Redgate Monitor vs SQL Sentry

Quick verdict

Redgate Monitor (formerly SQL Monitor) is Redgate's database monitoring and alerting tool. The current major version is 14, and the release notes list 14.34.0 (30 September 2026) as the latest release. It started as a SQL Server monitor; Redgate's documentation now lists monitoring for SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL (8.0.31 and later), Oracle (19c and later, on Linux or Amazon RDS) and MongoDB (6.0, 7.0 and 8.0). It comes in Standard and Enterprise editions, each available self-hosted or as SaaS.

SQL Sentry (SolarWinds SQL Sentry, originally a SentryOne product, and the SentryOne name still appears in its component file names) is a performance monitoring tool for the Microsoft data platform. Version 2026.3 was released on 1 September 2026. It monitors SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Amazon RDS for SQL Server and SQL Server Analysis Services, plus Windows, VMware and Hyper-V hosts. SolarWinds itself became privately held in April 2025, when its acquisition by Turn/River Capital completed. SolarWinds also sells Database Performance Analyzer (DPA), and the same licence type now covers both products.

Side by side

Key differences

Scope: multi-engine estate or Microsoft platform

This is the clearest dividing line. Redgate Monitor has grown from a SQL Server tool into an estate monitor: its documentation lists PostgreSQL 10 to 18, MySQL 8.0.31 and later, Oracle 19c and later (on Linux or Amazon RDS) and MongoDB 6.0 to 8.0, with Oracle, MySQL and MongoDB support added in version 14.0.52 in March 2025. Recent releases have added Aurora PostgreSQL cluster monitoring and an AWS RDS cloud migration planning tab (preview).

SQL Sentry goes deeper on Microsoft products instead of wider. Besides SQL Server and Azure SQL it monitors SQL Server Analysis Services (2026.3 added SSAS to the web Portal), Windows Server hosts, and VMware vCenter or Hyper-V hosts. Each SQL Sentry licence lets you watch three times as many Windows, VMware or Hyper-V hosts as you have licences. If you run PostgreSQL or MySQL as well, SQL Sentry will not cover them; SolarWinds points those workloads to DPA.

Architecture and hosting

Both products collect data remotely and store it in a central repository. Redgate Monitor uses one or more Base Monitor services, which query SQL Server DMVs with T-SQL, read operating-system data through WMI (over WinRM or DCOM) and connect to Linux hosts over SSH. The repository can be SQL Server or PostgreSQL 16+ with TimescaleDB. Redgate documents running components on Windows, on Linux and in Docker, with one restriction: a Linux Base Monitor cannot monitor SQL Server on Windows. Redgate also sells a SaaS edition, so you do not have to host the web tier and repository yourself.

SQL Sentry is self-hosted. A monitoring service (SolarWinds says one service typically handles 50 to 100 targets) writes to the SQL Sentry database on SQL Server 2017 or later, and you view the data in the Windows client or the self-hosted Portal. SolarWinds states that SQL Sentry needs no agents on monitored targets, and recommends not running the client, monitoring service and repository SQL Server on the same machine. For SaaS database monitoring, SolarWinds sells a separate product, SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

What each collects for SQL Server

Both cover the core of SQL Server troubleshooting: waits, blocking, deadlocks, top queries with execution plans, and Always On availability groups. The details differ.

• Redgate Monitor stores server waits, top queries, estimated and actual plans, SQL processes, Agent job history, backups and storage. Its deadlock alert reads an Extended Events session and shows the deadlock graph. Its query history graph takes data from Query Store and marks plan changes, and per-query execution monitoring is available but off by default. Availability group alerts include replication falling behind and query slowdown; Redgate notes that availability groups on Linux and clusterless Basic Availability Groups are not supported.
• SQL Sentry organises data into Dashboard, Top SQL, Blocking SQL, Deadlocks, Indexes, TempDB, Disk Activity, AlwaysOn and an Event Calendar that shows SQL Server Agent jobs and other scheduled events. Top SQL is captured through a trace (legacy rowset by default, or Extended Events), with a default minimum duration of five seconds. Plans can be opened in Plan Explorer, which SolarWinds offers as a free tool, and the Query Plans view keeps a chronology of plan changes.

