SolarWinds SQL Sentry Reviews & Ratings 2024

Starting at $0 Free

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…

While expensive SQL Sentry is the most complete proactive monitoring and reactive troubleshooting tool I've used for SQL Server

Rating: 10 out of 10

July 27, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

I manage the department that is responsible for all of the company's databases. We use SolarWinds SQL Sentry for monitoring our SQL servers proactively as well as reactive tro...

Andrew Gould

Manager - Information Technology

Manager of Data Services

Integrated DNA Technologies

SQL Sentry provides Insight to SQL Server

Rating: 8 out of 10

May 2, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We use SQL Sentry to monitor our production database servers. We use it mainly for performance tuning for our environments. We also use it to analyse expensive queries, blocka...

Jian Fu

Consultant - Information Technology

Applications and BI Specialist

Kathmandu

1 year of experience

SQL Sentry is a great product that makes my life much easier.

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 1, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

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.

Tim Hermann

Technician - Information Technology

Senior Database Administrator

EJ Ward

2 years of experience

Great Performance Engineering Tool

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 29, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

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.

Steve Strelzyk

Team Lead - Information Technology

Senior application architect

Aon

3 years of experience

SentryOne Product Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 28, 2020

Vetted ReviewVerified 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 determ...

Kevin R. Zakoski

Team Lead - Information Technology

Database Engineer III

LTCG

5 years of experience

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Pricing

View all pricing

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

9.2
Performance dashboard
(102) Ratings
Dashboard displays consolidated data with drill-down capability
7.9
Intelligent alerting
(96) Ratings
Customizable alerts and reports indicating outlier values from baseline
8.6
Top SQL
(102) Ratings
Details about any long-running or high impact statements
8.6
Historical trend data
(100) Ratings
Historical trends and anomalies for SQL tuning
8.7
Virtualization support
(64) Ratings
Root cause analysis for virtual platforms like VMWare or Hyper-V

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Product Details

What is SolarWinds SQL Sentry?

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 Competitors

Quest
Redgate
Idera

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Technical Details

Deployment Types	On-premise
Operating Systems	Windows
Mobile Application	No

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Downloadables

Datasheet

Frequently Asked Questions

Quest are common alternatives for SolarWinds SQL Sentry.

Reviewers rate Performance dashboard highest, with a score of 9.2.

The most common users of SolarWinds SQL Sentry are Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).

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Comparisons

View all alternatives

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Reviews and Ratings

(162)

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)

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SQL Sentry is a great product that makes my life much easier.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 01, 2020

Tim Hermann

Senior Database Administrator

EJ Ward (Oil & Energy, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe SQL Sentry is well suited for any environment where you need to monitor performance for both the databases and the database server. I wouldn't think it would be neccessary in a development environment.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring (5)

100%

10.0

Performance dashboard: 100%
10.0
Intelligent alerting: 100%
10.0
Top SQL: 100%
10.0
Historical trend data: 100%
10.0
Virtualization support: 100%
10.0

Alternatives Considered

None, I've used SQL Sentry at another job in the past and recommended it to be used at my current job.

Other Software Used

Oracle SQL Developer, Notepad++, Remote Desktop Manager

Users and Roles

I use it as the database administrator

Support Headcount Required

Just me

Business Processes Supported

Provide automated alerts for many conditions
To help find the most costly SQL Server statements
Provide ability to track disk peformance
Provide trending use of disk space

Innovative Uses

I can't say we are doing anything innovative, the basic features are rich and I'm sure I'm missing some interesting base functions.

Future Planned Uses

We are getting ready to set up Availability Groups, this will allow me to monitor them much better than SQL Servers standard functionality

Return on Investment

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

Likelihood to Renew

This has already become an essential monitoring tool for our SaaS environment.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability
Prior Experience with the Product

Prior experience was the most important, I knew how good the product was and the value it provides.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I might have looked to other products such as Quest Softwares SQL Server monitoring products.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal

Implementation Issues

Setting up notifications of particular SQL Server and Windows Host events.

Implementation Rating

Implementation was quite easy, SQL Sentry also provided a dedicated support person to help me out and follow up shortly after the initial implementation.

Support Rating

I have always received prompt, professional support. Without fail, they are able to answer my questions and get things up and going.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds SQL Sentry Support

The support staff provided me excellent support when I had to start supporting SQL Server instances on a different domain. The online documentation was incorrect, so the support team was able to find a solution for me that resolved my problem.

Easy Tasks

Setting up a new SQL Server Instance to monitor
Updating the license key
Modifying the metrics used to alert me

Difficult Tasks

Sometimes it gets a bit confusing on how to separate global versus local conditions and settings

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes, but I don't use it

Usability

Once you get over the inital hump, SQL Sentry is very easy to use, but also has a great deal of information that is very configurable.

Great Performance Engineering Tool

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 29, 2020

Steve Strelzyk

Senior application architect

Aon (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

3 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring (5)

56%

5.6

Performance dashboard: 100%
10.0
Intelligent alerting: N/A
N/A
Top SQL: 90%
9.0
Historical trend data: 90%
9.0
Virtualization support: N/A
N/A

Alternatives Considered

Spotlight, Foglight and AppDynamics

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. There was an established user base on SQL Sentry that preferred to not switch.

