SQL Server Extended Events For Failed Login: A Complete Guide

Have you encountered the failed login issues in SQL Server recently? There can be several reasons for this recurring issue. With this write-up, we will understand how SQL Server extended events for failed login can be used efficiently and how they can help users to resolve the issues in a hassle-free way. The article includes a complete explanation of how these extended events in SQL Server work and how the database administrators can benefit from them. 

What are SQL Server Extended Events? Overview

The Extended Events in SQL Server (XEvents) can be described as a monitoring framework that is comparatively lighter and more flexible than other tools. The extended events are generally used in place of SQL Profiler as an alternative for a monitoring solution and troubleshooting tool. The basic implementation of extended events helps users and database administrators to get insights into their SQL Server engine. However, for deeper insights and a better understanding of the SQL Server performance and further for SQL Server forensic auditing, a deeper knowledge of SQL Server Extended Events is required. Let’s now take a look at the core components of XEvents for understanding its working in a clearer way.

Components of Extended Events in SQL Server Explained

Here are the core components that help XEvents to allow efficient tracking of issues in the SQL Server engine. 

• Events: Events are the points in SQL Server Extended Events that are required to be captured during SQL Server monitoring. The events in SQL Server help get a clearer visibility of the internal operations in the SQL Server engine. 
• Actions: The action is an important component of XEvent in SQL Server. When an event fires, the action helps to collect and provide additional details about the specified event. Actions help determine the what and who queries of an operation executed in SQL Server.
• Predicates: The predicates are essential for real-time debugging in SQL Server. The predicates in SQL Server XEvents act like filters, deciding the events that are supposed to be captured before being written to the target. This helps the XEvents remain lightweight and flexible. 
• Targets: The targets are spaces where the captured data is stored by the extended events in SQL Server. The two major components of targets are:
  • Ring Buffer: The ring_buffer in the target stores the captured events in memory, efficient for real-time performance monitoring. 
  • Event File: The event file stores the captured events in the disks, allowing better analysis whenever the database administrator wishes to. This is beneficial for long-term analysis in SQL Server. 

With these components of SQL Server extended events, it becomes easier and more convenient for the database administrators to monitor SQL Server performance. Let’s now take a look at how these events help the database administrators to track user logins and failed login attempts in SQL Server, along with other issues.  After understanding the components, let’s now proceed with the responsibilities of XEvents in SQL Server. 

What Are the Responsibilities of Extended Events in SQL Server?

As we are now aware of what extended events are and how their components work, let’s now take a look at why these events are used. Apart from understanding the responsibilities of these events, we will also understand how they help to track failed logins SQL Server. Here are the key responsibilities of XEvents:

• Helps With Capturing SQL Performance Issues: The SQL Server extended events help the database administrators capture the performance issues within the SQL Server engine. These reports and analysis allow them to resolve and improve performance, queries, and other issues in the server. 
• Allows System Tracking and Events in SQL Database: Another major benefit of using extended events in SQL Server is that it helps users and database administrators to track crucial database events. These events include backups, restores, and other events such as schema changes in the database. 
• Helps With SQL Security-Related Concerns: The XEvents in the SQL Server database are also helpful with tracking and analyzing security-related events. These events include successful and failed logins to SQL Server. Furthermore, it captures and monitors unauthorized access events and potential security threats in the database. 

These are the crucial responsibilities of XEvents in SQL Server database. We will now take a look at the steps on how the SQL Server extended event helps users track failed logins SQL Server. 

How to Track Unsuccessful Logins in SQL Server?

So far, we have learned about the components of SQL Server extended events. We will now take a look at the step-by-step working of these components and also understand how they help with tracking unauthorized access attempts. 

Step 1: The first step for inspecting for a failed login in the SQL Server database is capturing the event that specifies a login failure. The Extended events help with capturing such events and further pointing out issues like SQL Server Error 18456. 

Step 2: Next, after the events are captured, the next step includes actions that capture the client names, the additional information required for each failed login attempt to the SQL Server database. This helps with identifying the root cause and the source from which the issue occurred.

Step 3: The predicates are then responsible for only delivering the relevant information about the failed login issue. Filtering out irrelevant data helps with easy analysis of the login failed issue without impacting database performance. 

Step 4: The last step here is storing the captured events in the target. When the captured events are stored in a ring buffer, they are helpful for a real-time analysis of the SQL Server login failed issue. 

With these steps, the SQL Server extended events help with fetching details about the unauthorized or unsuccessful login attempts. As we read earlier, the extended events in SQL Server are replacing SQL Server Profiler. Now, the question arises: if both these tools are used as SQL Server monitoring tools, how are they different, and how can one replace the other? Let’s take a look at the key differences between the two. 

Difference Between SQL Server Profiler and SQL Server Extended Events

Here are the key differences between the two that explain how XEvents act as an alternative to SQL Profiler. 

• The first factor of comparison is the performance impact of using these monitoring frameworks. The SQL Server XEvents are lightweight and don’t affect the performance much. However, the SQL profiler can slow down the SQL Servers and further delay the workflow. 
• As for filtering, in extended events, it offers advanced filtering, and it provides only the relevant data to the users. Whereas the SQL profiler doesn’t offer much advanced filtering and can include excess data in the reports. 
• Another point of difference is that the XEvents can save the fetched data to memory for real-time analytics. On the other hand, the SQL Profiler saves the data to database tables. 

These differences make the extended events in SQL Server a much efficient option to track SQL Server performance issues. 

Conclusion

With the help of this article, we have learned about the SQL Server Extended Events. Furthermore, we have also discussed the components of the XEvents and their working. The write-up also includes how XEvents tracks the unsuccessful login attempts and other issues in the SQL Server database.