Item: SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Rating: 10
Author: Sheila Champion

Overall Satisfaction with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Sentry Performance Advisor is being used to monitor our important SQL Server Production servers. I use it when I need to find out what is causing an outage of an application and to find out what SQL is possibly causing slower performance. I also use it to find times when the load is greater on resources, for example, on the CPU. I find it to be a very valuable tool in gaining visibility into my servers.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Graphs showing load on resources in both SQL and Windows.
Showing detail when a deadlock occurs so that it's obvious what SQL is running that has caused the killing of a victim process.
Retaining historical data so that an issue can be researched thoroughly.

Cons

Sometimes the graphs are a curve and sometimes they are blocks - I'm not sure why - I'd probably prefer to always see curves.
When looking at blocking, I would prefer ordering to be of the longest running process descending to the shortest running process.
I find it a little difficult to understand the results of the Top SQL. I'm not sure how it could be clearer and cleaner but there may be some room for improvement there.

Alternatives Considered

I like both products. But, SQL Sentry seems to give a more in-depth look into the processes that are running at any given time and how they may be effecting performance.

Other Software Used

Slack, JIRA Service Desk

Likelihood to Recommend

Researching blocking and looking at resource usage - both real time and historically.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

Comments

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Rick Pittser
(Vendor Representative) commented 9 years ago
Hello Sheila, Thank you for your very informative review. Nothing makes us happier than to know our customers are able to use our products to help them find solutions and improvements for their environments. Based on your review I did want to make a few comments. The dashboard graph differentials you see are two different views we offer, Sample and History. The Sample view shows the blocks you refer to, and is a snapshot of each polling interval, showing more detailed information for a specific collection sample. The History view allows you to see all of these collection samples mapped over time. The corresponding Sample/History button above the Dashboard will allow you to swap back and forth between these views. If your preference is the History view, you can make this the default view when opening Performance Advisor by going to Tools > User Preferences > Performance Advisor tab > Default Dashboard Mode > History. In regards to how blocking events are ordered in the Blocking tab, you can select any particular column to order the result set by that column in descending or ascending order. In your case, clicking the Duration column will provide the order of event you wish to see. In addition, I wanted to mention that we are beginning to work on some UI improvements for several of SQL Sentry’s components. This will include the Top SQL tab. However, if you have any questions about the Top SQL tab, please feel free to ask our support team any question you might have at support@sqlsentry.com. Again, thank you for taking the time to review SQL Sentry, and for being a part of the SQL Sentry family.

SQL Sentry helps me do my job!