Other Software Used

AppDynamics, New Relic

Users and Roles

This is a mix of users from software developers, architects, managers and support staff. We have three distinct platforms within our health and benefits portfolios that all rely heavily on this tool. It is also used by our performance testing team in conjunction with other application monitoring tools to provide the best value.

Support Headcount Required

The support requirements to keep this tool running are extremely low. The minimum required footprint is really just one server depending on the load and number of servers being monitored. Our DevOps team is able to handle this within their team. They perform the initial installation and handle upgrades as well as license expansion.

Business Processes Supported

Application Performance Tuning/Engineering
Performance Test Monitoring
Deadlock analysis
Blocking Monitoring and Alerting

Innovative Uses

We needed to use the tool to provide additional evidence of unauthorized access
We have used the tool to provide historical evidence of long running backups when our SQL Agent History is purged.

Future Planned Uses

We are considering of Extracting the Performance data from the tool into our Reporting and Analytics repositories for predictive analytics on server capacity as well as failure.

Return on Investment

Faster root cause analysis during production outages
Better platform stability when developers proactively look at poor performing queries in lower life cycles.

Likelihood to Renew

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

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability
Prior Experience with the Product
Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor

i have used many other tools in this space(Idera and Quest to name a couple). I felt that the user experience of how the information was presented was far superior to both of those tools. In addition, the time it takes to get the information I need was much shorter with SQL Sentry.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I wouldn't change a thing. Our evaluation process is very thorough. We look at the overall value to our organization through live trials. We will continue to follow this process to land at the best tool that meets our needs. Like many organizations, we constantly look at available technology. As people, products and technology change, we have found this approach to be the best. Today that process keeps us on SQL Sentry.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal

Since the tool does not have an agent to be installed on the monitored system, it becomes painless to upgrade and can be done within normal business hours. We do not need downtime to monitor new servers or perform upgrades. We did learn that some advanced planning is needed due to security management via group policy. The service account running the monitoring service needs to be a local admin on the machines. Our group policy pulls users out of the local administrators group on a regular basis. So we just need to get the account added to the proper security group prior to adding a new target for monitoring. That is not a tool limitation though.

Implementation Issues

Firewall Rules in some cases that were blocking WMI
Group Policy pulling service accounts out of local admin groups
Putting too many targets into a single installation without the right number of monitoring services.

Implementation Rating

Overall, implementation of this tool is very easy. Anyone with entry level server administration skills and basic sql server skills can get you up and running.

Training Types Used

no training

Ease of SolarWinds SQL Sentry Training

Generally speaking, the tool is easy enough to pick up without training. I'm sure I could have learned some things via training that I needed to research on my own.

Product Configurability

There are lots of ways to configure the tool depending on what you are looking to accomplish. Out of the box, the default configuration is good enough for cover 90 - 95% of your needs. If you are looking for configuring the tool for advanced monitoring and alerting, it can be done. It just takes a little more time.

Configuration Lessons

I recommend that beginners go with the defaults and learn as you go in most cases. The vendor has outstanding support and technical evangelists that can help you with your particular situation.

UI Customization

No - we have not done any customization to the interface

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Additional Customization Considerations

No additional information at this time.

Premium Support

Yes

It depends on the situation and the tool. For many enterprise grade products we frequently pay for premium support

Support Rating

Thankfully, we have not needed to submit many support requests. I believe he have less than 5 cases in the last 4 years. However, when we do need support, the team is there for us.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds SQL Sentry Support

We were using the tool to find evidence of unauthorized access to one of our production systems. The number of times the call of interest was made was much lower than we expected. We thought that there was a problem with the tool capturing information and submitted a case. The SQL Sentry team got back to us very quickly and advised us that the tool was capturing and storing everything per its design. We learned that there is a default minimum duration before a call is stored in the SentryOne database.

They explained what we would need to change if we wanted to capture more or all of the calls. They were also very forthcoming in telling us that lowering the number could have negative impacts on the monitoring service.

Easy Tasks

It is very easy to spot times when performance issues were occurring
The "highlighting" of data in multiple graphs within a selection makes it easy to correlate information
Fixing deadlocks is so much easier using this tool.

Difficult Tasks

It is sometimes difficult to hover over certain lines in a graph to see the values. (i.e. Memory)
It is sometimes difficult to see results over long periods of time. We frequently run into SQL Timeouts and no data if our data range is too wide

Usability

For our organization, we find this tool to be the best for our needs in the Performance Engineering space. We love how quickly we can identify queries that need tuning and fix deadlocks. The user interface is simple to figure out. We would love to see the Sentry One client be more flexible to allow a single instance to show information from different repositories. We have three different installations of the tool for three different platforms. All three end up on slightly different versions at times, and that requires that users need to connect to a different machine to run the client since it has to match the back end repository. It would be preferable if it functioned more like SQL Server Management Server that is forward and backward compatible to a degree.

Scalability

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.

Reliability and Availability

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.

Performance

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.

