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SolarWinds SQL Sentry

SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Overview

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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Recent Reviews

SentryOne review

8 out of 10
November 10, 2021
Incentivized
We use it to monitor our critical SQL server cluster and it is currently just used by the DBAs. It allows us to monitor in real time but …
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SQL Sentry Review

10 out of 10
June 25, 2020
We use SQL Sentry to monitor and alert on our SQL Server Environment. It helps us troubleshoot live issues as they occur using the …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Performance dashboard (102)
    9.2
    92%
  • Top SQL (102)
    8.6
    86%
  • Historical trend data (100)
    8.6
    86%
  • Intelligent alerting (96)
    7.9
    79%
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Pricing

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Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)

$0

On Premise
Free

SQL Sentry for Azure SQL Database

$161

On Premise
Per year per database (annual subscription)

SQL Sentry

1,450

On Premise
Per year per instance (annual subscription)

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.sqlsentry.com/portal/store

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

SQL Sentry - Live Demo

YouTube
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Features

SQL Performance Monitoring

SQL Performance Monitoring software is designed to monitor the database at all times

8.4
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

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

Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Integrations

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Downloadables

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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(162)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 58)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Production SQL Server implementations
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
[SolarWinds] SQL Sentry is well suited in [the] following cases: Nodes, availability, monitoring, query optimization, identification of problems, and increasing overall database performance. With the help of dashboards and graphs one can easily check all the important factors in one go. Network performance monitoring can be done easily. Databases can be monitored on AWS with the help of SentryOne.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The dashboard view of our server allows us to monitor the activity on our primary system and at a glance know if there is an issue. Getting to travel back in time and isolate performance issues is a huge bonus for us. We have been able to optimize and reduce issues with our database allowing our users to have a better experience with the dependent software. We also use it to monitor and plan our ETL jobs to not interfere with each other. In our regional community, we recommend others to SQL Sentry to monitor their Microsoft SQL instances.
  • Real-Time Monitoring
  • Top Long Running SQL
  • Performance troubleshooting
  • Job Monitoring/Planning
  • Procedure and Query Statistics
  • Shiny Easy to use interface for those not comfortable with writing Queries
  • Integration with Azure Data Studio
  • A Containerized, platform agnostic web client
  • Support for Other Operating Systems
  • Support for other databases
Just had an end-user approach me about a long-running report. I was able to utilize the Top SQL tab and view the long-running report, copy the SQL being executed so I can place it in a notebook for later review for performance optimization. My manager looked in on the DBA Space earlier this morning to inquire about login issues for an application. As we had the dashboard loaded on our primary monitor, we were able to quickly glance and identify that the issue was not with the database. The issue was with a specific web server that was identified with other tools. We received a lot of calls in a short period of time with reports of 504 issues in the application. Using the Top SQL tab, identified that there was a report query being run multiple times that was causing table locks to not release. All these issues were identified in seconds with SentyOne. Most were resolved in under 60 seconds from the initial report of concern.
November 10, 2021

