Performance Advisor for SQL Server provides unparalleled insight, awareness and control over the true source of SQL Server performance issues. Performance Advisor is packed with ground-breaking features that aren’t found in any other performance monitoring software, all designed with the singular goal of simplifying the process of SQL Server performance tuning and optimization. Performance Advisor represents many years of research and development by the same team that brought you the innovative, award-winning SQL Sentry Event Manager.
Performance Advisor utilizes the same management console and collector service as Event Manager to provide seamlessly integrated SQL Server monitoring and optimization, query tuning, alerting, and job scheduling features. This provides a variety of benefits including a single, unified installation package, streamlined configuration, and the ability to view performance events like SQL Server blocks and deadlocks on the Event Manager calendar.
Monitors and displays the most important Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL Server performance metrics, side-by-side, in a single view, so you have the full picture at a glance.
Easily switch between real-time and historical modes to view performance metrics for any point in time or date range. Go back days or even months to see exactly how your SQL Server performance has changed over time.
SQL Server resource utilization is integrated into the Windows network, CPU and memory charts, so you can monitor exactly how much of your server resources are being consumed by each SQL Server instance.
Wait Type analysis shows both high-level and detailed resource utilization, giving you an instant profile for the SQL Server so you can monitor exactly which resources or subsystems may be causing slowdowns. Wait types are grouped together into friendly categories, and meaningless wait types are eliminated.
SQL Sentry’s Quick Trace provides an instant picture of exactly which processes and applications are consuming the most SQL Server resources, without having to open Profiler or Activity Monitor and manually correlate the results.
The Windows Process Activity viewer shows CPU, paging, and other I/O metrics on a server with a single-click, showing you exactly which Windows processes are consuming the most resources, without having to fire up PerfMon or remote into a machine simply to open Task Manager.
Network utilization is broken down by SQL Server instance and by network adapter.
Disk latency charts show you exactly how long reads and writes are taking for each disk and database file, quickly highlighting IO performance bottlenecks on SAN, NAS as well as direct attached disk systems.
New metrics are presented front and center for an instant warning of potential performance issues, including bookmark lookups, forwarded records, and I/O statistics for backup and restore operations.
When monitoring a NUMA system, both the Windows and SQL Server memory charts are split to show exactly how much memory is allocated to and used by each NUMA node, which eases diagnosis of single-node memory pressure issues. In addition, page life expectancy history is also shown for each node.NEW v7
Mirroring queue monitoring displays the Send and/or Redo Queues on the same chart.NEW v7
SQL Sentry's Performance Advisor dashboard gives you a real-time and historical view of all of your server's most pertinent Windows and SQL Server performance metrics in a single pane of glass. Intelligent wait stats analysis filters out irrelevant wait types while grouping relevant waits into more intuitive categories, to easily begin investigating where your server’s bottleneck may be. Multiple instances on the same server can easily be selected and viewed. Multiple instances on the same server can easily be selected and viewed, while all instances are represented by different colored segments of the Windows resource charts, allowing you to see how any one instance is impacting the server as a whole.
In History mode you can zoom in and out, or move between time intervals with the click of a button. Also jump to any specific timeframe by entering a start and end time and immediately view that range. The dashboard allows you to investigate long term trends over weeks, months, or even years. You can just as easily jump to a very specific range where performance issues were reported and investigate with moment-by-moment granularity, something that isn't possible with other tools that take snapshots every several minutes. Then, drag your mouse to select a timeframe of interest and easily zoom in or jump to other details to easily correlate Top SQL, blocks, deadlocks or more at that point in history.
The Index Grid View shows statistics about your individual indexes, including size, average percent fragmented, average percent page space used, fill factor, and much more.
The Index Tree View contains the same statistics as the grid but organized by Database, Table, Index, and Partition-level drilldowns.
Sort the data and apply filters to easily see which indexes need to be addressed.
SQL Sentry’s collection of buffer data enables you to see how much of each index is currently memory-resident, allowing better decision making regarding index maintenance strategies.
