organization. It is being used to troubleshoot performance issues and to determine current pressure points. By knowing the pressure points, resources can be allocated appropriately.
- The performance dashboard presentation gives a quick overview of the health of the SQL Instance.
- Sentry products also include the Server OS performance metrics.
- The problematic SQL code 'jumps' out when zooming in on a dashboard.
- It seems to show only 3 weeks of data. Perhaps I'm not quite familiar YET with all the features.
- Having it as an APP on the iPhone would be nice.
May 20, 2016
DBA LifeSaver - SQL Sentry
Our DBA team uses SQL Sentry to monitor and troubleshoot all of our production SQL Server instances. This includes alerting on long running queries, when performance thresholds are met and exceeded, and the monitoring of SQL Agent Jobs.
- Monitoring.
- Troubleshooting.
- Alerting.
- Windows Monitoring.
- Allowing non-power users to utilize the tool for query analysis, without having the ability to kill queries.
- Alerting configuration.
We use Performance Advisor to monitor our database servers. We use this tool within the IT department to pinpoint pressure points, search for expensive queries, and for capacity planning of our databases. From a business perspective, this tool helps us to address performance problems introduced by new code and plan for new infrastructure.
- Easy to setup in a Microsoft shop that depends on Active Directory
- Alerting cover a range of issues
- Detailed trace information can be retrieved and stored on demand
- Records blocking and deadlock events
- Records disk contention over time
- Records disk utilization over time
- The disk utilization overview does not seem to accurately display volumes created using a software RAID
- It is difficult to determine what isolation level was used for a query.
- The deadlock and blocking queries tab does not record transaction isolation level either. This would help since knowing the transaction isolation level for a query would help us choose a more appropriate isolation level for the blocking transactions.
May 11, 2016
SQL Sentry guards our SQL complex.
We use SQL Sentry Performance Advisor to find failures in our own software as it is running by the email alerting feature. We find blocks and deadlocks very quickly this way and eliminate the issue before it causes larger problems. We also use the software to identify long running SQL and problems with our stats and indexes.
- The SQL Sentry dashboard lets us quickly see in one spot many performance counters for an SQL instance.
- The TOP SQL feature of SQL Sentry is great. Highlight a long running query, examine it to see if actual rows vs. estimated rows are the same, where the main expense of the query is, all from one interface.
- I would like to be able to set alerts a bit more easily. Adding other email addresses and items like that are a bit of a chore to locate and change.
- I would like to see performance of the client improve when running remotely and watching several servers. Switching between tabs can get pretty slow.
- Perhaps add the ability to watch jobs and plans and see what errors are generated in those plans.
I use SQL Sentry Performance Advisor almost on a daily basis, as does a few of my IT associates. Our original goal was to identify and correct inefficiencies when many of our servers were riddled with problems. SQL Sentry made it very easy to identify problems and patterns in a fraction of the time it would have taken to dig through a bunch of log files. The graphical representations within SQL Sentry and the way that the objects on screen are tied together make it easy to catch issues at a glance, and zoom in to a more narrow timeframe to see how one problem can affect different aspects of server performance. We monitor various production application and database servers with alerts setup for each of them. SQL Sentry has not only helped us identify issues to be corrected, but over time, has helped us redefine our approach to become a more proactive shop.
- The best feature of Performance Advisor is its history view. In the history view I can easily see when the server is having a performance problem, how often a specific issues comes up, and how long it has been a problem. It allows me to see patterns of performance (disk io, cpu usage, system memory, ect), and I can always zoom in to areas of concern.
- Performance Advisor can be in conjunction with application installations or changes, process/task changes ect. to get an idea on how these changes are affecting server performance.
- Alerts in Event Manager can be about as granular as you might want to get, but are a bit lacking in Performance Advisor. In Performance Advisor I only use alerts for connection and task failures.