My only choice for SQL Server performance analysis
February 15, 2016

My only choice for SQL Server performance analysis

David Klee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor

I use SQL Sentry Performance Advisor at as many of my clients as possible because it's the most actionable SQL Server monitoring tool on the planet. I have it monitoring all sorts of client databases and infrastructures.It's power comes in how I can quickly see an overview of a server and determine the right direction to go when performance troubleshooting.

Pros

  • Actionable - Lots of other utilities provide 'pretty' dashboards that do not provide much meaning. PA gives you a dashboard that presents vital performance statistics, and anything unusual jump out at you and help you refine how you approach that server.
  • Reporting - The built-in reporting provide much better depth in performance trending than others.
  • Performance reviews - The dashboard provides all of the necessary items needed to properly and efficiently review a system for any new issues.
  • Virtualization metric overlay - The utility now provides a great overview of the virtualization host-level performance metrics and how it impacts the VM's performance.

Cons

  • The UI is not the most intuitive at first and presents a learning curve to overcome, but once you know the interface these challenges go away.
  • The server running PA can get very busy when monitoring large quantities of servers (100+) but this is a matter of architecture with the deployment of the tool.
PA has the lightest monitoring footprint of any of the other third-party applications out there. The featureset of PA includes things such as virtualization monitoring, top SQL statements, and granular historical trending that other products miss or gloss over. The sheer amount of data that is contained in the PA database, and the encouragement of the company to have you mine their database for custom report generation, is incredible.
I encourage the use of PA for any SQL Server at my clients that I consider of any importance to the business at all. This is the only performance monitoring tool that I recommend for SQL Server. Period. This utility is second to none in terms of the actionable nature of the product, and it's one that DBAs all over can leverage to improve the performance of their servers.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring
9.8
Performance dashboard
9
Intelligent alerting
10
Top SQL
10
Historical trend data
10
Virtualization support
10

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