Easily shortcut to index properties in SQL Server Management Studio via the right-click context menu.
The Indexes tab includes a tree of the databases on the monitored SQL Server instance. The databases can drilled into for information at the table, index, and partition levels as well.
The integrated Plan Explorer takes SQL query plan performance analysis to a level never before possible.
Cost information is color-scaled so highest cost operations are instantly obvious.
Improved layout algorithms render more of the plan in view, making navigation much easier even for large, complex plans.
Plan information is continuously captured for heavy, slow-running, poorly-performing T-SQL, providing a record of all plan changes so you can see how different plan versions impact SQL query performance.
Plan CPU and I/O metrics are shown alongside operation totals, including lookups, scans, parallelism, sorts and more, so you can quickly find the heaviest plans on a SQL Server.
Plan Tree, Top Operations, and Query Column views are synchronized with the graphical plan diagram, letting you quickly view a plan from different angles.
Instant access to important details previously buried in the plan XML make the query optimization process much more efficient.
SQL Sentry’s integrated Plan Explorer functionality gives you dramatically enhanced visibility into SQL execution plans. You get a more compact, readable format than is provided with the native tools, with color highlighting to help you easily asses and identify the highest cost operations, no matter how complicated the plan. Plan information is collected automatically for Top SQL statements, and plan history retained so you can see how plans are being used over time and how different versions impact performance.
You can even make modifications to statements within the SQL Sentry Console and then retrieve estimated or actual plans to determine how effective your changes will be. Quickly and easily identify which columns and indexes are used in particular operations and determine which modifications will have the biggest impact.
View key performance metrics for all Windows, SQL Server, and SSAS servers across your enterprise in one view!
Metrics and servers change color based upon predefined warning and critical ranges.
Set custom filters for any metric or combination of metrics to show only servers requiring attention.
See Windows resources consumed by each SQL Server and SSAS instance for network, CPU, and memory.
The Global view allows you to see all of your servers in one window to get a quick overview and identify which servers currently require attention. Metrics are color-coded based on predefined thresholds to draw your attention to those critical SQL or SSAS servers. The overview screens are filterable by the various columns to show only those servers you wish to know about. You can then easily drill into the detailed dashboard view for any server with just a couple of clicks.
Powerful SSRS-based performance reporting, including Global Server Status, Wait Stats Analysis, Disk Space, Database File Size, and many more!
Custom Reporting:
Performance Counter History report lets you report on any combination of servers, performance counters, and instances.
Date Range Comparison report lets you compare performance across two different date ranges, using any metrics.
Custom reports aren’t limited to only Windows counters -- report on data collected from DMVs, WMI, and even internally calculated metrics like Waits by Category!
Report on any date range, from 3 minutes to 3 years or longer.
Easily save custom reports for future reference.
Deploy reports to an SSRS instance, and create subscriptions to auto-email reports for any frequency, including daily, weekly and monthly.
Export reports to PDF, Excel, XML, and other formats.
New reports include Top SQL, High VLFs, and Misaligned Partitions.
Preformatted reports are available on any metrics SQL Sentry collects, from a global level down to individual counters. You can even report on date range comparisons for trending and baselining of your server's long term performance. Reports can be generated within the SQL Sentry Console, and exported to various formats like Excel, PDF, or Word. Additionally, these reports can be deployed to an existing Reporting Services implementation for regular automated subscriptions.
Custom reporting allows you to specify any combination of servers, counters, or instances and save them for future use. These reports go beyond just counters, but also include options for Top SQL, virtual log files, and other unique details not provided by other tools.
Revolutionary, patent-pending graphical view of your server’s disk topology and activity.
Shows you exactly how data is moving through your disk system, highlighting performance bottlenecks at the database file, physical disk, or controller level for SAN, NAS or direct attached storage.
View disk bottlenecks in real-time mode, or historical mode for any date range.
Improve performance by easily identifying common configuration problems such as mixing busy data and transaction log files on the same physical drive.
Automatic Disk Partition Alignment problems Detection with comparison to disk latency.
Mount Points and Fusion-IO drives displayed alongside all other disks.
SQL Sentry's Disk Activity view is patent pending functionality that provides a graphical view into the live activity on your server’s disk system. You can easily identify every data and log file to see where they reside on the system. Animation shows exactly where the data is moving through your disk system and varies based on volume and latency. For the first time you can peer into your disk system in real time and see the hot spots!
Just as valuable is the historical view. This view allows you to easily identify which files are consistently experiencing disk performance issues, and determine whether relocating them will improve performance. Mount points are supported and appear just like other logical partitions, and misaligned partitions are highlighted. This allows you to instantly see where basic configuration issues may be hurting disk performance.
Capture all high impact worst performing stored procedures, batches and statements.
Low-overhead tracing system can safely be run 24/7 without impacting SQL Server performance.
Multiple executions of the same SQL are automatically normalized and aggregated, so you can easily determine which SQL is having the greatest overall impact on performance.
Drill into individual query executions to rapidly isolate problems with particular parameter values.
Runtime graphs show how the performance and runtime of a particular query has been trending over time.
View Top SQL on the SQL Sentry calendar, alongside jobs and other events. For the first time you can visualize complex scenarios involving resource contention between queries that simply can’t be ascertained with other software tools using only grid views.
Generate email or pager alerts whenever a query exceeds a specific duration, or contains specific text.
Running queries are shown, auto-growth events are captured, and query plans can be viewed for running and completed queries. Blocked and failed queries are highlighted, and error information is provided. Rows affected and auto-growth size is shown alongside other performance metrics.
SQL Sentry's Top SQL view provides details about any live or historical long running and/or high impact statements. Top SQL thresholds can be set based on duration, CPU, reads, or writes. The specific statement that was executing, database, host, application, and login are provided along with pertinent performance metrics. All information is provided in a highly customizable grid view that allows you to sort, rearrange, or filter on any column for raw or normalized metrics. Normalization allows you to see the cumulative impact of any statement for all times it executed over the defined timeframe.
Visualize a statement's history with runtime graphs, or easily jump to the calendar to see the statement alongside any jobs or other events. You can also configure email notifications and automate other actions based on statement completion, runtime thresholds, or string matches on statement details.
Hierarchical display of all blocking process chains provides the most complete picture of blocks available for SQL Server.
Wait Resources are automatically resolved for you, so for the first time you can instantly see which tables or indexes are being contended for without any manual effort!
Displays blocks on the SQL Sentry calendar alongside other events.
Generate email and pager alerts with full block chain details whenever a block occurs, when a block exceeds a specific duration, or when a blocking query contains specific text.
SQL Sentry's block analysis captures all block details based on configured duration thresholds. You get a hierarchical view of your blocking chains historically as well as in real time. Details such as the executing statement, database, login and host are provided for all processes involved. Additional details like wait types and wait resources are provided as well. These pieces of information can take considerable time to track down manually and can provide much-needed details. In addition to historical information, blocks can be viewed while they are occurring and blocking processes can be killed from the SQL Sentry console.
Provides a graphical display of all SQL Server deadlock types, synchronized with an innovative grid-based display to provide the most complete picture of SQL Server deadlocks available.
Grid display lists all nodes organized by resource, owners and waiters, and includes the full T-SQL for all nodes!
Unlike other deadlock graphing tools, deadlock nodes contain the concise information you need to rapidly visualize the deadlock and determine the root cause, as well as the order in which the locks were taken.
Deadlocks are displayed on the SQL Sentry calendar alongside other events.
Generate email and pager alerts including the deadlock victim T-SQL whenever a deadlock occurs, or when the victim query contains specific text.
SQL Sentry's graphical deadlock analysis provides the most comprehensive view available into SQL Server deadlocks. A graphical representation gives you a snapshot of all processes and resources involved. Host, application, and resource names are resolved in the graph, eliminating the need to translate reference IDs and SPIDs. The deadlock victim is clearly marked in red, and the graph is annotated to not only show lock types, but also the order in which they were applied. You can step right through the deadlock and see exactly how it developed!
In addition to the graphical view, all other pertinent details are shown including the SQL statements executing at the time the deadlock was detected. For the first time you have complete information on your deadlocks in one place, potentially saving hours of time trying to put the pieces together manually. All of this is “out of the box” functionality without the need to install any agents, set any trace flags, or perform any configuration on the monitored servers themselves.
Provides a complete picture of exactly which SQL Server processes are doing work on the server by automatically correlating trace and process activity data together for the first time.
Totals are provided for CPU, I/O, network, batches, transactions, cache misses, recompiles, cursor operations, and many other valuable performance metrics.
Eliminates continual starting and stopping of Profiler, refreshing Activity Monitor, and tediously correlating and calculating aggregates.
Quick Trace can be fired automatically in response to many different conditions such as "Job: Runtime Threshold Max", so if a problem occurs after hours you’ll always have the full details.
While Performance Advisor's Top SQL, blocking, and deadlock views provide all the information you need for most statement level issues, sometimes you need a complete, trace level, unfiltered view of all SQL activity on your server. In addition to long running or high impact queries, you might have very short queries that run hundreds or thousands of times in a short time span. This is where Quick Trace can provide the visibility you need.
Quick Trace provides a comprehensive view of all activity, similar to Activity Monitor and Profiler, but integrated within one tool. Quick Traces can be fired on demand, or automated based on conditions such as performance thresholds, blocks, or defined schedules. Beyond combining the information that typically requires multiple tools to retrieve, Quick Trace is dramatically more functional than those tools, allowing you to easily sort, filter, or group your metrics to quickly zero in on the data you need.
See Top SQL, Blocking, and Deadlocks on the Outlook-style SQL Sentry Event Manager calendar, alongside SQL Agent jobs and other events.
Chronological display of these types of events provides unparalleled insight into how they can impact each other and SQL Server performance which simply can’t be ascertained from grids alone.
Quickly jump back and forth between Performance Advisor and Event Manager via context menus and toolbar buttons.
When you integrate Event Manager with Performance Advisor you get a complete chronological picture of all activity on your servers. Top SQL, blocks, and deadlocks will appear on the Event Manager calendar alongside any SQL Agent jobs, Reporting Services reports and more. For example, if someone kicks off a long running ad hoc query against the server just before a job’s scheduled execution, and the job runs long as a result, you can easily see the chain of events that led to the performance bottleneck on the server. Event Manager and Performance Advisor are fully integrated within the SQL Sentry console, and you can easily switch between views with just a couple of clicks.
You can also easily visualize related events in one place, such as a job that executed a long running query that caused a block. All related events will be highlighted on the calendar based on defined criteria, such as SPID, application, login, or more.
Graphically displays disk space utilization by database and file.
Easily monitor and identify SQL Server disk capacity issues and understand where various database files reside on the disk I/O sub-system for SAN, NAS or direct attached disks.
Too many transaction log virtual log files (VLFs) can be a significant hidden drain on SQL Server database performance, and Performance Advisor is the first tool to bring this issue to the forefront. VLF statistics are shown alongside disk space usage, and problematic auto-growth and backup settings are highlighted.
The Disk Space view gives you a graphical display by file and partition size. At a glance, you can identify where you are running into disk space issues. Additional details help you track file utilization. Auto growth settings are shown with suboptimal settings highlighted, which can lead to performance issues like excess virtual log files (VLFs). Details on VLFs are provided and log files with high numbers of VLFs are highlighted to show where performance issues are likely to develop.
You can view space data historically, and disk reports allow you to track file growth trends, making it easy to predict when disk space issues are likely to occur. All of these details are available for local disks, mount points, and SAN storage, for a complete view of your storage environment.
Performance Improvement
Make quicker and smarter decisions by viewing SQL Server and Windows performance metrics side-by-side, and easily ascertain the root cause of performance issues.