Both build on the same SQL Server instrumentation that you can query yourself. This T-SQL reads the cumulative wait statistics both tools sample and store over time (the figures reset when the instance restarts):

-- T-SQL (SQL Server, Azure SQL Managed Instance)
SELECT TOP (10)
       wait_type,
       waiting_tasks_count,
       wait_time_ms,
       signal_wait_time_ms
FROM sys.dm_os_wait_stats
WHERE wait_type NOT IN (N'SLEEP_TASK', N'LAZYWRITER_SLEEP',
                        N'XE_TIMER_EVENT', N'REQUEST_FOR_DEADLOCK_SEARCH',
                        N'SQLTRACE_INCREMENTAL_FLUSH_SLEEP', N'BROKER_TASK_STOP')
ORDER BY wait_time_ms DESC;

What a monitoring tool adds is history, baselines, correlation and alerting on top of views like this one. For the background, see our performance tuning lesson and the error 1205 deadlock page.

Retention

Redgate publishes per-category defaults. Trend data such as alerts, basic machine and SQL Server data and custom metrics is kept for 2 months by default, with storage, backup history, Agent job and permissions data kept for 1 year. Troubleshooting data is shorter: server waits, top queries and estimated plans 1 week, SQL process data 2 weeks, actual plans and trace data 3 days. Each category can be changed, including to keep data indefinitely.

SQL Sentry keeps Top SQL, Blocking SQL and deadlock history for 15 days and event history for 30 days by default. Dashboard metrics are kept at full detail for 3 days and then at progressively coarser resolutions, down to daily values kept for one year and longer intervals kept for up to three years. In both products, longer retention means a larger repository database, which you size and pay for when self-hosting.

Alerting

Redgate Monitor ships a library of alert types (among them blocking process, deadlock, long-running query, unusual job duration, and availability group replication falling behind), an alert inbox, and notifications by email, Slack, webhook (for tools such as ServiceNow or Jira), SNMP and PagerDuty; release 14.1 added native ServiceNow and Microsoft Teams integrations. Redgate also lists an AI analysis of deadlock alerts and a Redgate Assistant in preview.

SQL Sentry uses Conditions and Actions. Advisory Conditions can be the supplied ones or your own, and Response Rulesets control how often an action fires. Actions include sending email, running a SQL Server Agent job, sending an SNMP trap and writing to the Windows Event Log. Version 2026.3 also added filters for deadlock and wait collection.

Pricing and licensing

Redgate Monitor. Paid, sold as an annual subscription per server in four variants: Standard or Enterprise, each self-hosted or SaaS. A licence covers one server (with any number of instances), one VM, one cluster node or one cloud PaaS instance, or five Azure SQL databases. The pricing page shows volume bands (1 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 19 servers, and contact sales for 20 or more), but the figures load dynamically and we could not read them reliably, so check the page for current prices. Redgate also sells through the AWS and Azure marketplaces. Enterprise adds security monitoring, auditing, a high availability architecture, the Data API and sensitive action logging. A 14-day free trial is available.

SQL Sentry. Paid. Since version 2024.4 SQL Sentry uses the Database Self-Hosted (DBSH) licence type, which is subscription only, is counted per monitored target, and can be used with either SQL Sentry or DPA. The Portal, clients and monitoring services need no extra licence, and the SQL Server instance that hosts the SQL Sentry database can be monitored with a free licence. SolarWinds does not publish prices; you request a quote. A 14-day fully functional trial is available.

Pricing checked on the vendors' official pages on 7 October 2026. Prices change; confirm before buying.

Where each one leads

Limitations

When to choose each

When neither is right

• You already run a full observability platform and want database metrics next to application traces: compare Datadog vs Redgate Monitor and read database monitoring vs APM.
• Your estate is mainly Oracle, Db2, SAP ASE or SAP HANA: SolarWinds DPA covers those engines; see Redgate Monitor vs SolarWinds DPA.
• You have a handful of instances and no budget: SQL Server's own Query Store, Extended Events and DMVs, viewed in SSMS, cover a lot. See the best SQL Server monitoring tools.

Final recommendation

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Redgate Monitor product page
• Redgate Monitor pricing
• Redgate Monitor 14 documentation: supported platforms
• Redgate Monitor 14 documentation: monitored SQL Servers
• Redgate Monitor 14 documentation: how Redgate Monitor connects to monitored servers
• Redgate Monitor 14 documentation: data retention policy
• Redgate Monitor 14.1+ release notes
• SolarWinds SQL Sentry product page
• SQL Sentry 2026.3 system requirements
• SQL Sentry components and architecture
• SQL Sentry license management
• SQL Sentry 2026.3 release notes
• SQL Sentry actions
• Microsoft Learn: sys.dm_os_wait_stats

Checked October 2026.

How we research comparisons: our editorial method.