Item: SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Rating: 8
Author: Chuck Schweiger

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Sentry P.A. is currently used by our SQL DBA team to monitor mission critical SQL servers.

Pros and Cons

Monitors the Top Queries and pulls Plan Histories where appropriate
The Dashboard gives a great overall view of the servers health and performance
Quick and detailed analysis of Blocking and Deadlocks

Because of the detailed nature of the product it takes a fair amount of time to learn all of the nuances.
Perhaps some detailed video training would be beneficial

Alternatives Considered

Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager

We actually use both tools.

Other Software Used

SQL Diagnostic Manager

Likelihood to Recommend

We have well over 100 SQL servers. It would be cost prohibitive to monitor them all.

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Rick Pittser
(Vendor Representative) commented 8 years ago
Hello Chuck, We appreciate you taking the time to rate us and for providing some great information on how we can make SQL Sentry a better product. SQL Sentry is a deep product, with a vast variety of features and configurations. Though we do this to allow users to configure the product in a way that best suits their environments, this does create a learning curve. We are actively working on documentation and resources to help ease this curve: - We have a new demo scheduling site. You can sign up for a time that best fits your schedule to have a demo with our experienced and knowledgeable Sales Engineers. These demos provide a great showcase of feature sets, as well as provide a platform for any questions you might have. (http://www.meetme.so/SQLSentrySEGroup). - We now provide an On-Boarding process to new users. This process includes documentation listing crucial resources and information. In addition, we will make sure the initial set up of SQL Sentry goes smoothly and is working as expected, while providing an overview of navigating the product and features. - The SQL Sentry TV site provides some videos demonstrating some of SQL Sentry’s features as well as general SQL Server topics. (http://sqlsentry.tv/ ) - The SQL Sentry blog site also has great posts on product features and SQL Server topics in general. (http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/ ) : (Ex: http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/greggonzalez/sql-sentry-v8-intelligent-alerting-redefined/ ) - We are expanding our SQL Sentry Essentials training. Currently this is a whole course, but we have plans to itemize the modules, allowing you to take only the modules that best fit your needs. (http://www.sqlsentry.com/pro-services/essentials ) Many of us are experienced DBA’s, and understand the large workload that entails, and that it can be difficult to find the time to become acclimated with a product such as ours. We are continuing to try and find ways to help our users get on their feet with our product, so they can get the most out of it, with as much ease as possible. As always, don't hesitate to contact our Support team for any questions you have or to get help at support@sqlsentry.com. Again, thank you for your input and being a valued SQL Sentry customer.

SQL Sentry Performance Advisor Review

Overall Satisfaction with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros and Cons

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings