Splunk Observability Cloud vs. SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Splunk Observability Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
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…
$0
Free
Pricing
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Editions & Modules
Infrastructure
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
App & Infra
$60
per month (billed annually) per host
End-to-End
$75
per month (billed annually) per host
Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)
$0
Free
SQL Sentry for Azure SQL Database
$161
Per year per database (annual subscription)
SQL Sentry
1,450
Per year per instance (annual subscription)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Features
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
SQL Performance Monitoring
Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Splunk Observability Cloud
-
Ratings
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Performance dashboard00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Intelligent alerting00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Top SQL00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Historical trend data00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Virtualization support00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Small Businesses
InfluxDB
InfluxDB
Score 8.8 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic
Score 9.4 out of 10
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
NetBrain Technologies
NetBrain Technologies
Score 9.2 out of 10
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.4
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Splunk Observability CloudSolarWinds SQL Sentry
Likelihood to Recommend
The query language is relatively easy and flexible when looking into an application's problems. These queries can then be used for alerts, reports, and dashboards. I believe Splunk is a platform that can help a system grow into its proactive application management, using incidents to add insights as needed without trying to work out every scenario in advance.
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Of all the tools I've used, SolarWinds SQL Sentry's Top Query has been the single most helpful tool in helping me identify which queries are putting a load on our servers and at what times. This greatly simplifies my job in prioritizing tuning. Having Plan Explorer directly linked to the tool is icing on the cake.
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Pros
  • The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
  • I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
  • The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
  • Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.
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  • Alerting is very flexible and configurable to our needs
  • Linking alerting into third party alerting tools via PowerShell was easy
  • Collecting and rolling up SQL statements make it much easier to troubleshoot performance problems
  • Drilling into PLE and what’s happening when it drops out
  • Ease of drilling into time-frame to figure out what was the issue at that time
  • Being able to query the SentryOne database for management reports is awesome (Deadlocks and Blocking)
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Cons
  • An indicator for errors on the navigations pane so that we don't have to go through each tab.
  • As we go more and more cloud maybe you guys can implement a pay-as-you-use strategy so that small companies using it not frequently can also afford it.
  • That's it can't think of any and it wont let me skip to next question. Thanks
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  • It would be nice if the reports can be interactive like drill down, clickable content, etc.
  • Navigation could improve and become more intuitive.
  • Calendar of events could also improve - wish the date and time range could be specified instead of just by day or interval.
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Likelihood to Renew
Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
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Absolutely. SQL Sentry is an absolute must have for any company with a SQL Server estate. It provides a force multiplier to effectively manage SQL Server, and the feature sets are second to none. The support and expertise at SentryOne is incredible. They are very supportive of both the platform users and helping your business with the product
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Usability
When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.
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I don't know how we survived before without this tool, the added value that you get from it to do deep dive performance analysis, reactive problem solving and proactive monitoring and alerting is limitless. We have only scratched the surface of what we can do with this tool at my company. The support and ROI that SentryOne provide is exceptional and one of my favourite vendors to deal with.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
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.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
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
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Support Rating
Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
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The main platform is very well supported. Requests for help with customizing alerts and monitors have been rapidly and thoroughly responded to. Our use of the chain feature seems to be out of the ordinary and our defect reports there while understood and taken seriously, tend to be lower priority than defects in the main platform. They will work diligently to give us a workaround but correction in the standard release is a little slower in the chain feature.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool
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Implementation Rating
Follow a training before starting.
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Was suggested that we install the process monitors on a dev or qa database server, but we found it more useful to create an IT db server and put it there (along with a few other apps that we use for monitoring).
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Alternatives Considered
We initially chose Splunk Observability Cloud because it promised full-stack visibility and tighter integration. The other tools didn't offer this as part of the core package. Their analytics and real-time dashboards looked strong during the demo but it turned out to a lot heavier and more complex than expected. If I had to decide again, I’d probably go with something more streamlined and easier to manage.
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SQL Sentry has a LOT more information in it than the SolarWinds DPA product. Its reporting tool isn't as good either. The IDERA product isn't as reliable as SQL Sentry and its reporting isn't nearly as good. The IDERA UI is a resource hog and isn't as intuitive.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
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.
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Return on Investment
  • Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
  • Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
  • Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.
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  • Better customer service as it alerts me automatically to loss of service issues so I can react and either get things fixed before it impacts the customers or to let my management know as soon as possible
  • It helps me find expensive SQL so our customers get better performance and we make better use of our resources
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ScreenShots

Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL