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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

(1-2 of 2)
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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
SQL Performance Monitoring (5)
72%
7.2
Performance dashboard
80%
8.0
Intelligent alerting
50%
5.0
Top SQL
70%
7.0
Historical trend data
90%
9.0
Virtualization support
70%
7.0
sql sentry is more expensive that some of its other competitors (red gate sql monitor for example) but you do get more for money. if you have experianced database adminstrators and database developers you will certainly get value for what SQL sentry gives you. but if you are diverse team (ie not just a dba) or just learning it may give to much information that can flood you
  • shared knowledge
  • indepth monitoring
  • cusotmization
Great support from the team both pre and post purchase
  • alerting of sql server performance issues
  • review history of sql server performance
  • large collection of logs collected against sql server to give an overview of current or passed events
  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
5
dba/dev/ops
3
dba/dev/ops
  • check install is following best practices
  • allows all teams to share and review the same performance issues
  • covering more environments
depending on the amount of time you have to review and update code based on the tool. if you are looking for low hanging fruit to fix this may be overkill, if you looking to run a business critical app that you need to fine tune to as much as your dev/dba can this is a good option
No
if you could run multiple tools against a similar workload with known issues that would help you highlight the differences in each tool and show if one tool is easier to you than other.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
  • customized configuration
  • changing default settings
  • alerting
got offered free support for one of the sql sentry experts to come and review our workloads was a nice extra touch to see how to performance tune using there tooling
  • in-person training
sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool
i would definitly suggest asking for a support person to come and review your performance, look at any training they have to help you with getting the tool up and running to its full functionality
customization of monitoring, alert config toke time and effort but are worth it in the end
get support with from sql sentry after you have installed it and get a review if possible
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code
not as easy as redgate sql monitor
wealth of options are available both out the box and via your own customization.
No
No
Excellent initial support, offering several web conferences and remote support to help configure and analyse the data captured
  • Drill down and up from event manager to top sql,
  • Customized events,
Great tool, captures lots of metrics to help diagnose and monitor performance
  • email
easy to configure to get alerting
  • slack
  • File import/export
contact support if you cant do what you want it do, they are friendly and willing to help
size of our estate
offered all the help support i requested
No
  • new features for new versions of sql server
  • new features for new sql server featueres
No
No
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.
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
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.
60
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.
5
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.
  • Application Performance Tuning/Engineering
  • Performance Test Monitoring
  • Deadlock analysis
  • Blocking Monitoring and Alerting
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Faster root cause analysis during production outages
  • Better platform stability when developers proactively look at poor performing queries in lower life cycles.
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.
No
  • 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.
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.
  • Implemented in-house
No
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.
  • 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.
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.
  • no 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.
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.
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.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
No additional information at this time.
Yes
It depends on the situation and the tool. For many enterprise grade products we frequently pay for premium support
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.
No
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.
  • 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.
  • 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
  • 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.
  • App Dynamics
  • New Relic
We do not know if this is supported, and we need to do more research.
WE have not used any of these technologies
The ease of integration is unknown as we have not attempted it yet.
No advice to give as we have no integrations.
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.
Their sales, support and technical evangelists are great to work with. They are willing to offer suggestions and help at any time.
I don't get involved on the terms negotiations, but I have not heard anything bad from the team that does.
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.
Yes
Nothing unexpected. The upgrades were simple to perform.
  • In one case an upgrade was done to fix a known bug
  • Some fixes are to address performance.
  • 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
No
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