Systems Integrated With

None yet

We currently have AppDynamics and New Relic. We have not done any direct integrations, but we do use all three tools together for looking at separate data points.

Future Integration Plans

App Dynamics
New Relic

We do not know if this is supported, and we need to do more research.

Types of Integration

WE have not used any of these technologies

Ease of Integration

The ease of integration is unknown as we have not attempted it yet.

Integration Lessons Learned

No advice to give as we have no integrations.

Pre-Sale Experience

The sales team is extremely responsive. We frequently shoot emails over for quotes as potential needs arise, and we often get a response same day. They are very flexible as well when we needed to extend a trial beyond the expected time frame. They work well if our Accounts Payable team to get invoices submitted and they offer many payment options.

Post-Sale Experience

Their sales, support and technical evangelists are great to work with. They are willing to offer suggestions and help at any time.

Key Negotiation Points

I don't get involved on the terms negotiations, but I have not heard anything bad from the team that does.

Dealing with SolarWinds

Nothing other than be a good customer. They are more than willing to help any of their customers regardless of size or purchased license count. Don't make unreasonable or unrealistic requests. Think about how you want your customers to treat you and pay that forward to SQL Sentry. You won't regret it.

Upgrade Process

Yes

Nothing unexpected. The upgrades were simple to perform.

Upgrade Benefits

In one case an upgrade was done to fix a known bug
Some fixes are to address performance.

Anticipated Benefits from Future Upgrades

Would love to see the client interface function more like SSMS when connecting to sites. (i.e. Allow multiple sites connected at once)
Would love to see forward and backward compatibility with the Sentry One client

Migrating Between Editions

Complete monitoring of SQL server

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 21, 2019

Richard Bober

DBA

Health New England (Insurance, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

1 year of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring (5)

86%

8.6

Performance dashboard: 90%
9.0
Intelligent alerting: 70%
7.0
Top SQL: 90%
9.0
Historical trend data: 90%
9.0
Virtualization support: 90%
9.0

Alternatives Considered

Redgate SQL Monitor

I evaluated both and thought that SQL Sentry was a much more mature and complete product for approximately the same cost.

Other Software Used

Veritas NetBackup Appliance

Support Rating

Very seldom do I need to wait an hour for a response, and the support techs are knowledgeable and really work to make sure your problem is resolved.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds SQL Sentry Support

I found that I needed to re-deploy the monitoring process because I wanted to get it installed on a dedicated server rather than my personal workstation. I got complete, step-by-step instructions from the support rep, plus a couple of recommendations from him when we discussed what my plan was and what the ultimate goal was.

Force Multiplier

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 01, 2020

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

Vetted Review

Verified User

1 year of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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!).

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring (5)

100%

10.0

Performance dashboard: 100%
10.0
Intelligent alerting: 100%
10.0
Top SQL: 100%
10.0
Historical trend data: 100%
10.0
Virtualization support: 100%
10.0

Alternatives Considered

Spotlight

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 customer base to ensure a premier monitoring product.

Other Software Used

PRTG Network Monitor

Users and Roles

The platform is used primary by SQL Server DBAs for performance tuning, troubleshooting and reporting, but also provides other functions of the business with access to trending information.

Support Headcount Required

SQL Sentry provides significantly detailed help and information resources, which enables non SQL Server DBAs and Management the ability to review the platform and cross reference metrics, enabling a better understanding of the SQL Server platform.

Business Processes Supported

Provides quick triage ability
Drilldown detail provided
Point in time rollback capability

Innovative Uses

The point in time rollback capability provides 24/7 detail without the requirement for pre-configured extended events, performance counters, and DMV metric capture, facilitating outstanding customer support.

Future Planned Uses

APS monitoring capability

Return on Investment

Increased employee efficiency
Improved incident resolution time
Improved customer service

Likelihood to Renew

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.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Vendor Reputation
Analyst Reports
Third-party Reviews

The product features are top of class, and whilst there are other products from other large vendors available, SentryOne stood out from the pack by a very long way. This in turn was supported by the price, product usability during testing and the reputation of multiple employees within the SQL Server community.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

N/A

Support Rating

The support received is outstanding. They are quick to respond, will happily speak with you on the phone, and go above and beyond on every single ticket to ensure that you have the best resolution, and provide a detailed breakdown around the problem, or if you are having issues understanding the metrics. The training / support materials alone that SentryOne provide are invaluable.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds SQL Sentry Support

Pretty much every time we have contacted SentryOne the support has been exceptional! The turnaround time, the detail provided. Incredible support.

Easy Tasks

All dashboards
Top SQL Drilldown is smooth and detailed
Point in Time rollback

Difficult Tasks

None

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes, but I don't use it

Usability

Users from SQL Server DBAs, Managers, to non technical Account Managers can drive the product, and the help function and resources provided enable anyone to double check any functions they aren't sure about, or even it its to analyse a particular chart or graph. But there aren't any issues with usability we've experienced.

Lives up to the hype

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 28, 2020

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Medical Device Company, 10,001+ employees

Vetted Review

Verified User

7 years of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

SQL job management.
SQL server monitoring.
Alerting.

Cons

Windows task management.
Object hierarchy.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.