Can we have multiple database audit specification on a single server audit ?

Question

Hi,
We are having a 2 node Sql Clustered instance of SqlServer 2008 R2 Enterprise running
on windows server 2008 R2. We have about 88 databases in the instance.
Our servers run on Intel Xeon(R) CPU X5670 @2.94 GHz with 6 cores(12 logical processor).
The servers are having 12GB of RAM.
We are planning to introduce database level audit to find if there is any activity on
some of our databases. These databases are not growing in size and there is a request
from the application team to ascertain whether the endusers are accessing the database
over a period of time. In this context I have 2 queries-:
1)Can we have multiple database audit specification on a single server audit ie can we
audit multiple databases to find out the user activity on those databases at a time? Or
should we a separate server audit for each database audit specification?
2)We plan to have the target of the audit on a file on the same shared volume(lun) where
the MDF file and LDF files are located(in EMC storage) and in this context what performance
monitor counters should we watch to ascertain whether there is any performance degradation
due to introduction of server audit.
Thanking you in advance
Binny Mathew.

Answer 1

As Auditn  is at the SQL Server instance level. You can have multiple audits per SQL Server instance.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280386.aspx
Database Audit Specification
The Database Audit Specification object also belongs to a SQL Server audit. You can create one database audit specification per SQL Server database per audit.
The database audit specification collects database-level audit actions raised by the Extended Events feature. You can add either audit action groups or audit events to a database audit specification. Audit events are
the atomic actions that can be audited by the SQL Server engine. Audit action groups are predefined groups of actions. Both are at the SQL Server database scope. These actions are sent to the audit, which records
them in the target. Do not include server-scoped objects, such as the system views, in a user database audit specification.
Database-level audit action groups and audit actions are described in the topic SQL Server Audit Action Groups and Actions.
You can also consider using a Profiler trace file to capture the events.
Best Regards,Uri Dimant SQL Server MVP,
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/uri_dimant/
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