SentryOne review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to monitor our critical SQL server cluster and it is currently just used by the DBAs. It allows us to monitor in real time but also allows us to better understand why problems had happened so we can prevent them from reoccurring.
  • Monitors IO at multiple levels such as Storage, OS & Database level.
  • Top SQL provides a lot detailed analysis which allows you optimise queries
  • Alerting when setup correctly allow you to fix issues before users are aware.
  • Temp DB is not monitored and needs to be
  • Improved notifications like push
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is using SQL Sentry to monitor a group of high-profile SQL Servers for performance problems. The DBA team relies on this tool to quickly resolve performance issues -- sometimes before the users even notice something is wrong. It also helps with long-term capacity planning by giving us historical trends of many useful metrics.
  • The performance dashboards are very useful and help bring attention directly to the problem areas.
  • The alerting system is extremely customizable,, so you don't get peppered with a bunch of useless alerts that make you blind to real action-worthy alerts.
  • The reporting is powerful enough to provide exactly what you need to see trends over time.
  • The alert customization is powerful, but can be cumbersome to set up.
  • There is so much information on the screen at any given time that without some practice it can be overwhelming.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
[Well suited to] Show top running queries and details like CPU usage and start time.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We specifically purchased SQL Sentry Performance Advisor out of the need to resolve performance issues on one of our SQL clusters. It was difficult to troubleshoot the issues after they had occurred and SQL Sentry allowed us to review the performance over a period of time and specifically go back to when an issue occurred to troubleshoot. We now use this for the majority of our SQL estate and specifically for IT Department only.
  • Historical analysis of performance counters - you can go back in time or over a range to see what was happening to the server
  • Review Top SQL and Blocking - You can see at a specific moment in time what queries are running and even review historical blocking.
  • Baselining - Ability to set your own baselines, so you can compare what is on screen to what you expect
  • Read only views - You can grant read only access to users, allowing us to grant support teams the ability to review the dashboards as well.
  • If a server is maxing out and unable to allow the service to record then you can get blackouts in the data. This is a risk of running as a service, but then you have bigger problems to deal with if that has occurred.
SQL Sentry can be utilised for both performance monitoring and alerting. It is good if you need to analyse performance issues whether in production or in development. Easily can export stats to send to vendors where applications are not performing well. And can setup alert thresholds that can send emails to support teams or write out to SCOM or the event log.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SentryOne to monitor our Production SQL instances for the entire organization. We choose SentryOne as our monitoring solution to reduce dependency on custom written alerts. This eliminates having to maintain custom alert compatibility with different versions of SQL Server and we are confident in the best practice standards SentryOne uses to develop their alerts. SentryOne is my first place to go when problems arise, and SentryOne is usually the first to let me know there is a problem.
  • Because of previous products, we had been accustomed to receiving emails for our alerts. SentryOne provides this functionality with great features like not using it for everything monitored to preventing our mailbox from being flooded by controlling alerts to a certain amount in a time frame (customizable) and an alert to tell you that limit has been reached.
  • SentryOne provides a great blocking page to help understand a blocking chain quickly. It is also configurable to ignore short term blocking that hasn't run long enough to be of concern.
  • Top-SQL has been a helpful feature to recognize processes or jobs that run beyond their normal run time. Also, helpful when looking for what was running during times an issue has come up and we need to see what was running in the past.
  • There is still some work to do with the baseline data. I am sure there are a great number of alerts that could be created using this data to highlight variations beyond normal.
  • All the alerts have the ability to trigger a response, providing some best practice configurations of these might help us to use these features more often.
  • Could use better documentation on the ports and firewall settings needed during the process of adding an instance to monitoring. This has proven to be different than what is used once monitoring is setup.
SQL Sentry has a very simple to follow layout for configuration and is easily adapted to each instance that has special requirements. Also, having the option to configure an alert to do more than one action is invaluable. Using the Alerting Channel, emails, and running scripts to address the issue automatically provides great value. Being able to set time windows of when to monitor and not monitor, as well as turning off all monitoring as needed by the server or reducing unneeded alerts during maintenance.
Mark Lessard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SQL Sentry is being used to monitor 260 SQL instances across or enterprise. We are in the process of integrating the alerting capabilities with SCOM via SNMP. Along with alerting SS greatly increase our efficiency in resolving ongoing and past performance issues. SS also provides a central repository for reporting at the enterprise and client level. We previously used a competitors tool for 7 years but moved to SQL Sentry due to the products inability to function in our environment and more so a lack of response to the issues we were experiencing by the vendor. Our experience with SQL Sentry support has been excellent to date.
  • Collecting and rolling up SQL statements with the associated plan. The ability to see aggregate and individual execution of SQL statements along with the associated plan is key in rapid diagnosis of bad plans. Bad plans are the most common performance issue we see in the big data environment.
  • The ability to drill into disk IO. Being able to easily see IO per a file can help identify issues with slow / stressed storage and or poorly distributed tables.
  • Easily focus on time-frame. Being able to click and drag to select a time frame to analyze from a prior time frame keeps maintains the flow of troubleshooting.
  • Alerting is inherited and highly configurable.
  • The collection can be distributed over multiple servers allowing scaling out horizontally and fault tolerance.
  • AD roles can be used in configuring access to the subsets of the servers being monitored. Access can be configured such that adding a user to an Active Directory role will provide access to just the servers then need to see. This works very well for our client specific operations.
  • 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.
I only see one scenario for this type of tool. I want all tools in this category to collect OS and SQL performance metrics over a time frame and present and or alert on them in a way that allows me to diagnose availability and performance issues on the servers. I need this information in real time and historically. I need to be able to report on this information at the micro and macro level. I need a tool that just works and a company that stands behind there tool. SQL Sentry meets these needs.

