SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer vs. SolarWinds SQL Sentry

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

229 Reviews and Ratings

SolarWinds SQL Sentry

162 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer	Score5.5 out of 10	N/A	SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. What can you monitor with DPA? Oracle Oracle Exadata Oracle EBS Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance MySQL DB2 SAP ASE Aurora MariaDB DPA monitors physical, virtual,…	N/A
SolarWinds SQL Sentry	Score9 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

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SolarWinds SQL Sentry

No answers on this topic

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)

Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer	SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	Yes

Optional

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer	SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Considered Both Products	SolarWinds Verified User Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer DPA is a market leader and goes beyond what most products in the space can offer. It's a battle between SQL Sentry and DPA for the lead and everybody has their favorite. I personally prefer DPA for ease of install, management and better tuning and query advice options. Incentivized Helpful? Mike Saedi SENIOR SQL SERVER DBA / DATAWAREHOUSE DEVELOPER in Information Technology at Nortek (Machinery, 501-1000 employees) Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Overall DPA is the best tool that I have used because of its simple interface and ability to dig in within a few clicks to see the root of a performance issue, but Idera and SQL Sentry have some areas where they are better than DPA, such as blocking and deadlocks. I also feel … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer SolarWinds was chosen by our system administrator before I joined the company. It was what he found when he searched for SQL Monitoring tools. After a demo of SQL Sentry/Sentry One, he wants to pursue that tool instead of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA). We find … Incentivized Helpful? Aruna Bandara Associate Engineer in Information Technology at Axiata Digital Labs (Information Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees) Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer The main thing was their popularity for the products they are providing. Also, we had great customer support for other SolarWinds products also. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer I like the web-based interface and wait stats analysis of DPA. Some of the other tools have more features, but DPA feels like a more polished tool, and the features it has work well. It's been a while since I've looked at the competitors' products. DPA works well for us, and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer DPA simply provides another angle over the performance of the server, plus it is very quiet and has little overhead. I also like how historical performance data is stored, and although it does not really let you decide how it is aggregated, it is good enough. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Quest Spotlight had a 70-page installation manual - quite daunting. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward to install and use. I'm looking forward to exploring SQL Sentry but haven't gotten far into it yet. Incentivized Helpful? Samir Patel, PMP SQL Development Team Lead in Information Technology at Allianz Asset Management (Investment Management, 1001-5000 employees) Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer I have done my comparison against SQL Sentry and I feel like Solarwinds Database Performance Analyzer for SQL Server is more of a graphical tool, so it lets you see wait time for a database instance. That's really nice when you're dealing with similar instances. We haven't … Incentivized Helpful? Nathan Heaivilin SQL Sever DBA Team Lead in Information Technology at Epiq Systems (Legal Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer I haven't seen a better tool for analyzing and tuning queries based upon wait times. However, for operational monitoring, finding current blocking, and at times slow queries that aren't run frequently, it lacks true benefit. Best use is for long term production query tuning and … Incentivized Helpful? Johnny Garcia Sr. Database Administrator in Information Technology at CyberCoders (Staffing and Recruiting, 201-500 employees) Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer DPA was the best bang for the buck since we already had Orion monitoring. So being able to integrate was a huge factor. Incentivized Helpful?	SolarWinds Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry 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. Incentivized Helpful? Andrew Gould Manager of Data Services in Information Technology at Integrated DNA Technologies (Biotechnology, 1001-5000 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry We chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry because it met more of our requirements than any other single tool. Proactive monitoring, quick collection times (every few seconds vs minutes), flexible custom alerting as well as in-depth data for performance analysis (Top SQL is by far my … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry I have used tools from Idera, redgate, and also Solarwinds. SQL Sentry is one of the better tools out on the market in my opinion. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry I use Toad and SolarWinds. Spotlight used too much of a server's resources. Sequel Pro was not as well-rounded for SQL reviews. Incentivized Helpful? Jim Rothe Network Engineer in Information Technology at Computer Resources (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry I felt they were all comparable to each other. SolarWinds DPA had the best interface but we chose SQL Sentry due to the difference in cost. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry Every resource has a different way of allowing users to access performance data and events, I simply think that SQL Sentry does it the best by displaying a dashboard that allows seeing the data in angles that no other has. Incentivized Helpful? Dennis Squires Systems Administrator/DBA/ERP Specialist in Information Technology at Nicolet College (Higher Education, 51-200 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry I found SQL Sentry to be the best bang for the buck by a good margin. Redgate makes great software too, so that is a big compliment in my book. Incentivized Helpful? Charles Hitchcock Production Support DBA at Cardlytics, Inc. (Marketing and Advertising, 201-500 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry SQL Sentry has a dashboard and tools that better suit our needs as a business. The tab based layout we found was easier to use and for the layman to understand. The top SQL feature has been invaluable to us for locating problems in real time. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry As a whole Sentry offers the most complete SQL Server monitoring package. Incentivized Helpful? Alvaro Costa Sr. Database Analyst in Information Technology at White & Case LLP (Law Practice, 1001-5000 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry SQL Sentry was the best option that we found for SSAS monitoring. Incentivized Helpful? David Klee Founder and Chief Architect in Information Technology at Heraflux Technologies (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry PA has the lightest monitoring footprint of any of the other third-party applications out there. The featureset of PA includes things such as virtualization monitoring, top SQL statements, and granular historical trending that other products miss or gloss over. The sheer amount … Incentivized Helpful? Timothy Ford Team Lead: Database Administration in Information Technology at SurveyMonkey (Health, Wellness and Fitness, 10,001+ employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry The sheer amount of information, ability to tune almost all areas of alerting and thresholds, and the low impact of monitoring as well as transparency into how their monitoring processes may impact performance gives them the advantage over these others. In some cases their … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry It was the easiest to use and setup. It was effortless to install and setup. We immediately saw the results without the need to go through a bunch of setup screens. Incentivized Helpful? Nathan Heaivilin SQL Sever DBA Team Lead in Information Technology at Epiq Systems (Legal Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose SolarWinds SQL Sentry For us, there were 3 big items that swung SQL Sentry. 1) customization of alerts and notification 2) polers in other domains allow for a more secure deployment. In addition, the polers allow for redundancy, ensuring we are spending time fighting fires, not fixing the fire … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

SolarWinds SQL Sentry

Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Feature	SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer - Ratings	SolarWinds SQL Sentry 8.4 102 Ratings
Performance dashboard	00 Ratings	9.1102 Ratings
Intelligent alerting	00 Ratings	7.996 Ratings
Top SQL	00 Ratings	8.6102 Ratings
Historical trend data	00 Ratings	8.6100 Ratings
Virtualization support	00 Ratings	8.764 Ratings

User Ratings
	SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer	SolarWinds SQL Sentry
Likelihood to Recommend	8.9 (113 ratings)	8.6 (102 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.6 (4 ratings)	8.8 (16 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (6 ratings)	9.0 (12 ratings)
Availability	9.1 (1 ratings)	7.1 (2 ratings)
Performance	9.1 (1 ratings)	7.1 (2 ratings)
Support Rating	9.3 (6 ratings)	7.5 (14 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	7.3 (2 ratings)	8.8 (8 ratings)
Configurability	7.3 (1 ratings)	7.9 (2 ratings)
Ease of integration	8.2 (1 ratings)	5.0 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	8.2 (1 ratings)	7.0 (1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	9.1 (1 ratings)	8.5 (2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	9.1 (1 ratings)	8.5 (2 ratings)