SQL Sentry – What’s New?

Since the acquisition of SentryOne by SolarWinds, a lot of development work has gone into SQL Sentry ^® . SQL Sentry is well known in the SQL Server community as a popular monitoring tool for DBAs. With each release, we aim to continue empowering Microsoft Data Professionals to achieve breakthrough performance across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

The chart below shows some of the more significant features and enhancements developed by the team, dating back to 2021, and provides insight into what the team is working on for future releases.

A substantial amount of work has gone into developing SQL Sentry Portal (the web-based UI for SQL Sentry). Long-term users of SQL Sentry will no doubt be familiar with the thick (desktop) client, but if you haven’t had the chance to navigate Portal, check out our new online demo site.

Release by release, Portal is not only bridging the gap in functionality with the desktop client, but it’s overtaking it in some regards. The development work has added some key features to SQL Sentry, making it a more well-rounded product.

WaitStatshave recently been added to Portal (for the 2023.2 release, this is in early access mode, steps to enable it can be found here). Wait Analytics is something the SQL Server community has wanted in SQL Sentry for some time due to its importance for troubleshooting and performance tuning. End-user feedback is one of the main drivers behind product development work here at SolarWinds, and we are delighted to bring this feature to SQL Sentry.

Custom Dashboards & Charts

Custom Dashboards are one of the most important additions to Portal and have been continuously improved since its introduction. This allows you to create personalized dashboards with the performance counters, labels, colors, and chart types you select.

As a SQL Sentry user, you can now control how the data is displayed , allowing you to deliver timely answers to the business by creating dashboards with the most relevant information.

TempDB

Monitoring TempDB in SQL Server is critical to get a complete understanding of the performance of the database.

The TempDB view in SQL Sentry Portal provides insight into what is using your TempDB database and how effectively it is being used. In conjunction with other TempDB monitoring in SQL Sentry, you can be sure that you have optimized both the TempDB configuration and your applications using it.

Azure Synapse

Outside of the Portal development work, we’ve also been busy adding new features to the desktop client of SQL Sentry. One such addition is the ability to now monitor Azure Synapse .

Ensuring optimal performance of your Azure Synapse SQL Pools means you can deliver accurate, business-critical information to your end users. SQL Sentry gives your data team logically presented, actionable metrics to view the entire data warehouse environment and quickly identify bottlenecks causing potential delays.

SQL Sentry gives you detailed visibility into the queries, loads, backups, and restores of all your data. With the event calendar and intelligent movement dashboard, you always know what factors impact workload.

If you want to test drive SQL Sentry without installing a trial version, check out our new online demo site.

If you are already an existing user but haven’t had the chance to set up Portal yet:

See the SQL Sentry Portal Configuration article. SQL Sentry Portal may be installed through the classic SQL Sentry Setup Wizard or through EPI commands , as long as your chosen method matches your existing SQL Sentry installation.

If you have any product development ideas, please submit them to the feature request page on THWACK ® .