Lower Database Administration Costs
Performance Advisor greatly reduces the amount of labor required to troubleshoot performance problems, allowing DBA's to spend more time proactively managing their servers.
SQL Sentry Software Benefits
Continual Innovation
While other SQL Server monitoring tools have stagnated, SQL Sentry has continued to push the envelope, introducing several industry firsts such as our patent-pending SQL Server disk analysis, unrestricted historical performance reporting, comprehensive deadlock analysis, performance event calendars, intelligent wait analysis, and many more cutting edge features.
Lower Overhead
SQL Sentry’s tools are built to be minimally invasive and incur the lowest possible hit on monitored servers via our agent-less architecture... while other SQL Server monitoring tools incur far more load than they will ever help you to resolve. Some even filter out all of their own query activity so you never see it! Don’t be fooled by misleading claims of lower overhead – install SQL Sentry alongside other tools to see exactly how much of a performance hit they incur. Also, download our Overhead Analysis.
Lower Cost
SQL Sentry software continually delivers more features, functionality and utility than other SQL Server software tools, at a lower price point. With subscription-based and site licensing options, the relative savings can grow even further.
Higher Quality
SQL Sentry software undergoes intensive regression, scalability and overhead testing in our internal test lab of over 100 SQL Servers. It is then real-world tested in one of the largest SQL Server hosting environments in the U.S., until it is deemed stable enough to release to the public... no matter how long it takes. After release, our integrated, automated exception reporter gives us a perpetual feedback loop with our customers, who are continually surprised to receive a response from a real human usually within hours of submitting an exception.
Scalability
SQL Sentry software is installed in some of the largest SQL Server environments in the world. Our low overhead, agent-less, site-based approach provides almost linear scalability. We have yet to meet a SQL Server environment that the SQL Sentry architecture can’t handle.
World-class Support
SQL Sentry provides the highest level of support services you will find in the SQL Server software world. Our clients continually rave about the responsiveness and technical competence of our support team. You will never speak to a non-technical front-line person that doesn’t understand SQL Server or SQL Sentry software. To the contrary, you will often be speaking directly to a development team member.
Credibility
We've been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for many years, and our customer survey results say it better than we ever could. Our marks across the board are consistently higher than other Microsoft partners. All customers fell into the "Champion" quadrant, ranking us amongst the top Microsoft ISVs in the world.
Click here for the survey results.
SQL Sentry Version 7 offers significant new features for both Event Manager and Performance Advisor. We’ve completely re-architected our alerting and notification functionality for even more customization. Also new to v7 is integrated index analysis and defrag, mirroring monitoring, and support for Central Management Servers, among many other new features. This short video gives you an introduction to many of SQL Sentry’s most anticipated enhancements.
SQL Sentry v6 introduces several groundbreaking features like Integrated Execution Plan Capture and Analysis, Top SQL Enhancements, VLF (virtual log file) Info along with many new reports.
During this 1 hour webcast, Brent Ozar and Tim Ford provide an overview of what each DBA should consider with SQL Server query plans. Aaron Bertrand shows the capabilities within SQL Server Management Studio and then demonstrates how SQL Sentry Plan Explorer can make query plan analysis so much easier. Steve Wright expands on that theme by showing the integration points and enhanced capabilities with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor.
The SQL Sentry Power Suite provides a complete performance monitoring and optimization solution for Microsoft SQL Server by combining both Performance Advisor for SQL Server and Event Manager.
SQL Sentry's Performance Advisor dashboard not only gives you real time performance details on your server, but easily provides long term trending as well as flexible point in time details for all of your SQL Servers.
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor provides a graphical display of all deadlock types, synchronized with an innovative grid-based display to provide the most complete picture of SQL Server deadlocks available.
Pricing
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor is licensed per individual monitored Microsoft SQL Server instance. First year annual software maintenance is required and provides technical support via e-mail and phone, fixes and updates and free version upgrades.
