SQL Sentry provides Insight to SQL Server
Updated May 02, 2020

SQL Sentry provides Insight to SQL Server

Jian Fu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SQL Sentry

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, blockages, deadlock and so on. Then from the analysis, we apply optimizations accordingly.

Pros

  • It captures all relevant information about captured queries, from physical metrics to row counts. It packs all the information we need to analyse our database performance.
  • It provides a great graphic user's interface to have quick understanding of what is going in the environment, and gives facility to check historical values for the metric in question.

Cons

  • It could be improved on the way how the SQL Sentry database is managed, for example archiving old data, and also could have SQL agent jobs to do regular maintenance jobs to make it perform better.
  • Also it might be an good idea to have a web interface.
  • It would be good to be able to configure what kinds of queries to capture in each server instance.
I think SQL Sentry is typically useful for us to understand an environment with performance issues. With this product onboard, we are able to continuously improve our system to give our users the best experience.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Feature Ratings

SQL Performance Monitoring
7.3
Performance dashboard
8
Intelligent alerting
Not Rated
Top SQL
8
Historical trend data
6
Virtualization support
Not Rated

Using SQL Sentry

3 - IT
1 - Advanced understanding of SQL Server, from logic to physical aspects.
  • Performance tuning.
  • Disk space monitoring.
  • Blockage analyse and resolution.
  • Improve employee efficiency.
  • Improve user experience.
Using SQL Sentry has become part of our daily routine, and it has played a big role for us to understand our database activities and make our lives easier to analyse issues and provide resolutions.

Using SQL Sentry

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Requires technical support
  • Analyse curent blockage in SQL Server
  • Index monitoring and maintainence
  • Analyse long running queries

Comments

  • Rachel Siragusa | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Rachel Siragusa
    (Vendor Representative) commented 9 years ago
    Hello Jian, Thank you for taking the time to provide us with some great input on how we can improve our product. Performing maintenance on the SQL Sentry database is crucial to sustaining performance. This can be done through SQL Sentry using our Fragmentation Manager tool. However, customer defined maintenance plans can work, as well. It is also important to make sure the maintenance plan in place is adequate and includes statistics updates. For example, several key tables such as PerformanceAnalysisTraceData(Top SQL), PerformanceAnalysisData(Dashboard), and EventSourceHistory(Event Manager/Event objects) will require a more aggressive maintenance plan than weekly plans. We are also working on developing a web based UI. This will increase convenience and make the data we are collecting more readily available to users. If you have any questions or concerns about maintenance plans for the SQL Sentry database, please be sure to contact our excellent Support team. Again, thank you for your input and for being a valued SQL Sentry user.

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