The only scenario I see were SQL Sentry would not work is were purchase cost of the product is weighted very heavily as opposed to all other factors.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SQL Sentry in my department to monitor patterns and fluctuations in performance for our SQL Servers. It's helped us address monthly spikes and unusual performance dips, so we know when we have a bug in just-released code and we know when to prepare for slightly-slower systems and address that accordingly.
  • offers good insight into data that would otherwise be time-consuming to compile
  • performance tuning
  • monitoring metrics
  • customization of alerts can be tricky
  • could have more granular data
  • summary reports could be more complete
SQL Sentry is a great monitoring tool for performance in environments that are transaction-heavy. It gives a complex overall view of performance on a daily/hourly/etc. basis so you know where spikes are happening (and when, more importantly). It also provides insight into blocking processes, so if you have a long-running query/job, you can see what's happening more clearly.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using SQL Sentry to centralize our SQL server monitoring from a number of differing domains. For the first time at this organization, we are getting a comprehensive view of our entire SQL estate. The previous solution was a mix of individual alerts on various SQL instances and several instances of a competing monitoring tool.
  • Metrics collection
  • Collects data across differing domains
  • SQL Plan Explorer is part of the tool
  • Alert configuration is amazing
  • Customer support is outstanding
  • No metrics for replication, but does alert
  • Thick client is slow and almost unusable over a VPN
  • The alert configuration is so flexible that it has a steep learning curve
SQL Sentry is so flexible it's amazing. It comes with a steep learning curve and will take time to truly implement and dial in, but you're not alone--customer support is outstanding. My biggest complaint is that the thick client is slow and almost unusable over a VPN. Since COVID hit, that's a big deal. The web portal is snappy and fast, and I look forward to when the thick client is retired in favor of the portal.
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.
SQL Sentry allows the user to get a quick overview of the DB server and then drill into problem areas to get more details. The dashboard charts make it easy to snip and paste into Teams chats for the group to analyze. It seamlessly integrates with Plan Explorer for detailed analysis of the execution plan.
Kevin Dickover, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SQL Sentry Performance Advisor on both MSSQL Server and Analysis Services. It allows us to go back and investigate performance events that occurred outside of the normal workday and correlate what was happening on a server to other servers that it was connected to at the time. Over time it has allowed us to address specific recurring performance problems that we might not have been able to easily track down.
  • PA focuses attention to problem areas when in the moment and helps get us to quicker problem resolution. Trapping execution plans for long running queries has been particularly helpful as has the insight into disk activity.
  • Running PA in both QA and production has allowed for more efficient benchmarking of changes due to go to production and resolution of possible performance problems.
  • PA does not replace a DBA but it does help them to be more focused and efficient in a number of situations.
  • I would like to see the UI be more responsive, particularly when looking at historical records.
  • Capture of execution plans is sometimes unpredictable and I would like to see that more often
  • Reporting of job runtimes over history is difficult. Pulling baselines and exporting for multiple jobs would be very helpful.
  • Dropping anomalous job execution times from stats would be helpful when exceeding maximum runtimes is important
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor is good at monitoring your system over time and allowing you to go back to previous problems to compare what was happening then to what is happening now. It is also good at reporting on harder to trap errors occurring in your system, memory pressure events in analysis services spring to mind here.

