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SolarWinds SQL Sentry Information Reviews & Insights

Score9 out of 10

162 Reviews and Ratings

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Reviews

20 Reviews
InformationComputer Software18Internet1Publishing1

SolarWinds SQL Sentry to monitor, identify the blocker, and fix the problem in no time

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.
Vetted Review
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
1 year of experience

Sentry One a comprehensive monitoring tool

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sentry one is used to profile anomalies in the SQL Server like blockings, deadlocks and high CPU usage.

Pros

  • Problem detection
  • Alerts
  • Graphs

Cons

  • High resource usage
  • Calendar take time to load
  • incomplete execution plan

Likelihood to Recommend

[Well suited to] Show top running queries and details like CPU usage and start time.

Already impressed with SQL Sentry

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using SQL Sentry to centralize our SQL server monitoring from a number of differing domains. For the first time at this organization, we are getting a comprehensive view of our entire SQL estate. The previous solution was a mix of individual alerts on various SQL instances and several instances of a competing monitoring tool.

Pros

  • Metrics collection
  • Collects data across differing domains
  • SQL Plan Explorer is part of the tool
  • Alert configuration is amazing
  • Customer support is outstanding

Cons

  • No metrics for replication, but does alert
  • Thick client is slow and almost unusable over a VPN
  • The alert configuration is so flexible that it has a steep learning curve

Likelihood to Recommend

SQL Sentry is so flexible it's amazing. It comes with a steep learning curve and will take time to truly implement and dial in, but you're not alone--customer support is outstanding. My biggest complaint is that the thick client is slow and almost unusable over a VPN. Since COVID hit, that's a big deal. The web portal is snappy and fast, and I look forward to when the thick client is retired in favor of the portal.
Vetted Review

Use Sentry One and get to spend more time at the beach.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SQL Sentry to manage in-house production and development databases as well as production databases of our clients. SQL Sentry allows us to effectively, efficiently manage many databases in our high volume, highly transactional system. This tool allows us to help us keep our system running smoothly and proactively fend off possible problems, greatly reducing and even eliminating the dreaded "the system seems slow today" phone call.

Pros

  • Determine the root cause in seconds. Determining the root cause of SQL Server issues can be a time suck in a black hole. This tool eliminates that.
  • Historical Perspective. SQL Sentry provides an easy way to review performance intuitively over time.
  • Indexes. The Query Plan Explorer almost makes tuning indexes fun.

Cons

  • UI Response Time. At times the UI is sluggish. This somewhat understandable when you realize what the tool is doing. The 2-3 UI response is not an issue though when compared with the amount of time that it saves you troubleshooting.

Likelihood to Recommend

There are a lot of choices in this area, a few leaders. The entire process from pre-sales, to sales, training and finally using S1 daily has been smooth. The combination of all aspects of the company and product leads to a "you can't go wrong with S1" recommendation.

SQL Sentry ROI immediately seen

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Sentry is used to identify issues with our custom SAAS solution for the education industry. It is used by IT to identify issues in our SQL environment and by the development team to find the root cause of SQL issues and correct and/or improve them.

Pros

  • Identify problem queries.
  • Identify root causes for bottlenecks.
  • Provide baseline and historical data for comparison.

Cons

  • Identifying index related issues.

Likelihood to Recommend

I cannot think of any scenario where it would not be useful. It is very helpful in identifying where we can improve our code to improve performance and reliability.

Essential for any production server

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Performance Advisory allows you to quickly know what the overall performance of the servers looks like. From the dashboard you can deep dive right away to any specific area that may require attention. It contains the KPIS and data of almost all aspects of the SQL Server.

Pros

  • Excellent presentation of KPIs
  • Allows you to deep dive on counters with a click of a button
  • Lets you easily move from one time frame to another

Cons

  • To allow users to configure raw data retention before it is aggregated
  • Reporting
  • To use algorithms that alert when a relevant or critical KPI is behaving abnormally

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it is well suited for all scenarios where an SQL Server is involved. Given the costs perhaps I wouldn't spend money paying for licensing on Development environments.
Vetted Review
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
1 year of experience

SQL Sentry Review

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Sentry is being used to monitor SQL Server performance across our entire organization, providing trending, alerting, and helping us solve the "death by a thousand cuts" types of issues that are more of a challenge to pinpoint.

Pros

  • SQL Agent Jobs runtime trending and alerting - out of the box alerts runtime deviations send alerts.
  • Ad hoc trending against a previous week, day, or sampling period - pretty colors with ranges and averages to share with others.
  • Reporting against multiple counters - this is available to compare time periods as well.

Cons

  • I'd like to see a "Response Time" - measuring/tracking 'Select 1' out of the box instead of having to add a custom counter.
  • There is so much functionality in the product that we need additional training to more fully utilize it. For many DBAs this type granularity is preferred over simplicity - I'd rather have more options than too few in a monitoring product.

Likelihood to Recommend

SQL Sentry is more suited to managing SQL Server performance issues in an enterprise environment. If you are a small shop it may not be the best fit due to cost.

SentryOne is an Awesome Product

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SentryOne in our production (over 120 Instance worldwide and growing). It gives us an easy way to navigate the dashboard to quickly identify a performance problem and the ability to drill into the issue quickly and come up with a game plan to address the performance problem.

Pros

  • 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)

Cons

  • Navigation could be improved. It can be hard to follow if you are new to the tool
  • Calendar of events could use some work. Display can be confusing at times

Likelihood to Recommend

It’s great for a DBA to have a tool like SentryOne. To be able to troubleshoot our production environment and come up with a root cause to a performance issue in very little time is awesome. Being able to drill into an instance and see what happened yesterday when a user walks up to our desk and tells us the instance was slow yesterday and they want to know what was going on.

Best tool to monitor SQL Server

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.
Vetted Review
SolarWinds SQL Sentry
1 year of experience

DBA LifeSaver - SQL Sentry

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our DBA team uses SQL Sentry to monitor and troubleshoot all of our production SQL Server instances. This includes alerting on long running queries, when performance thresholds are met and exceeded, and the monitoring of SQL Agent Jobs.

Pros

  • Monitoring.
  • Troubleshooting.
  • Alerting.

Cons

  • Windows Monitoring.
  • Allowing non-power users to utilize the tool for query analysis, without having the ability to kill queries.
  • Alerting configuration.

Likelihood to Recommend

Disk space alerting. We are forced to leverage SCOM, which is clunky at best. If SQL Sentry could provide us with those types of alerting and monitoring it would satisfy all of our SQL Server needs.