We've purchased SolarWinds SQL Sentry in order to have eyes inside our database servers. From the moment that we rolled it out, people were excited to use it and couldn't believe that such a tool exists [that] can provide so many details on the queries and performance inside the server. It has helped us to discover performance issues, bugs, and much more.
Pros
Jobs management
Locking investigation
Performance analyze
Monitoring of AlwaysON
Cons
Creating smoother integration to 3rd part tools, such as Slack, PagerDuty, etc.
Adding the ability to have an option for adding custom metrics defined by user queries
Adding more dashboards and visibility into the SQL Sentry Portal
Likelihood to Recommend
[SolarWinds] SQL Sentry is well suited for any production SQL Server that has performance issues or a need to look into the guts of the server itself. Using the very specific features that are targeting SQL Server, you can see that every feature you use was described by the hands of a DBA and it is suited to be used by one. It is not suitable to be used with other database technologies at the moment.
It helps to monitor SQL server performance monitoring with the help of graphs. ]The software] helps to identify the performance problems like long running quries on the database. [It] helps you to create best index for the given query. Daily running queries on [the] database can be easily viewed and its wait time can also be monitored.
Pros
Query analysis
More ways to monitor database performance
Graphical representation of different factors
Cons
Customized dashboards are good, but can be improved further.
More details can be shown to optimize query plan.
CPU and memory usage , availability can be shown in more different ways with additional details.
Likelihood to Recommend
[SolarWinds] SQL Sentry is well suited in [the] following cases: Nodes, availability, monitoring, query optimization, identification of problems, and increasing overall database performance. With the help of dashboards and graphs one can easily check all the important factors in one go. Network performance monitoring can be done easily. Databases can be monitored on AWS with the help of SentryOne.
It's being used by a department. It addresses the quick pinpoint and resolution of any spike in resource utilization and there by avoiding impact to customer response time.
Pros
Professional graphical interface.
Zoom into deep dive into issues.
Ability to create a baseline and generate alerts on baseline deviation.
Cons
Check historical information on specific SQL
Give overall advice post installation on tools on low hanging fruits which can be fixed right away
Likelihood to Recommend
Across all the tools available in the market for SQL server, I would SentryOne is head of the competitors.