I've have heard of people trying to replace DBAs with this tool, that is a bad idea. This is a tool for DBAs, not a replacement.
Adrian Sullivan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
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
SQL Sentry is amazing at getting information relating to the state of SQL servers. Alerts and issues are easy to consume as an action list.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Great for indepth monitoring where you can plug in 3rd party tool and know you are gathering everything needed to troubleshoot issues. If you dont have a datbase administrator, the amount of details gathered may be to large and set you off down the wrong path / give you red herrings for some issues
May 01, 2020

Force Multiplier

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a Managed Service provider, SentryOne provides us with a key platform to monitor, diagnose issues and optimize performance for our customers. The platform provides the capability for services to be monitored 24/7 with in-depth, relevant information to be captured and reviewed for proactive and reactive cases, improving service delivery significantly.
  • 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.
  • Has the potential to make the business think they can replace DBAs with this fantastic product.
  • Windows Integrated Authentication for cross-domain monitoring (but you can monitor across domains, so this can be forgiven!).
A customer experiences a slow Analysis Services cube processing overnight from their Data Warehouse and wants to understand why this issue has occurred. SentryOne provides you the capability to see exactly what happened, with just as much detail as if you were sitting on the servers at 3:00am monitoring it directly. This applies for SQL Server, Windows, Azure, APS. Once you have experienced the product, you will realize you must have it.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SQL Sentry to help us identify performance issues and remediate them quickly. In addition, we use it to alert on blocking and deadlocks.
  • I like the way that the graphs on the dashboard can be selected and synchronize to show how each are related.
  • The ease at which problematic SQL can be identified by spikes on the dashboard make this tool invaluable to a Performance Engineering team.
  • We have a number of installations across different environments and solution lines. The tool needs to be able to switch between them within the tree view instead of needing to connect to a different installation from the file menu
  • We receive frequent timeouts when looking at the Top SQL tab on our busiest SQL servers with a lot of history. Something needs to be done on large repositories
SQL Sentry is very useful in production and performance testing environments for identifying and fixing slow performing applications. It is difficult on very high volume instances with a lot of history.
April 28, 2020

Pandemonium Control

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
It is well suited for monitoring all servers in one consolidated interface, rather than bouncing around between different registered SQL Servers.
April 28, 2020

Lives up to the hype

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
SQL Sentry started out being used by one division/group and has now expanded to another group and working on expanding to additional areas. It is being used to proactively discover database related issues and manage SQL jobs across different database servers.
  • SQL job management.
  • SQL server monitoring.
  • Alerting.
  • Windows task management.
  • Object hierarchy.
I would think for mid-size groups/divisions it works the best. I cannot imagine having more than 10 or so servers on one monitoring service. It is great when you have a lot of inexperienced users hitting the same database servers with ad hoc queries. SQL Sentry is much more powerful than I know I am using it for, it just takes time to figure out what is best for your own use.
Kevin R. Zakoski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
My team uses SentryOne to monitor our production SQL environment. They will use it as a first tool to verify system health when pulled into production issues. If SQL is determined to be the bottleneck in process, we'll use the information SentryOne provides to pinpoint the problem code and pass the information onto developers for fine tuning. In our development environment, our developers also have the client tools to monitor their processes. If we had licenses available for the Dev/Test servers, then we could fine tune them before releasing code to production. This is limited because we only have a few licenses to spare for Dev/Test.
  • It has an easy to use interface/dashboard; it doesn't require a lot training or reading to get information. Most of the key counters are on the main dashboard and the rest of the data you're looking for is usually just a tab away.
  • Historical information: By the time I get the call, the system is usually back to normal, so having the ability to look back in time and pinpoint when problems started is essential for us when determining the root cause of problems.
  • One tool: Not only can it determine what is causing the issue, SentryOne also captures the detail and plans for code being executed. It allow me to drill into the plans and get down to the nitty gritty code all within one interface. No need to buy additional tools or load into Management Studio to get more details.
  • 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.
It has great out-of-the-box features that make it easy to install and get it up and running right away. However, fine tuning and customization of the solution, like setting up custom alerts and notifications, needs to be someones dedicated responsibility. Because of this, we don't necessarily have the time allocated to become true subject matter experts on the tool. What we get out of the box is usually going to be the norm.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
I think it is well suited for all scenarios where an SQL Server is involved. Given the costs perhaps I wouldn't spend money paying for licensing on Development environments.
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.
It is well-suited for analyzing and identifying performance issues. It is also well-suited for monitoring failures for SQL jobs and performance issues resulting from blocking or deadlocks.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
It's great for making sure your environment is performing well. I love the fact that I can monitor my entire SQL Server estate from 1 screen. However, the setup and customization to ensure your inbox doesn't get inundated with warning messages are tedious and time-consuming.
Timothy Ford | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

We are currently in the evaluation stage of purchasing SQL Sentry Performance Advisor but in my previous role and as a Technology Consultant I've been responsible for installing, configuring, and using SQL Sentry Performance Advisor at multiple companies to the tune of 150+ seats. I'd advocated for years to size up our install base from 15 seats to over 120 at my last company and eventually succeeded in funding with management please over the results.

There, as well as in other companies I consulted for, I used SQL Sentry Performance Advisor to not only identify issues arising on our SQL servers but most importantly to be able to drill into find out the specific commands that are (and were) causing the pain while we all slept at night. There is nothing more important in troubleshooting performance than knowing the specific commands that underlay points in time when performance degrades. The tool is complex in the data available to the end user but simple enough to set up out of the box and the reports it provides to users across all tiers of management has saved many phone calls and stressful conversations.

  • Identifying statements causing performance issues: I've never seen any other tool work as good, or provide as much information, as their "Top SQL" tab in SQL Sentry Performance Advisor and I'm quite familiar with all the major players in the SQL Server tools space. You're able to drill into the statements in each of these commands and display (graphically or tabular) what the associated execution plan looked at as well as the IO/Memory/CPU cost for those statements.
  • The Dashboard view give you all you need to see in one shot at the SQL Server instance level: CPU, Memory, IO, Network load... it's all there. Then there is the Default Site overview of all alerts, exceeded thresholds, and current status of these same data points for all monitored instances you can see with a single glance.
  • Integration with their one-of-a-kind Plan Explorer product: Plan Explorer blows away anything else out there - and there is not much outside of the Microsoft-supplied tools - for graphical query plan analysis.
  • There is a great deal of metadata collected and provided to the end user client tool. I've seen issues with responsiveness inside a VPN as a result. This may be an issue with the VPNs itself but I've seen this with at least 50% of the VPNs I've used their tools through.
  • Unless you have a DBA on staff, configuration may be a bit difficult as there are a large number of settings to dial in. That being said I've never heard of anyone not getting assistance quickly in regards to customer support and I know from experience for certain sized installs and larger they'll even come on site for training and configuration assistance (either in person or remote.)
Let's get this straight: when it comes to performance analysis tools for SQL Server this is the only product I'd recommend. I've yet to see an scenario where SQL Sentry Performance Advisor was not appropriate. I've monitored physical and virtual servers, large and tiny instance. No issues across the board.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SQL Sentry to manage in-house production and development databases as well as production databases of our clients. SQL Sentry allows us to effectively, efficiently manage many databases in our high volume, highly transactional system. This tool allows us to help us keep our system running smoothly and proactively fend off possible problems, greatly reducing and even eliminating the dreaded "the system seems slow today" phone call.
  • Determine the root cause in seconds. Determining the root cause of SQL Server issues can be a time suck in a black hole. This tool eliminates that.
  • Historical Perspective. SQL Sentry provides an easy way to review performance intuitively over time.
  • Indexes. The Query Plan Explorer almost makes tuning indexes fun.
  • UI Response Time. At times the UI is sluggish. This somewhat understandable when you realize what the tool is doing. The 2-3 UI response is not an issue though when compared with the amount of time that it saves you troubleshooting.
There are a lot of choices in this area, a few leaders. The entire process from pre-sales, to sales, training and finally using S1 daily has been smooth. The combination of all aspects of the company and product leads to a "you can't go wrong with S1" recommendation.
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